2013 Calendars

We like to give back a little with everything we do. $15 from the sale of each of these calendars will be contributed to the Cure Alzheimer's Fund, in support of continued efforts to research, prevent, and cure Alzheimer's disease.

My fascination with natural history led me to cyanotypes. This early photographic process of preservation was popular in the 1840s among the specimen-collecting set. The cyanotype process (coating paper with a UV-sensitive iron salt solution) produces a vivid, oceanic blue and is able to capture detail in outlines, leaving ghosts of whatever subject is placed on the paper while it is exposed to the sun.

I gathered Queen Anne's Lace to make these calendars when we visited Matt's mom in Iowa in July. She was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, and it’s put a fine point on our sense of time and priorities, to say the least. These calendars are my attempt to savor just a moment of the time we spent visiting her. The contribution we’re making to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund from their sale is a way to make these summer plants live on well past their short season.

Each one of the calendars in this edition of 60 is unique. The compositions vary slightly from one to another, and the lightness and deepness of the blue varies. I coated the paper and printed all of the cyanotypes by hand in Marion, Iowa at Campbell Steele Gallery. The lettering on the days and months is my own handwriting, letterpress printed by hand on a Vandercook 219 press at Peter Fraterdeus's Slow Print studio in Dubuque, Iowa. I've torn the edges of each calendar to give them a feathery deckled finish and bound each book by hand here in Brooklyn.

There's lots more story behind these calendars that you can read on our blog.

Details

• Measurements: 11.25" wide x 24" high, unfolded (folded accordion book measures 4.25" x 11.25"
• Accordion fold book with natural linen/cotton covers over pH-neutral book board.
• Punched at the top center for easy wall hanging.
• Cyanotype on 90lb Reich Savoy 100% cotton stock.
• Letterpress printed hand lettered calendar in dark gray ink on most calendars and a few errant bronze inks from the first part of the run.