Sometimes it's a bit like

 climbing a monkey puzzle

bonefolders & bodkins

Contemporary Advanced Bookmaking Course (with me)

Tuesday 4th to 25th August; 6.30pm to 9.00pm

Spend 4 summer evenings at hot bed press adding to your bookbinding skills by creating 3 beautiful and versatile structures. You will complete a compensation concertina book, ideal for recording and housing notes and sketches. An intricate button hole stitch with an exposed spine opens flat to provide function and decoration and learn the hugely satisfying and popular coptic stitch using found papers and ephemera, ideal for binding prints. These techniques will enable you to make your own artists' books and editions in the future. With dozens of limited edition books to be inspired by, you will leave the course bubbling with ideas to apply to the forms you have mastered.

£105, (*£95 concessionary) For bookings contact 0161 743 3111 or 

e-mail info@hotbedpress.org

Therapy & rain

An enlightening Saturday in a muddy car park  saw sunshine/ showers/ puddles/ apprehension/ confessions/ forks/ queues/ heartbreak/ shyness/ optimism/ addiction/ yearning/ smiles/ winks/ tears/ aphorisms/ envelopes/ prescriptions/ anonymity/ hunger/ success/ rain/ cocktails/ jumpsuits.

Art in a car park

Whatever your symptoms, I will diagnose an artist’s book to help you find a way through your woes, or at least distract you from your plight for 10 minutes. Clients are invited to relax in the ‘reading chair’, tell me their needs/anxieties/dreams/desires, while I select an appropriate artist’s publication where solace can be found.

Are you broken hearted/tired of the commuter train/Do you want to make better use of the city/grow a beard but worry what kind/miss birdsong/need to find inspiration/want a good marmalade recipe/need your faith restoring in the postal system/benefit from hearing a fairytale/need reminding of reasons to get up in the morning?

There will be a wide selection of books on loan ranging in theme, format, humour, beauty, insight, and degree of professionalism from well known to not-known artists, available for digestion in the designated silent study area (the back seat of a 1988 audi 100). The fee for this service will be one British pound, entitling clients to a comforting boiled sweet and a philosophical letterpress printed quote along with their appropriate on-site book loan. 

Pop by the car park of the Chips Building, new islington, manchester tomorrow between 12 - 7pm where I vow to help alleviate your troubles.

Ode to Fred

Egg basket