#ghost maps

I wanted to get this episode out there before we get too far into 2021 🎧

These aren’t by any means the only podcasts I listen to but these are the ones that really helped me through the ups and downs of last year. Some are podcasts I’ve listened to for ages, some are new discoveries, but all are lovely. This is just my very small way of sharing the word and thanking these lovely creators for the job well done (and also finding out that I listen to way more horror podcasts than I initially thought. Whoops 😬)

Fine Press Friday: The Poetry of Chance Encounters 

Minneapolis visual artist Harriet Bart, fine-press printer Philip Gallo of The Hermetic Press, and bookbinder Jill Jevne are the recipients of the 2015 Minnesota Book Artist Award for their latest collaboration, Ghost Maps. Since 2000, Bart, Gallo, and Jevne have collaborated to produce ten artist books, two of which have been honored with Minnesota Book Awards in the Fine Press category. To celebrate this year's achievement, we present one of those earlier award-winning collaborations, The Poetry of Chance Encounters published in 2003, and the recipient of the 2004 Minnesota Book Award for Fine Press. The book was conceived and directed by Harriet Bart through her Mnemonic Press imprint, and  printed in collaboration with Philip Gallo at The Hermetic Press in a limited edition of 35 copies and 5 artist's proofs on Rives BFK paper. Jill Jevne bound the edition in full goatskin leather with a single raised band, and created the slipcase with gold paste paper by Claire Maziarcyzk and an edging of goatskin over boards.

Harriet Bart describes The Poetry of Chance Encounters as "a contemporary book of devotions, an illuminated manuscript of surrealist games of chance. It brings together in evocative pairings of image and text, the artist’s love of the written language and her passion for the found objects that have been part of the iconography of her sculpture for years." The book contains sixteen visual poems on multi-color fields, each imprinted with an icon in 22 karat gold. Each page has a total of five press runs, including a varnish over the icon and field, giving the icon an embossed appearance on the page. Although very complex in its assemblage, the overall treatment of the book is spare, presenting a progression of striking glyphic spaces covering the span of human encoding.

Congratulations Harriet, Phil, and Jill!!

Ghost Maps – The Ocean from the River (Album Review)

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Album :: Ghost Maps

I've had to submit all my year end best-of lists, which puts me in a weird limbo for reviews. On the one hand, I'm not really ready to start with 2014 releases (though I've had to for print deadlines). On the other hand, I'm still listening to 2013 releases, and I feel like things are falling through the cracks.

On that note, I only just got the Ghost Maps LP, The Ocean From the River, today. It's full of pretty, orchestral arrangements and instrumental numbers. Mostly, Jeff Martin's voice reminds me of Neil Halstead's, and the above track sounds like it could have come from a Mojave 3 album. That's all but guaranteed to win me over.