Author: springtidepress@me.com

October 17, 2017

Estados Divididos

Well, here we are. Our book has been out for a year, and already (for us, anyway) it has transformed from a celebration of women’s accomplishments to a laundry list of battles in need of fighting all over again. The new president has been in power mere months, and already he and his toadies have singled out the most vulnerable among us to be blamed, excluded, punished, even crushed. As artists, we feel our path is clear, our work is cut out for us: the hard part is choosing where to start, upon which injustice to focus first. In the end, the oppressors chose for us, with a seemingly endless succession of outrages against Latino-Americans and Central-American immigrants: the border wall, ICE raids, the DACA repeal, Joe Arpaio’s tent cities and later pardon, the list goes on. And since nobody spoke truth to power like Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who better to preside over this broadside?

Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?

Frida’s life story is the stuff of legends, and one that many of us know by heart. So rather than travel the well-trodden ground of her accident and illnesses, or her relationships with Diego Rivera and famous men and women of her era, we paid homage to Frida’s artwork instead. (Even our edition number is symbolic of Frida’s body of work: she created approximately 200 paintings in her lifetime.) Estados Divididos is largely inspired by two of Frida’s paintings.

The first is Self Portrait Along the Border Between Mexico and the United States, which she painted in 1932 in Detroit, while Diego worked on a mural commission there. It’s painted on tin, in the Mexican folk tradition of retrablos or devotional paintings. She signed the piece with the name Carmen Rivera, perhaps as a tongue-in-cheek response to the way Americans would have referred to “the wife of the artist.” Interestingly, Diego insisted that she was the real artist in the family, calling her “la pintura más pintor,” using both the feminine and masculine form of the word painter in reference to her prowess (and possibly her androgyny, as well).

The other painting that inspired our broadside is What the Water Gave Me, painted in 1938. This is the first Frida Kahlo painting I (Chandler) ever saw—and it has, in a way, haunted me my entire life, even as my understanding of it has grown and changed as I’ve aged. This painting is largely known as Frida’s autobiography: scenes from her life, both joyful and painful, as well as symbolic figures are combined in a tableau reminiscent of an allegory by Hieronymous Bosch. These scenes float in a tub of bathwater in which she’s soaking her battered, scarred feet: both her bath and her unflinching self-reflection are rituals both soothing and possibly agonizing.

We tried to channel that unflinching gaze of Frida’s when we created this broadside. We’ve highlighted intolerance toward Latino-Americans and Spanish-speaking immigrants before in our Adina De Zavala broadside, but whereas we mostly dealt in metaphor and veiled symbolism then—the gloves are off now. Every time we heard of some new cruelty directed towards Latinx populations, our fury and disgust grew, and we funneled that rage into the design itself. The lower half of the illustration comes right out and says it: faceless ICE agents in red MAGA baseball caps arrest and threaten and round up and brutalize people, while civilians rat out their neighbors, carry tiki torches, turn a blind eye to injustice, or sign executive orders with their tiny hands.

That said, our design is still filled to the brim with symbolism and layers of meaning, starting with the title. Estados Unidos is “United States” in Spanish, but we are anything but united right now—so our title is the Spanish translation of “Divided States.” Also, the bird taking wing is a quetzal—an ancient Mayan symbol of liberty and a more modern emblem of Central and South American culture. And because right now the whole world is upside-down, we’ve turned our paper upside-down, too. The deckle, that natural rag edge from the paper mold that you normally find at the bottom of our broadsides, is now at the top. (We think it gives Frida’s cloak a nice fluttery quality as her portrait presides over the composition.) The folksy, children’s-book illustration style contrasts sharply with the content of the lower half of the design. This is a jab at American exceptionalism and the fairytales we tell ourselves about who counts as “us” and who gets lumped in with “them.” That contrast of cheerful colors and serious subject matter is yet another nod to Frida’s life and work: she has frequently been referred to as “a ribbon around a bomb.”

