Testaments to the Boom Times to Come (Posts tagged poetry)

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
lipstickmata
nervebynerve

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin 

Ursula K. Le Guin art music poetry books theatre radio
sonictoaster
jodyart

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Things We Carried Into Space, artist's book, 2021

Things We Carried Into Space is an artist's book that meditates on what we carry with us into the galaxy. The images, based on x-rays of spacesuits, represent the physical apparatus we need to survive, and the text touches on what we carry inside those suits: our hopes, our prayers, our memories, our songs, our names.

Things We Carried Into Space was printed on a Vandercook Universal III at the In Cahoots Residency in 2021. The images are pressure printed and the text is letterpress printed using poylmer plates. The typface is gil sans. The book is a drum binding with a hardcover case.

my friend this looks SO good obsessed with how this technique is called pressure printing and what it's rendering are items designed for varied pressures! Things We Carried Into Space Jody Arthur space art books poetry
jodyart
jodyart

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Things We Carried Into Space, page process

I am obsessed with x-rays of spacesuits. I love the ghostly quality of the images. I've always wanted to make a book based on spacesuit x-rays, but the concept never quite came together until I was accepted into the In Cahoots residency program for 2021. I paired a newer draft of the poem with pressure prints based on the x-rays. I decided to pair pressure prints based on the x-rays with a poem I'd written in grad school, "Things We Carried Into Space."

The first step was to design the page layout on the computer using Affinity Publisher. As you can see in the image above, the layout uses an older draft of the poem.

I traced the outline of the x-rays and cut out paper shapes to create the plates I would use for pressure prints. Crumpled tracing paper and binding thread gave the plates added texture.

At In Cahoots, I printed the pressure print plates in a light teal. The text was printed using polymer plates in a slightly darker shade. There are fourteen pages in the final book. Every single page is a pressure print, with type printed on every page except the end pages, which are yellow.

WOOHOO Jody Arthur art books space poetry Things We Carried Into Space
sonictoaster
marghalary

So peaceful Souvenir. A brother singing ancient Andalusian song in Al-hambra palace.

simonalkenmayer

Unmute

headspace-hotel

The right amount of melancholy

witchmd13

This is one of my most favorite Andalusian muwashshahat (an Arabic poem that’s specifically written to be sung). It was written in the 3rd century by an Arab poet from Granada, so it’s not very far fetched that the song has been sung at some point in that very palace centuries ago. 

These are the lyrics in Arabic and English, in case anyone’s interested. 

When he appeared with a sway in his walk 
My darling infatuated me with his beauty
Oh, my fate and my confusion
Who will have mercy when I complain
Of anguish in love
Except for the holder of beauty?

لما بدا يتثنى
حبي جماله فتننا
وعدي و يا حيرتي
من لي رحيم شكوتي
فى الحب من لوعتي
إلا مليك الجمال

music poetry Andalusia
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