Spilled Ink

Found a copy of Maternal Mitochondria’s art project Spilled Ink in the shelves… If someone tries to buy this, Collected Works Bookstore is going to be really confused! Spilled Ink is a small chapbook filled with poetry, photography, and suminagashi from an artist residency at Wildacres in North Carolina. We had just read Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking, and I participated in the community that grew up around the book, sending free copies to people around the world (and sometimes getting weird, awesome book art in return). So we decided that Spilled Ink would not be purchasable, and would mostly be given to people who asked for it… I say mostly because I definitely foisted off a few on my poor friends! So it’s super fun to still find copies of this hidden around town.

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument Artist Residency

Miriam Sagan is recently returned from an artist residency at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Nebraska! We’ve done a small suminagashi/book arts/poetry project to commemorate her time there, using poetry and sumi she created at the residency. To see all of the suminagashi, visit our Tumblr Project, Sumi-A-Day. This book will be on display at the offices of the National Park, along with the accompanying broadside. For more of the work we do together under our artist collective, check out Maternal Mitochondria!

Sumi in Japan

I love doing sumi here. In the states, most people have no idea what suminagashi is, and if they do it’s usually along the lines of “Oh sure, my kid did that one day in kindergarten.” While I love that suminagashi is such an easy and accessible art form, it’s a little like telling a painter that your kid enjoys finger painting… 🙄 Here, everyone actually knows what it is! And they’re at least polite enough to comment on the difficulty involved 😂

 

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