The two separate color schemes represent two worlds: Mexico and what Frida called “Gringolandia,” peace and war, heaven and hell, tolerance and bigotry, freedom and captivity, friend and foe. Like a flag—or a war zone—the two full-bleed color fields are sharply bifurcated by a no-man’s-land of Whiteness, representing the border wall of white supremacy that has long since been erected in America. Yet if you follow Frida’s words and footprints, starting in the trouble below and heading upward, you’ll find a way through—a path across the divide.

In recognition of this challenging duality, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to two different nonprofit organizations. One is Border Angels, a San Diego-based organization that provides free bilingual immigration services and consultations, as well as migrant and day-laborer aid and outreach—including border rescue stations and desert water drops. The other donation supports Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a Seattle-Tacoma-based advocacy group that provides legal assistance to community members facing deportation. This is our second donation to NWIRP, acknowledging the very important and difficult work they tackle, especially in our hometown of Tacoma, at the Northwest Detention Center.

Purchase your copy in the shop!

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Estados Divididos: No. 26 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 200
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón in Coyoacán, Mexico. Growing up in La Casa Azul, Frida would endure lifelong pain due to polio, a near-fatal streetcar accident, and more than 30 surgeries, including foot amputation. She began painting to ease the pain and combat the boredom of bed rest, often creating self portraits. Incorporating symbolism from her own life as well as Mexican popular culture, Frida declared: “I paint my own reality.” She was fearless in depicting the female form and experience, including pregnancy and miscarriage, and her tumultuous relationship with muralist Diego Rivera. Frida and Diego had a shared mexicanidad, an identity born of Mexico’s indigenous cultures and its colonial past, and a common dream of a liberated socialist country. After her wedding to Diego, Frida took to wearing the Tehuana style of dress, including long skirts, embroidered blouses and floral headpieces. Traveling with Diego as he took commissions in the United States, Frida was miserable in “Gringolandia.” Her self portrait on the border between the two countries contrasts belching smokestacks with agrarian themes, juxtaposing electrical wires in America with plant roots in Mexico. One of the most important 20th century artists, Frida’s paintings confront those issues that divide us more than 60 years after her death, including gender and cultural identity, feminism, politics and power.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring in opposition to racism, injustice, intolerance and walls of hate.

Save

April 23, 2017

A Leaf From Her Book

An absolute and constant motivation for us in creating the Dead Feminists series has been the opportunity to find and share the words and stories of women that people should know, but often don’t. While this might be considered teaching, a February trip to Farmville, Virginia, gave us the chance to be the students. We were invited by Longwood University Professor Kerri Cushman to learn more about the struggle against school segregation that began April 23, 1951 in Prince Edward County—long before the Montgomery bus boycott. On that day, 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns led her classmates to strike against conditions at their all-black high school. Her persistence convinced NAACP lawyers to take up the students’ cause, filing a suit which would become one of five cases included in Brown v Board of Education.

Barbara’s former high school is now the home of the Moton Museum, a National Historic Landmark. A reconstruction of temporary tar paper shacks built to house overcrowded students, and first-person accounts help visitors understand the extreme conditions that motivated students to strike. According to Barbara’s sister, Joan: “In winter the school was very cold. And a lot of times we had to put on our jackets. Now, the students that sat closest to the wood stove were very warm and the ones who sat farthest away were very cold. And I remember being cold a lot of times and sitting in the classroom with my jacket on. When it rained, we would get water through the ceiling. So there were lots of pails sitting around the classroom. And sometimes we had to raise our umbrellas to keep the water off our heads. It was a very difficult setting for trying to learn.”

As a result of the Brown decision, in 1959 the Board of Supervisors refused to appropriate any funds at all for the County School Board. From 1959 to 1964 Prince Edward County closed their public schools to avoid integration. While many white children attended segregated private schools, black children had to go elsewhere, attend makeshift schools, or forego years of formal education. In 1964, The Supreme Court in Griffin v. Prince Edward ordered schools to reopen, declaring “the time for mere ‘deliberate speed’ has run out.”

