Crankies, Chanterelles, and a Steampunk Party

This portion of the trip took us through Washington and Oregon, and on into Northern California. Seattle was beautiful and had some beautiful weather to share with us.

Besides giving a lecture for Seattle Book Arts Guild at University of Washington and having a table at the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair, and attending the Fifth annual Crankie Festival at the Northwest Puppet Center, we got stuck trying to pull out of the Day Moon Press's driveway where we were parked during our stay. 

In Portland we held a “tiny bookmobile home on wheels” open house at Backstory Books and Yarn, and in Eugene we gave the inaugural King Arts Lecture at Lane Community College. You can see that we pulled the wagon inside the building for the talk. Never done that before....

Then we taught a weekend workshop hosted by LCC instructor Susan Lowdermilk.

We made miniature sheets of paper, miniature linoleum cuts on that paper and bound them as a miniature book. 

Also in Eugene, Donna took a quick walk into the fir forest near Eugene* to collect these beautiful chanterelles. They will be lovely in some soup this winter! 

*a secret spot! 

And to top it all off we went to an elaborate Steampunk theme party where we saw another crankie. What is a crankie? Imagery on a roll of translucent paper, mounted at the ends to shafts with handles is attached and cranked through a picture frame window while being illuminated from the back. The sequence of images that are on the roll of paper tell a story. The first crankies, originally known as moving panoramas, were made in the mid-1800s. There were both small (to be held in the hand) and large (to be shown on a stage) variations and they provided a form of visual entertainment that remained popular until the invention of movies.

Is a crankie an artists’ books? In his lectures, Peter often compares the field of artists’ book to that of music: There is a huge range of musical styles; from non-melodic jazz to nursery rhymes, from rap to Gregorian chant, all different, but all considered “music”. It is the same with artists’ books; there are many forms; from digital zines to letterpress printed fine press, altered books to literary shrines. And what about crankies? According to Peter, it all depends on whether the creator made it as a book, or as a work of theater. 

Talking about art, just before the California-Oregon border we visited a shop selling burl wood where they made the wildest buildings with twisty wood.

And then we finally reached the California coast. It was almost 2 years ago that the truck and trailer left the state on the start of this fourth and final wandering book artists trip - and we could tell they were glad to be almost home.