The blog has moved

The Huldra Press blog has moved to my website. The archives have been moved as well. If you subscribe through a feed reader and would like to keep reading new posts, please update your RSS feed to

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Can't believe it's been eight years since the first post in 2009...So much has changed. The huldrapress.blogspot.com address will remain for now but will eventually be deleted as all the old content has been moved to the new website as well.

Thank you!

Ultrices

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend a few days collaborating on a book with Leah Mackin, who's work I've admired for a long time. That book is Ultrices, an artist's book about place, systems, and chance. Each book is unique, this is a selection of page spreads from the edition. The book is available for sale, details in the link if you're interested.

Colophon: Ultrices is a collaboration about place, systems, and chance by Marianne Dages and Leah Mackin. Conceived, drawn, printed, and bound by the artists at Huldra Press in Philadelphia. 2016. Variable Edition of 40 books.

The text was generated using the pdf and Google Translate as chance operations. Its source is Sigmund Freud's essay, "The Mystic Writing Pad."

Available for $140, please contact if interested.
Each book is unique, this is a selection of images from the edition. There is a gallery of more images at my website HERE.

Beisinghoff Printmaking Residency

:: monoprints ::

:: letterpress ::

 

 :: the scraps ::

:: taking walks ::

Chance

By using chance operations we can get to points with which we are unfamiliar - John Cage

Beisinghoff Printmaking Residency

I am in Rhoden, Germany for one month as an artist in residence at the Beisinghoff Printmaking Residency. I am getting settled in and went for a long walk today to look and listen. My plan is to make new prints, possibly an artist book, that will use and respond to the materials I find here. The presses here are all hand inking only, so I also want to challenge myself to loosen my hand and experiment with monoprints, and layers.

 :: found words ::

 :: sign fence ::

:: composing stick ::

Stations

I started writing Stations in the winter. I had just installed a solo exhibition and with that came a familiar feeling of exhaustion and doubt. Almost every night, I found myself watching a Youtube video from the movie Christine F of David Bowie performing Station to Station.  Over and over. In the film, Bowie enters slowly in red, a sweeping green curtain behind him. The song begins with a mechanical grind, then a beat like a giant's plodding steps. There is smoke in the air and in the words. I was fascinated by its pageantry.

Here are we, one magical moment, such is the stuff
From where dreams are woven
Bending sound, dredging the ocean, lost in my circle
Here am I, flashing no color
Tall in this room overlooking the ocean
Here are we, one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth

There are you, you drive like a demon from station to station 

And with the words are gestures. Gestures of power, and magic, and beauty, as the song swells towards its manic conclusion. 

I took screen shots and collected them in a file. And I started writing a poem for each song of Station to Station. Then David Bowie was gone.  I watched the video over and over in tears. I finished the poems, did a reading of the poems, and put them aside.

The last two weeks, I taught a letterpress workshop at Penland School of Crafts, it was called "Text as Image, Type as Thought." The focus was on the visual and conceptually potential of working with text. I worked with the most wonderful group of students, and their endless energy is what inspired me to finish this book.

Recently, three of the poems were published in the The Found Poetry Review's special issue of David Bowie inspired poetry. You can read those here. 

Each poem is written using Google Translate and a song from Station to Station as sources of ideation. The covers are letterpress printed, the inside of the book is are single color photocopy prints. There is an edition of ten in blue, and ten in gray. This is the blue edition.

Instruction

I made this quiet, little book in the spring. The text reads

INSTRUCTION

1  The Towers

light grey, windows white

a crack in the floor, a vase

make these

in front of the towers

a silver cord

lies on the ground

leave it carefully

you fold like smoke

to begin again

for Ophiel