The Virginia Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond honors Barbara and the striking students.

As we considered how best to honor Barbara’s story in our collaboration at Longwood, we took inspiration from what motivated her to take courageous action: “It was time that Negroes were treated equally with whites, time that they had a decent school, time for the students themselves to do something about it. There wasn’t any fear. I just thought — this is your moment. Seize it!”

We knew this project would be a little different from our other Dead Feminists broadsides–it would have to happen in a short visit, and we had the special opportunity to create a bigger collaboration and utilize handmade paper. Kerri and her students embraced the idea of making shaped paper that would reference the region’s history as a tobacco producer as well as suggest the shape and look of high school pennants. Kerri created custom paper moulds, and Chandler’s illustration worked to fill the space in both form and content.

We also created stencils (magnetic sheets cut to resemble leaf veins) and used actual cooked tobacco “juice” to stain each sheet of handmade paper. The five leaf veins represent the five school integration cases.

In addition to the gorgeous papermaking facilities at Longwood, there are plenty of printing presses. Kerri and her students created plates from Chandler’s illustration on site, and we handset the curved colophon. With ink mixed, we had two presses running and plenty of community members and students attending our working demonstration.

The shaped leaf was best handled through the presses by carefully mounting with painter’s tape on a carrier sheet.

We completed the edition with a lot of help from Kerri and her amazing students, including talented and enthusiastic studio assistant Juan Guevara. Working together, we made it happen!

We also shared our work in Longwood’s gallery, including some very big steamroller prints.

We completely enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about Farmville, papermaking, the Moton Museum, and of course, Barbara Rose Johns, as we share her story. We hope “A Leaf From Her Book” honors her bravery as a young woman, but also her continued commitment to education, as shown through her work as a librarian until the end of her life in 1991.

Very special thanks to Longwood Professors Kerri Cushman and Larissa Fergeson–collaborators, teachers and hosts–for seizing the moment with us.

March 16, 2017

Save Our Ship

For millions of people around the U.S., particularly women, minorities and members of marginalized populations, the last few months have felt like a descent into darkness. Every day we learn of fresh horrors in the news, from a rise in hate crimes, to an ever-growing list of punishing legislation, to the latest presidential tweet. With so many issues suddenly in need of highlighting, Jessica and I didn’t know where to start. And then it hit us: light a candle amid all that darkness.

The resistance movement of which we now consider ourselves members feels like a collection of beacons shining in the night. So we turned to those who literally kept a light on to protect those in the dark: the many women lighthouse keepers of the last century or more. We’ve highlighted twenty of these brave keepers in our new Dead Feminists broadside, and centered a quote by Grace Darling:

“At the time I believe I had very little thought of anything but to exert myself to the fullest.”

Grace Darling is just one of countless women who have—by choice or necessity—spent their lives out on lonely rocks and islands, keeping a light burning in the dark to protect seafarers from running afoul of the shore. We chose to focus on Grace because her life included a unique act of heroism.

On the night of September 5, 1838, Grace and her father discovered that a ship had wrecked on the shoals near their lighthouse in the north of England. The pair rowed out to find several survivors clinging to the rocks—while Grace steadied the rowboat, her father managed to save five people by hauling them aboard. After the incident, word quickly spread about the disaster and subsequent rescue, and seemingly overnight, Grace became a celebrity and national heroine.

Grace gave us a great quote, but we also wanted to include as many other women lighthouse keepers as we could, because together their lights form a glowing constellation of hope, bravery and selflessness.

There was Ida Lewis, Grace’s American counterpart who also rescued her fair share of shipwrecked sailors—she is credited with saving 18 lives from her Rhode Island post. When criticized for the unladylike activity of “manning” a heavy rowboat, Ida quipped, “None – but a donkey, would consider it ‘un-feminine’, to save lives.”

Fannie Salter devoted 45 years of her life to Maryland’s Turkey Point Light—and, yes, even raised turkeys there.

