Pressed for Time

Pressed for Time is one of three Moth Woman Press zines currently in the works. (Its title describes my current state of being only too well)! The new zines, which are in various stages of development, will be unveiled at the 2017 Festival of the Photocopier zine fair at Melbourne Town Hall on February 12.

Until then, here is a preview of the front and back cover art of Pressed for Time. The cut and folded mini-zine will measure approximately 10 x 7.5 cm; it will be limited to an edition of 100. To discover what is pressed between its covers, join me at FOTP 2017. Full details of the zines and zine fair will be posted nearer the time.

A New Leaf

When the infamous countdown to 2016 began, I was hard at work on the cover art for a new mini-zine. It's very much a work in progress, but it seemed so pertinent to the start of a brand new year that I'm sharing it here.

Happy New Year from Moth Woman Press.

 Draft front cover for A New Leaf  

Draft back cover for A New Leaf

As the midnight bells tolled, there was still time to light some sparklers and
toast the arrival of the New Year 

A mini-zine in the making: 2015 Mothstralian Postage Stamps

With the dust barely settled on this year's National Moth Week, the commemorative publication previewed in our previous post is well under way. Full details of the mini-zine Mothstralian Postage Stamps 2015, a signed and numbered limited edition of 100, will be posted soon.

National Moth Week - A commemorative mini-zine

To mark the occasion of this year's National Moth Week, which runs from 18-26 July, we have produced a set of eight stamps, which we are currently incorporating into a new mini-zine. Like other recent MWP zines, it is made with iPad apps (see also previous post). In this instance, I've employed the apps Square Ready, Pic Collage, Face On Stamps and Strip Designer in combination with selected works from my own Moth Masks series of paintings and drawings. The stamp sets can be viewed on my Art Blog, along with some revelatory information about the Moth Women themselves.

Individual pages of the zine are previewed below:

Work resumes on 'Hair Pieces' mini-zine

Following last week's setback (see previous post) the artwork for Hair Pieces is back from the printer in a new, vastly improved state and the process of folding, cutting and transforming each A4 sheet into an eight page mini-zine is well under way.

Considerable progress has also been made on other mini-zines in development. They include Tattooed Faces, Tattooed Faces in Living Colour and 2015 Mothstralian Stamps. 

The above mentioned zines were made by combining my own paintings, relief prints and drawings with iPad apps. The eight-panel grid that is the basis for these mini-zines is my own invention - I'm rather proud of it. The grid was constructed in the astonishingly versatile Strip Designer. The coloured borders and selected backgrounds were also developed in this app. The panels containing text and image were designed in Pic Collage. 

Sneak Peek: New zines for Clunes Booktown

As we announced in our previous post, Moth Woman Press has been invited to exhibit our books at the renowned Clunes Booktown on 3-4 May. We will join a group of distinguished book artists including Gracia and Louise, Nicholas Jones, Angela Cavalieri and David Frazer. It’s the first time that a section of Booktown will be devoted entirely to artist books.

MWP will chiefly be exhibiting a selection of one-of-a-kind books from the Tall Tales series. But we also wanted to take the opportunity to make some new zines especially for Booktown.

Awhile back I began some experiments with folded zines using iPad apps for the layout and design. They never came to fruition, partly because other projects intervened. These unresolved tests became the basis for the new work.

I began with a grid constructed on Strip Designer. Images of my artwork, variously altered in the Etchings, Face on Coins, Pic Collage and Phoster apps, were downloaded into the grid. The zines were laser printed, then cut and folded.

The four zines I've made using this new method are: The Shadow Women, Parts 1-3 and Republic of Mothstralia - Coins of the Realm, featuring the infamous Moth Woman Vigilantes.

Pictured above:

Top, from left: Shadowomen 3, Shadow Women 2 and The Shadow Women, 2014, zines, laser printed, 10.5 x 7.5 cm (closed). Edition: 100

Bottom: Republic of Mothstralia - Coins of the Realm, 2014, zine, laser printed, 10.5 x 7.5 cm (closed). Edition: 100

Books, zines and iPad apps

Lately I've been experimenting with potential book forms using iPad apps (see also previous Blog Post). I'm finding that presenting pre-existing work in a different context not only gives it new life, but can also provide the basis for new ideas and narratives. 

By combining my own imagery with the iPad Face on Coins app, I recently produced a set of Moth Woman Vigilantes Coins of the Realm. The announcement of an Australian Federal Election in September has provided the perfect backdrop against which to launch them.

With a forthcoming Moth Woman Press project in mind (further details TBA) the designs were further developed in the Etchings app. The title on the top image was added in the Pictures with Words app.

From top:

Mothstralian twenty cent coin

Mothstralian one dollar coin

Mothstralian fifty cent coin

Moth Woman Vigilantes Commemorative Coin.

Moth Woman Press extends warm thanks to James Bucanek for the name Mothstralia and to Deborah McMillion Nering for invaluable app advice.

To view a complete set of the newly minted MWV coins and to learn more about them, visit Deborah Klein's Art Blog HERE.

Dorothy Parker Comic

This week I’m continuing work on the unique artist books mentioned in my previous post. It’s proving to be a particularly satisfying, but challenging project.

So I have sought occasional light relief by playing with other book forms. Advised and encouraged by iPad artist Deborah McMillion Nering (see Blog Post December 24, 2012) I’ve made my first experiments with comic strips, one of which is reproduced above.

The Dorothy Parker comic was made using Strip Design, Etchings and Halftone iPad apps. The latter app offers an impressively varied selection of picturesquely aged ‘papers’. The comic's title comes from the opening line of Cole Porter’s song lyric Just One of Those Things (1935). The text, of course, is by the inimitable Dorothy Parker.

Click on the comic to enlarge.