Alphabet City Press

6 August 20146 August 2014

Dingbat earrings

I’m currently working on my submission for the Personal Histories Artists Book Exhibition which will be held at the Redland Museum in Queensland later this year. In sifting through the material that I’m using as the basis for my book I have come across all sorts of things I had forgotten about. One item is this pattern for making dingbat earrings. This now-mottled and deteriorating bromide (remember them!) came complete with instructions and fixings.

3 August 20143 August 2014

Seat of knowledge

Two weeks in an enclosed airconditioned environment, with the usual handful of snifflers and coughers. Mix it up with the lunchtime throng of sneezers in the shopping centre across the road. Yet I survived unscathed, patting myself on the back for maintaining excellent health! Then, on the weekend, I dropped by the travel agency, and in the split second that I let my immune guard down, I knew (too late) I would be leaving with more than the flight information I had been seeking. If only I had stopped a moment, when I had the chance, at this seaside surf club seat of knowledge: perhaps I would have learnt the cure for the common cold.

31 July 201431 July 2014

Morning

Late afternoon, actually, sun low in the sky, that transformed this very ordinary dry-cleaner’s window into something a little more eye-catching. What first attracted me was a reflected ‘yes’ (you can just see the Y in the upper right corner), but here, I like how the strength of the afternoon sun has thrown the shadow of the writing on the window into such sharp relief, and that the angle of the sun has slightly distorted and skewed the letter shapes. The typeface is Arial—most easily distinguished from Helvetica by the shape of the arm on the r.

28 July 201428 July 2014

Neon P

I can hardly bring myself to admit it, but I fear that this establishment has become a shadow of its former self. It was more than a cafe: it was an institution. A trip to Melbourne did not go by without calling in at least once for what was guaranteed to be the best coffee and the best spaghetti marinara in that fine city. Sadly, on my last visit, I was bitterly disappointed on both counts. However the neon lettering in the side laneway remains as character-filled as ever—no pun intended—so perhaps I will be enticed in once again, just for old times’ sake.

24 July 201424 July 2014

Spellcheck

The last couple of weeks my routine has changed because I am temporarily working in-house. My assignment is with a publisher with whom I have an excellent longstanding relationship, and I regard them with great esteem. This closer-than-usual proximity to the inner workings of getting quality books to print has reminded me of the enormous effort that is put into checking and re-checking and checking again. My current morning routine includes doing the crossword and scanning the headlines, and it is clear that attention to detail—for that matter, a basic proofread—is not high on every publisher’s list.

21 July 201420 July 2014

304

I wonder if it is ever possible to successfully analyse one’s aesthetic sensibility. Sometimes I puzzle over why I like the look of some things and yet find other (often much nicer) things completely unappealing. For example, I have no idea what part of my brain or my upbringing or my cultural heritage makes me find this—a fading red number inside a white circle on a dirty grey tank—inordinately pleasing. And the geometric pattern of the rusty stairs only makes it better!

18 July 201417 July 2014

Importers of hardware

I really wanted this to still be a hardware store, because it would be the kind of place where I would just love to have a mooch around and stumble across some hard-to-find piece of equipment to add to my bookbinding toolbox: a thumb square, or a pin vice, or the perfect heavy duty knife for slicing through that browny grey boxboard—one that’s not too big, so it fits in my hand just so. But more predictably, it’s a cafe. I am impressed that they have maintained the hardware theme, and so cleverly used the screw clamp in the logo to thematically bring hardware and coffee together.

15 July 201413 July 2014

Stabile

If I had to come up with a list of my top ten favourite artists, Alexander Calder would be on it. As long as I can remember I have loved his mobiles and wire figures, but his monumental stationary sculptures—stabiles—are equally compelling. I don’t often find myself at the top end of George Street, but whenever I am there, I stop for a moment at Crossed shears, the Calder stabile that stands in the forecourt of Australia Square. I am also reminded of a time when I was very young, barely a teenager. I picked up a copy of Time magazine and read something that still makes me giggle. It was a story about a punning game that proliferated in the Manhattan art world: pick an artist’s name, then make up the question for which it is the answer. My favourite: Why did the chicken cross the road? Alexander Calder.

12 July 20149 July 2014

Fresco

This is more secco than fresco, but it hardly matters how the wall ended up as this—to my eye—aesthetically beautiful work of art. Fresco is a technique where pigment, using water as a medium, is applied to wet plaster, so that when the plaster sets, the paint becomes an integral part of the wall. Secco is done on dry plaster and needs a medium such as tempera to make the pigment stick to the wall. I can hardly imagine that the Renaissance painters would share my appreciation of this cracked, chipped and crazed masterpiece, but fortunately they are not here right now to fix it.

9 July 20149 July 2014

Aloha

A scrawl on the dirty brick fence of a ratty block of flats on the edge of Newtown: there is nothing aloha about this bit of graffiti. And yet, and yet … It brought a ray of light into my day, enough for me to stop and, ahem, smell the hibiscus and take out my camera. The very word summons up imagery of clean turquoise waters, swaying palm trees and mai tais in tiki tumblers; a carefree life in the warm tropical sun. So perhaps it is a well-placed aloha after all.