And then there’s Emily Fish, who wo-manned what is now the oldest continuously-operating lighthouse on the West Coast. Or Katie Walker, who first helped her husband keep Sandy Hook Light in New Jersey, and then after his death tended Robbins Reef Light Station off the coast of Staten Island. His last words to her were “Mind the light, Katie.”

It’s stories like these that help keep us afloat these days—and we hope they’ll be a lifeline for you, too. To inject even more brightness into the dark, we printed our second black-paper design using bright seafoam-and-silver metallic ink. And there’s more—one last secret in the deep. Do you see that black-on-black varnish above?

That varnish catches the light and shines in a whole different way from the metallic silver.

And that’s because it’s not varnish at all—

—but a special formula of glow-in-the-dark ink. Charge up the ink with a bright light first (either daylight or a bright bulb), and you’ll see the design burn with a subtle glowing luminescence like a green flash in darkness.

To help the next generation of courageous girls become seafarers and mariners, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to the Girls Boat Project. A joint program of the Northwest Maritime Center and the Port Townsend (Washington) Public School District, the Girls Boat Project teaches the maritime trades to girls aged 12-18.

Update: Sold out. Reproduction postcard is now available.

Save Our Ship: No. 25 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 138
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Grace Horsley Darling (1815 – 1842) was one of many women around the English-speaking world who have held the lonely and dangerous job of lighthouse keeper. Tending the lights was often a family business, and if a male keeper died, his female relatives were expected to keep the beacons lit — often without pay, benefits or even official sanction. Many of these women tended the lights for decades, guiding countless ships and sailors to safety.

While Grace never held the official title of keeper, she frequently assisted her father in maintaining Longstone Lighthouse, located in the remote Farne Islands, Northumberland, England. On September 5, 1838, the 450-ton steamer ship _Forfarshire_ ran aground near the lighthouse, killing 35 people. Braving rough seas and strong winds, Grace and her father rowed nearly a mile to rescue five shipwreck survivors clinging to the rocks. Her heroism earned her international fame, aristocratic patrons, a medal for bravery from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and a monetary reward from Queen Victoria. Her story inspired poems, plays and paintings — and her likeness even graced the packaging of Lifebuoy Soap. She died of tuberculosis at 26, exhausted by her uneasy role as heroine and celebrity.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, in solidarity with women who keep the lights burning in the darkest times.

Save

November 21, 2016

Deeds (and Words)

As we lurch towards Thanksgiving, still dismayed at the outcome of the election and the steady appointment of very conservative white men as cabinet leaders, we are taking some time to look back and regroup before we move ahead. It’s difficult to find a silver lining in what feels like a crushing defeat, but we are hardly the first to walk this particular mile. Many of the women featured in Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color suffered incredibly disappointing losses. As the first woman to run for President on a major-party ticket, Shirley Chisholm turned over her 152 delegates to George McGovern, who was crushed by Nixon (who resigned in 1974 to avoid impeachment). Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony spent their lives working for the cause of suffrage, but both died before women got the vote. Alice Paul penned the Equal Rights Amendment, but never saw it passed—nor have we. (In 1972, the ERA was finally passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The original seven-year limit was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by only 35 states, three states short of the 38 required.) All these losses are a reminder that we have so much work to do, and it’s going to be a lot harder than we ever thought.

This fall, we have traveled around the Pacific Northwest sharing the stories of the women in our book. It has been largely celebratory—preaching to the choir, and meeting other authors with whom we agree. We spent several days in Portland for a long run of events, including the opportunity to speak on a panel at Wordstock about boundary-breaking women with best-selling author Laurie Notaro and moderator Elly Blue. An event at Powell’s on Hawthorne let us share the stage with Rad Women Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl. The tour wound up with an appearance at Beach Books on the Oregon Coast, attended by Jessica’s mom and three sisters—an intense feminist posse. We even hit the road on election day, speaking to a standing-room-only crowd at the University of Puget Sound, everyone jubilant with the thought that we’d be celebrating that night.

