Lotus. A summer short story.

Lotus introduction and artist talk at I Never Read Basel Art Book Fair radio program

Since New Year’s, burrowing at my desk pouring through design files. Endlessly polishing text and margins.

I played with some graphic elements and their deconstruction on this volume. Fine-tuning each to our final washi choice.

I’ve had to rescan and re-edit every artwork to bring print quality to par. Finally a decent test outcome. And sunshine.

The full content on final paper has just gone out to the bookbinder today. Up next: final mockup, last adjustments.

Lotus is a flower associated with enlightenment, the round window its architectural metaphor. From a Kyoto garden…

… in summer and the lotus leaf I thought of contrasting blue and yellow greens, also shadows. Layered papers…

… and calligraphy-inspired characters, finding our title and window structure in the deconstructed strokes of “Lotus”. The unorthodox…

… timing of a cover reveal, when art and content are intimately connected. A flat color design file for now, waiting…

I am printing Lotus on Japanese paper (washi). A dense, swirling fibre printing paper. Washi adds “bleed” as a factor to printing. A low “bleed” softens the look positively. A lot of “bleed” interferes with legibility. Positive dynamic and interference. Compounded by those swirling fibres.

The prior week, I reran multiple tests to balance the dynamic vs. interference equation. Let go once more of “perfection” as goal. A long swirling fibre will always carry pigment in unintended directions. A dense fibre hotspot will always expand bleed. Landed on a darker grey for text, a “lighter load” for ink. More legibility, less interference. Overall softness retained.

Washi has a warm tone, meaning it adds a mild yellow “veil” over an artwork. Unlike digital art, our art’s color curves are not independent. Pull a rich black and the delicacy of light grey gradations is lost. Fade original textures, reducing tone interference, and you’ve now placed the subtlest areas of color at risk. Edit nothing and the “cool green” side of a lotus leaf is lost by default. The second set of tests focused entirely on optimising the color output for every single image, with as little editing as possible.

I am printing Lotus in full book sets. It eliminates color variability within a copy, but reduces printing speed. The reader’s aesthetic experience ranks above efficiency. For real, ink painting books are a printer’s nightmare – small volume, very high maintenance.
Looking at our opening pages, drying atop a growing hill of printed sets. Is it worth all the trouble?

In the two weeks between printing and cover making, the cherry blossom season in Zurich came and went. The story of “Lotus” takes place in a similar time frame of two weeks…

… between July 6 and 22, sitting by the pond of Zurich’s Old Botanical Garden, I painted a different view of the lotus season every few days…

From barely visible buds to fully blossomed white flowers with faint pink-lined edges. From a myriad water droplets to ripples and shadows…

… until the season was over.

Looking at the full set of five images, thinking of the summer breeze blowing by the last blossom fading in the pond… that’s when the idea for the short story emerged.

Two thousand words, a mild mystery feel, connected to an artist’s inner world, light as that summer breeze…

In the very first prototype, cut by hand with an art knife, the window was too large, the reveal too obvious…

We already looked at the final window artwork design in a previous update, but the final proof of the pudding was only possible on March 25 when our diecut mould for the window (the set of blades inside the beige square, top left) was finally put to work.

The mould is placed in its exact position on a metal bed matching the paper dimensions, surrounded by different metal weights and sponges, and then placed in the press machine. What follows is an iterative test process, to find the right pressure that will yield a consistent, true-to-design cut.

Once we reached the outcome we were looking for, the full pile of cover paper was loaded. Our first edition cover sheets were finally ready to be pressed.

This is where things got tricky. Because the window elements were very thin and the corners fairly delicate, the machine could not run at its usual speed. The covers had to be pressed, as well as visually checked one at a time, adding considerable time to the operation.

And then, we had to do it all over again for the slightly offset second cover. The one expected to deliver the three-dimensional window effect when combined into the binding.

Mad, artist bookmakers are truly mad people living in an alternative world. A mechanic, wheezing and clinking alternative world, framed by the boundaries of a Heidelberg press machine.

Here it is, the first copy of “Lotus” newly unwrapped. Simple as intended.

Hindsight tells us our mould’s thinnest elements should have been at least 1mm thicker. To shorten our pressing time.

To make our binding less of the high-precision, eagle-eye, slightly nerve-wrecking sort of operation it will now have to be, if we are to maintain the offset as intended.

Finally, there was also another idea when designing our cover. Glancing at the character for Lotus in the font version of Fujiwara Sadaie’s handwriting last August (top left above), I could see the letters “L”, “O”, “T” and “U” within its stroke combinations.

What if we could 4. create a window that would spell out our story title, when deconstructed? Very few would probably be able to see it immediately, so I used the frontispiece title design to render it more obvious. If you look at the western letters that spell “LOTUS” above, you will see that they are directly extracted in a 1:1 scale from the window design.

Because our inspiration source deserved to remain seen, the character was kept in the edition. Prominently displayed in the final page, above all other credits.

Enlightenment as transposition. From thirteenth-century Japanese calligraphy to geometric lines to western letters. Simple…

After the first copy of “Lotus” arrived, the first task was to inspect the binding. Check whether all was “on spec” and detect any last adjustments necessary. First pass all-clear!

With that out of the way, I could start building our image library to give you a good feel of how the book looks like. Also just enjoying the pleasing light effects from our double cover and washi throughout the photo taking process.

With the images ready, website updates were next. Postal rates from Switzerland increased yet again this year, meaning our shipping rates for online orders had to be updated too.

So, is this the last issue of our letter? No, not yet.

All fifty copies of “Lotus” were signed in time for the Swiss art book fairs and my departure to Japan.

I wrote about (and showed) the setting of “Lotus” in “The Art Journey” spring issue, as previously promised. You can read the issue in full here.

Our preview at Mini Volumes Zurich and then our official launch at “I Never Read” in Basel – both well known international art publishing fairs – were the most fun so far this year. A few good friends showed up, familiar and new faces from the art book scene as well. Such a pleasure to discuss “Lotus” with my friend, and collector of all my books, Marianne. Looking forward to sharing our radio talk when it’s online.

Photo above courtesy of Andrea Benedetto

Paint, paint, paint.

Merciful cloudy rainy season skipped straight to scorching sun hot this year in Japan.

Paint water landscapes, paint water creatures, paint garden pond views from the shade in early mornings. Paint as many cooling images as can be, including a “start to finish” live ink painting session from Asakusa, Tokyo. And another Kanazawa winter scene to add to the ongoing series. All of this happened too.