I was looking to see what I missed at the meeting on Sunday.  I will check again later on.  I am sorry I missed it, hope it was a productive meeting.  Let us all know!

Meeting at MCBA Sunday, June 23 from 2-4pm

Meeting: Several of you have expressed interest in discussing your ideas related to this project with other participants. I started this blog as a virtual way to do this, and now I've scheduled a time when anyone who is interested can meet in person. I'd like to invite you to meet at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in the Bindery on Sunday, June 23 from 2-4pm. This should be good timing, as it is about a month before a digital image of a working proof is due. As a reminder, here are the important dates for this project:

July 26, 2013: Digital image of working proof, bio and artist statement due

October 25, 2013: Final prints and $50 fee due

January 10, 2014: Books mailed to participants and possible exhibition.

Agenda for the meeting: Please let me know if you have anything else you'd like to add to the agenda.

2:00pm Brief introductions and quick clarifications of technical details.

2:15 Discussing questions in groups of 2 or 3.

2:30 Sharing and discussing as a large group.

3-4pm Time to share sketches and get feedback or suggestions.

RSVP: If you are planning on coming, please email me to let me know. This will give me an idea of how many people to expect. If you are not interested or not able to come, no need to respond unless you want to send in your own thoughts to be shared at the meeting.

Questions to discuss: I'd like to prepare for this meeting by asking all of you to share a question or two with the group that you'd like to hear other participants' answers to. You may email me directly with these questions, or post them to our blog. If you'd like, you can also begin to answer and discuss these questions on the blog. Please share your questions by June 16, so I can send out a list of questions to everyone to consider before the meeting. If you have discovered in your research any really tantalizing articles, poems, images, or links that you want to share with the group in order to discuss at the meeting, please share them in our blog or send me those links or attachments by June 16 as well. Also, if you are unable to attend the meeting but would like to bounce your thoughts off of others in the group, you may send me (or post on the blog) your answer to a question or two that interests you.

Here are some of my questions that I'd love to hear some of your thoughts in response to, and I look forward to adding more questions from the group to this list:

• What does it mean to you to be collaborating with this group of women?
• What would you like to learn or receive from the others?
• What would you like to share of yourself with the group?
• How does this project relate to your other artwork and interests?
• What topics are you researching in preparation for your print?
• How are you interpreting the proportions of dark and light visually and conceptually?
• What thoughts or concerns do you have about making something that will be understood in the context of 28 other prints that you haven't seen yet?
• What is significant to you about what it means to be female and experience the rhythm of the lunar cycle?
• What are your hopes and dreams for this project?
• Who do you imagine to be the ideal audience for this project?

Sharing process on Lunation prints

This blog is for the participants in the upcoming print exchange book "Lunation: 21 days of darkness and light" to use to share and discuss ideas and work in progress. Any participant can post to this blog.

“Lunation: 28 days of darkness and light” will be a book about the relationship between humans and the cosmos with a focus on what it means to be female and experience the rhythm of the lunar cycle. Participants will be asked to consider the amount of illumination visible during a particular day of the lunation and roughly translate that relationship of light and dark value into their print. Ideally, the book will have a flow from mostly darkness to mostly light and then back to mostly darkness again, giving unity to the diverse ways that each of the participants interprets the theme of the book.

Participants are welcome to consider these themes as possible inspiration for their prints: cycles of life and creativity such as menstruation, ovulation, fertility, motherhood, and menopause as well as how these physical experiences inform our understanding of dark and light, growth and loss, fluids and tides, mystery and dreams, mortality and the cyclical passing of time.

Size: 10 x 7 inches, landscape orientation - Paper should be flexible, text-weight paper with the grain running in the 7” inch direction (parallel to the binding).  Any printmaking or papermaking medium is welcome, but please leave a full inch on the left-hand side of the print to accommodate binding. Any imagery printed in this area will not be visible in the bound books.

Edition: 35 total - of these, 29 sets will be bound into books and distributed to each of the participants. Two sets of prints will be reserved for exhibition; one bound and one unbound. The remaining books will be available to donate to museum collections.

Fee: $50 per participant, due with the completed prints. This fee will help cover costs of binding including covers, colophon and thread, plus return shipping. Each participant will be responsible for the cost of shipping or delivering the prints to me.

Timeline:

April 17, 2013: Intent to Participate Due - Please respond via email to emily.hoisington@gmail.com

May 8, 2013: Finalized participant list posted and lunar phase assignments sent to participants

July 26, 2013: Digital image of working proof, bio and artist statement due

October 25, 2013: Final prints and $50 fee due

January 10, 2014: Books mailed to participants and possible exhibition.

Exhibition and collection recommendations: I am hoping to exhibit the lunation book and prints in 2014, both locally and nationally, as well as donate several copies to collections. Please send me your recommendations for exhibition venues and collections that you think would be interested in our book. If you know someone personally and think I should drop your name specifically in my exhibition proposal, please let me know.