A post-election event at Third Place Books last week was—in contrast—fairly somber, lightened by host Lish McBride (YA author of the fantastic Necromancer and Firebug series, who shared some tips for us newbie authors) and an earnest audience. Carole, an insatiable reader, asked us to sign a copy of our book to send to Donald Trump, thinking the abundant visuals would be welcome by a self-acknowledged non-reader. Another woman introduced herself as a Republican, sharing how she scolded her reading group, admonishing them that they could “still be Feminists and Republicans too.” We left that evening feeling recharged, having been told by many women there that they found some comfort in the gathering and were inspired by a message of action.

While it has been amazing to see our books in stores throughout the country, we are especially excited to have our work in Washington, DC. The National Museum of Women in the Arts will feature our broadsides through the inauguration, until March 17th. Knowing that others have tread this path before us, and still others are following behind us, both heartens and strengthens us. And more than ever, we are reminded that all of us have the right and responsibility to act, for our words and deeds have an impact on the future.

Save

November 8, 2016

Leading the way

When we were coming up with the action-word titles for each chapter in our book, some words came to mind easily, while others were a challenge. Since we had to include three different feminists under each umbrella term, we had to think outside the box of each word’s literal meaning. “Lead,” though, was a no-brainer, and one of the first words that sprung to mind.

The women we featured in that chapter were all natural leaders, both literally and figuratively. Harriet Tubman, of course, literally led people to freedom in the North. The four members of the Washington suffrage movement led the way to gaining women in their state the vote. And Shirley Chisholm was elected to lead her constituents in the U.S. House of Representatives—then led the way as the first woman candidate on a major-party Presidential ticket.

So since today is Election Day in the U.S., Jessica and I have our minds occupied with the women who came before us, who forged the path that led us to where we are today. And we’ll be focusing on this topic in our talk today at the University of Puget Sound:

Pressing Matters: Election Day
Artist talk, book signing and pop-up shop
Today, November 8, at 4 pm, in room 020
Collins Memorial Library
University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA

First came the seemingly endless fight to win women the vote—

—not just nationally but also within their individual states. The amount of campaigning, organizing, writing, publishing, and picketing done by Emma Smith DeVoe and her colleagues was staggering, but their cumulative efforts built momentum that turned the campaign into an unstoppable train of force.

Since women in Washington gained the vote in 1910, a full decade before women could vote in national elections, the suffrage movement saw our region as progressive leaders, trailblazing the path to political equality.

More than sixty years later, Shirley Chisholm took the lead by running for President, which made her, in her own words, “literally and figuratively the dark horse.” Though she lost the 1972 Democratic primaries in the end, she fought hard to make the path a little easier for any women who came after her.

Today we stand on another historic threshold, where at long last, American women have the chance to vote for the first woman President—not just in the primaries, but in the main event. When we cast our ballots today, we’ll feel the presence of all the women who led the way.

A century’s worth of campaign buttons has got it right: your vote counts, especially if you are a woman. Please get out and vote today, and help us make history, not just write about it.

Save

October 25, 2016

Tell tale feminists

Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color has been out in the world for a few weeks, and most folks have been excited (beyond our immediate families). A common response has been one of surprise: “it’s a real book!” Dashing expectations of a coffee table book, Dead Feminists is more than 180 pages of the women, history and social issues entangled in our series of broadsides. Questions about the writing process have come up, from assumptions that we worked with a “real” writer, or that I did the writing while Chandler illustrated. While we definitely worked with talented editors at Sasquatch Books who steered the book towards “real” bookness, both of us did the research, writing and photo research over nearly two years.

Many of our dearest Dead Feminists are writers, artists, or both– evidence that we all find a way to tell our stories. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who launched our series, wrote most of the speeches delivered by Susan B. Anthony. Some writers and their books are well known, like Gwendolyn Brooks and Rachel Carson—who both confronted ongoing challenging social and environmental issues—and their voices can guide us still. We have mere fragments of poetry from Sappho and carefully handwritten letters from Jane Mecom to her brother—they give us insights into their lives and eras when words from women weren’t often valued or recorded. In the chapter entitled Tell, we focused especially on women who had stories to share, like Virginia Woolf, who carefully crafted and composed both the pages and handset type for printing. Knowing the time and care involved, there is little doubt in my mind that the act of being writer and printer sharpens both crafts.

