Note: this is an excerpt of the Codex post over on Chandler’s studio blog. You can read the full post about the event here.
You know, I spent the whole time we were at Codex just trying to process everything around me. I thought the few weeks since that I’ve been telling stories and rehashing memories would make it easier to sort it out in my mind, but I still just can’t seem to articulate the impressions bouncing around the inside of my skull.
It was just too big … too rich … too much.
Which probably explains why I never managed to get any decent photos—even with Jessica at the next table to spell me when I needed a break. I was too busy standing there goggling at the enormity of it all to document the experience properly. It was all I could do just to man my table and keep track of all the folks who stopped by to talk to me.
Here’s the short version of the story (if you want the long one, feel free to visit my studio blog):
Jessica and I spent four days exhibiting our wares (including our Dead Feminists broadsides) at the Codex International Bookfair in Berkeley, CA. We were among 140 exhibitors at the book fair, plus many hundreds of visitors: students, educators, private collectors, librarians, museum curators, conservators and archivists, hobbyists, publishers, supply vendors, gallery reps and dealers, bookstore owners, clubs and organizations, and every stripe of enthusiast were in attendance.
Photo courtesy of the Codex Foundation.
So yeah. Codex is huge.
It was both intimidating and inspiring. I was immediately and constantly confronted with my own insignificance (I kept imagining that at any moment, some cartoon alarm would go off—woop! woop! woop!—alerting everyone to the fact that I didn’t belong there)—yet at the same time, everyone I met was warm and welcoming.
Jessica’s done Codex once before, so she was prepared for the overwhelming onslaught of people.
She suggested that we put together a letterpress-printed take-away catalog of our work so that after the fair, when everyone was just as dazed as I was, they’d have something to remember us by. (And that ended up being a great idea, and a big hit—we had tons of follow-up messages afterward, and we didn’t see anything like the catalog at the book fair.) Since we collaborate on so many things, we decided to combine our efforts into one joint catalog—with a twist.
We figured we had an opportunity to clear up a little of the confusion over who does what around here, so we had fun playing with the design possibilities. Jessica came up with a flip-flop format, and I designed two covers that would come together at the spine to form a single image if laid flat. Held one way, you’d read her half of the catalog; flip it over and read from the back, and it becomes my half. We converged in the middle with a Dead Feminist “centerfold” (ha!).
It’s hard to remember that we were in a city as fabulous as Berkeley—the folks at Codex had created a complete world just in that one room. (Though we did get out enough to discover that when the overstimulation had us in a daze, a hot-cookie ice cream sandwich down the street was just the ticket. Thank you, Berkeley!) The next fair is two years away, but I came home with what seemed like a decade’s worth of inspiration. And I find I’m already looking forward to Codex 2013—sensory overload and all.
Bring it on. I’ll be there.