Crossroads of America

“Crossroads of America” is the state motto of Indiana and this is where we are crossing the figure eight in our travels. On this trip we went north across the states to Vermont in the east, then looped around to Kentucky, Michigan and now Bloomington, Indiana. We leave the gypsy caravan and truck here for the winter in this boat storage place down the road (the proprietor was really jazzed to have Paloma parked there!).

But wait, we have some stories to tell of Bloomington first. Our friend and conservator in the Lilly Library, Jim Canary, invited us to come to the University of Indiana. (One of Jim’s other jobs is the keeper of the scroll of Jack Kerouac’s book, “On the Road”. He sets up the shows and tours of the scroll around the country!)
Peter gave a talk in the library where there is a huge collection of miniature books. The talk was preceded by an open caravan and the thing I liked about the event was that is was mostly students and they were interested in books and art as much as they liked the caravan. We always get someone who “has always dreamed of doing something like this…”

We printed our last broadside of the series, this one done at the Graphic Design Press at the University. We worked with Paul Brown and Tom Walker and the cool thing was having 2 presses going at once! We designed and printed the amazing number of 6 color runs in the day.

We used the pressure print technique to do the crossing roads, a very fine wood engraving of an apple by Paul, and some wood type for the words “Cross Roads”. The broadside’s got great color and I’m happy with this final boldness.

Just a few runs are done on this print…

We camped here for the night at Oliver’s Winery when we found we could not get down the hill to Jim’s to park the caravan, hence the stay at the winery then the boat yard.
So we fly home tomorrow. The caravan is nestled in. We will miss living in the simple colorful way we have lived for the past 6 months and we’ll miss the companionship of all the folks who have been part of the adventure.
We will return to wandering next March. Our first event will be teaching some classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School in South Carolina, then crossing America to get home in the summer sometime. Let us know if you would like the wandering book artists to visit!