Without the discovery of Rywka Lipszyc’s diary found in the ashes of a Auschwitz crematorium she would have disappeared from history. Sarojini Naidu dreamed of independence for India through her poetry (“Waken, O slumber Mother and be crowned”) and was revered as a nightingale, filling the night air with song. We hope you’ll explore these stories more in depth through the book—and for local folks we have some opportunities in the next few weeks to join us in person.

Here’s what’s coming up this week and next, when you’ll find us invading first Seattle, then Portland. You can find future events and more info on our events page.

• • •

LIT CRAWL Seattle: book signing and artist talk
Thursday, October 27, 2016, 8 pm
Ada’s Technical Books and Cafe
425 15th Ave. E., Seattle, WA

• • •

BROADS AND BROADSIDES
A retrospective exhibition featuring our series through broadsides and steamroller prints
Reception, book signing & costume party
Come dressed as your favorite historical feminist!
Saturday, October 29, 4 to 7 pm
(the show continues through December 16)
School of Visual Concepts
2300 7th Ave., Seattle, WA

• • •

DEAD FEMINISTS and RAD WOMEN: joint author event
with Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl, authors of Rad Women Worldwide
Thursday, November 3, 2016, 7:30 pm
Powell’s Books on Hawthorne
3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., Portland, OR

• • •

LIT CRAWL Portland: book signing and artist talk
Friday, November 4, 2016, 8 pm
The Big Legrowlski
812 NW Couch St., Portland, OR

• • •

WORDSTOCK: Portland’s Book Festival
Chandler & Jessica appearing on an author panel
with Danielle Dutton, author of Margaret the First
and Laurie Notaro, author of Crossing the Horizon
moderated by Elly Blue of Microcosm Press
Book signing to follow
Saturday, November 5, 2016, 1:30 pm
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Avenue, Portland, OR

• • •

BEACH BROADS(ides)
book signing and artist talk on the gorgeous Oregon coast!
Saturday, November 5, 2016, 6:30 pm
Beach Books
616 Broadway, Seaside, OR

Save

October 18, 2016

Lively Dead Feminists

What a week we’ve had. It started with an incredibly fun party at King’s Books for our book release. Dead Feminists fans arrived in awesome costumes, filling the bookstore with Fridas, some Zimmermans, Georgia O’Keeffe, Harriet Tubman, Babe Zaharias, Rosie the Riveter, Woodrow Wilson and John Stuart Mill and lots of Live Feminists. Victoria Woodhull (aka sweet pea, the owner of King’s Books) presided over the event, remaining on fairly good terms with the Susan B. Anthonys, despite their historic friction.

Susan B. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (aka Jessica & Chandler) signed piles of books, and especially enjoyed hearing about gifts intended for cool feminist grandmothers or soon-to-be-born feminists. Many, many thanks to Northwest Costume and especially Ricky German, who costumed us with aplomb then arrived as Harriet Tubman; to sweet pea, Raissa and Kenny for their excellent book wrangling; to friends who waited patiently in line to join us in celebration, to our editor Hannah from Sasquatch Books, and photographer Eli Gandour-Rood.

This was just the first of many events to come, in Tacoma, Seattle, Portland, and other places throughout the Northwest and beyond. If you’d like to join us this fall, check out our events page!

Save

October 13, 2016

Song of Aloha

When we wrote and illustrated our new book, Dead Feminists: Historical Heroines in Living Color, it was important both to us and the publisher that we fill the pages with new content, rather than simply rehash the story of our previous broadsides. So it came to us that one great way to do that would be to have a new broadside appear in the book and in the world simultaneously. One of the biggest challenges of doing this (other than having to print the broadside ahead of publication and then keep the secret for months) was choosing who to feature, considering the fact that we’d be introducing the broadside to a brand new and much larger audience. We wanted to feature a woman who touched the world, and who reflected the world we had become.

We live in a global society, with different cultures mingling—and at times clashing—with a regularity we now take for granted. It is easy to forget the imperialist origins of globalization, where Western cultures sought to dominate and even extinguish the societies they encountered. Colonization of the Indigenous world has had far-reaching effects on both people and the environment, the consequences of which we are only beginning to understand. And who better to understand the ripple effects of colonialism than the queen of a colonized nation?

“E onipai’a . . . i ka ‘imi na’auao.” (“Be steadfast in the seeking of knowledge.”)
— Queen Lili’uokalani

Queen Lili’uokalani was the last monarch—and only queen regnant—of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. Raised by traditional Hawaiian custom and a resident of a post-colonial country, she was fluent in the ways of both Hawaiian and Western cultures. Her reign was sadly brief—thanks to powerful foreign interests who refused to share the nation they had claimed for their own. Yet she devoted much of her life to preserving traditional art forms and recording them for others to study. Hers was the middle road—the road of survival.

For Indigenous women like Queen Lili’uokalani, there is no going back to life before Euro-American contact. Yet Lili’uokalani led a life that included and celebrated both the culture of her birth and the one imposed upon her later in life. Her example of sharing both traditions with future generations helps us all create a path forward. We are especially thankful to Alison Milham, a Hawaiian book artist who has extensively researched the Queen and who helped us fine tune our message.

Jessica and I have our own paths to walk when it comes to creating each new broadside in our series. In my case, I’m always eager to explore different historical eras and design styles. And Jessica is constantly looking to push the envelope of what’s possible with letterpress printing—she loves to experiment with different techniques, like the split-fountain inking on our Nightsong broadside, or the crazy metallics of Focal Point, or the large floods and knocked-out shapes of Title Nine Iron. This time we wanted to create a tropical rainbow, but rather than printing every letter in ROYGBIV separately, we puzzled out how to create an illusion of a full-color design with translucent, overlapping colors, which Jessica would print in just four passes on press.

Jessica’s job was extra tricky, since the different plates had to line up perfectly to make the illusion work. But my end of the process was confusing, too: since I do the original drawing in black and separate the colors by hand, I had to keep checking and re-checking to make sure I didn’t assign some blob of color on the design to the wrong plate.

Generally speaking, we usually print our colors from lightest to darkest. So this time we started with a deep saffron yellow—the color of royalty in the Kingdom of Hawai’i, and one symbolic of Queen Lili’uokalani’s reign.

Then we overlaid a hot-hot pink on top of the yellow, one that stood in both for tropical flowers and the blazing color of the sun setting on Hawai’i’s Indigenous rulers. Wherever the pink overlapped the gold, the ink mixed to create a fiery orange.

Next came a pass of cerulean blue. This part might seem confusing, because you can’t actually see any blue in the finished piece (though you can see it on press on the photo of Jessica above), but it’s an essential ingredient of our color scheme. Wherever the blue overlaid yellow, we got green. Where it hit that hot pink, a royal purple resulted. And where it touched any orange areas that resulted from the previous pass, a russet brown appeared.

Finally, we were ready for our last color, a rich black (actually, Jessica ran that last pass twice—the double hit of black made the ink nice and opaque) that brought everything together into harmony:

Our 24th broadside, Song of Aloha, depicts the lush flora and unique fauna of Hawai’i. Plumeria and hibiscus bloom, while leaves and fronds stand in silhouette in homage to traditional Hawaiian quilt motifs. At the center of the design is Queen Lili’uokalani herself, wearing a sash in royal colors, her signature brooch, a necklace of shells (from the extinct species Carelia dolei) and a Kamehameha butterfly in her hair. As a symbol of the vanished Hawaiian monarchy, every bird pictured is an extinct Hawaiian species—including the greater koa finch, the Hawai’i mamo, the Lana’i hookbill, the Hawaiian crow, and several species of endemic honeycreeper that now only exist as museum specimens.

Oh, and hidden in the design are ‘Iolani Palace and a line of music from Lili’uokalani’s famous composition, “Aloha ‘Oe.”

This piece marks the inauguration of the Dead Feminists Fund, to which a portion of our proceeds (and those of our new book!) will be donated. In honor of the power of women’s work, the Fund supports nonprofits that empower girls and women to create change in their own communities.

Song of Aloha: No. 24 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 192 prints
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches

Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.

Colophon reads:
Lili’uokalani (1838 – 1917) was the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. Born into the royal family, she ascended the throne in 1891 via traditional election after the death of her brother. She reigned for less than two years, until Sanford B. Dole—backed by American business interests and the Marines—deposed her and dismantled the monarchy. Dole placed Lili’uokalani under house arrest and despite her formal letters of protest, Hawai’i was annexed by the United States in 1898 without due constitutional process.

Queen Lili’uokalani lived with one foot planted in each culture, embracing Victorian dress and Western mannerisms while working tirelessly to preserve traditional Hawaiian art forms. A prolific singer, musician and composer, her best known song was “Aloha ‘Oe” (“Farewell to Thee”), written in both Hawaiian and English.

Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, knowing that the spirit of aloha can honor what we’ve lost and save what remains.

UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the shop!

Save

October 12, 2016

From print to page

Earlier we shared some sneak peeks of the chapter spreads, but now that our book is out we can tell you a bit more about how the book is structured.

Of course, we go into detail about the process and stories behind each of our broadsides, including a “director’s cut” of each print.

The great thing about the book format, though, is the ability to expand beyond the short colophons we include on each broadside. So each chapter goes in-depth about the women we featured and the social issues we highlighted with each broadside. Each story is anchored with archival photos and vintage ephemera to paint a more complete picture of these 27 women and their lives.

To tie everything together and reinforce our letterpress roots, the pages are peppered with vintage hand-set metal and wood cuts from Jessica’s incredible collection. Each one appears like an easter egg, linking our content to our process and bringing the past to life in the present.

Major thanks to our amazing editorial and marketing team at Sasquatch Books—every member of which is a fellow woman—for getting us to this point, and for continuing to support the Dead Feminists Fund through a portion of every book sale. And last but not least, thank you for supporting our series and our book. We hope that reading the book will be as rewarding for you as it was for us to write it.

See you tomorrow with more information about our 24th broadside!

Save

October 11, 2016

Today’s the day!

People everywhere can finally read our book, because today is the official release date! You can find your copy wherever books are sold—you’ll find all the major retailers on our book page.

If you’re in the Seattle-Tacoma area, just a reminder that you can pick up your copy tonight (and see Jessica and me in costume) at our official release party at King’s Books!

Official Book Release Costume Party
Tuesday, October 11, 7 pm
Hosted by King’s Books
218 St. Helens Avenue, Tacoma, WA
Event is free, all ages welcome; more info here
Come in costume, dressed as your favorite historical feminist!

We’d also love to see you at Tacoma’s Studio Tours, happening this Saturday and Sunday. This is our biggest event of the year, where we join more than 50 Tacoma artists for a city-wide free event. We’ll be selling (and signing) copies of our book at the event, as well our new Dead Feminists broadside and a special new mini letterpress print. We’ll also have a host of new gifts and stationery for sale, plus free hands-on activities: print your own keepsakes at Jessica’s studio, and create a die-cut greeting card at my place. Sstamp your Studio Tour Passport at at least 8 stops on the tour, you can enter a drawing for a variety of artist-made prizes. Here’s the scoop:

Tacoma Studio Tours
This Saturday & Sunday, October 15 & 16
11 am to 5 pm, free!
Chandler is stop #9; Jessica is stop #15

If you’ll excuse us, we have some costumes to get into… See you tonight!

Save