We’ve been working with Lart the last few weeks on her new weekly planner called “Alpine Songs” and we’re so excited about it that we thought we’d share a sneak peek of the cover mock-up!

Come join us this weekend at Portland’s Stumptown Comics Fest! We’ll have special fest discounted pricing so stop by and stock up!

The Minneapolis duo behind LandLand Dan Black & Jessica Seamans never cease to amaze me with their posters. Here are a few examples from the past few months.

Jo Dery & Jeremy Tinder are part of the current show at Giant Robot (GR2) called “Patchwork, Small Works on Fabric” that ends on April 7th. If you’re in LA and have a chance you should check it out!

by Jo Dery (via www.gr2.net)

by Jeremy Tinder (via www.gr2.net)

Our friends and old neighbors Creativity Explored in San Francisco have a new art show opening April 15th called Where Are We? which takes the concept of maps as the basis of the exhibit:

“This includes, but is not limited to, painting and drawing on maps, using maps as collage material, and drawing maps from scratch. While some of the artists working with this theme embrace the challenge of integrating maps into their oeuvres, others take a more individualized approach by creating maps of their home countries, while yet others use the topic of maps to explore fresh new subject matter.”

image from creativityexplored.org

Maps have always had a strong influence on us with their combination of the artistic and the practical. They are a necessary part of getting from one point to the next–even now with online maps and GPS we live with maps more than ever–but they can also be beautiful and intricate and create not just a physical manifestation of where we live, but also another two dimensional world we wished we could live in.  They have always been part of our world view, a visual representation of Earth where we imagine ourselves going from tiny point to tiny point.

Lart made two amazing projects based on maps: Lakes and Territories of the Greater 2008 and 2009 Railways. Both were a calendar on one side and a poster on the other, so that at the end of the year you could flip it over and have a poster with no indication that it was ever a calendar (we’ve always been bothered by how calendars basically become obsolete once the year is over and loved this dual use idea brought to us by Jennie Smith).

The Lakes and Territories of The Greater 2008

the back of Lakes and Territories

The map drawings were created as a map to each given year, with the months as territories/states on one and subway stops on the other. It was a common thing in our store to have people ask “what is this a map to?” and not always understanding the answer of “the year 2009.” Especially with how pervasive calendar dates are out there with your computer, iphone, etc, we thought it was nice to have a calendar that’s not so straight-forward and forces you to stare at it a bit.

2009 Railways Map Calendar

the back of 2009 Railways

The NYPL has another great exhibit (in the same space the Ehon exhibit was in) ending on June 26th that is based on maps called, Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009. We saw it when we were in New York last October and it was really great, almost overwhelming with how many maps there were. It was fascinating to see the way the city grew and changed, what geographic misconceptions existed, and the craftsmanship and artistry of old maps. On their revamped website they also have a Map Blog pulling things from their extensive map collection.

images from nypl.org

Here are more Ehon book images from the New York Public Library exhibit we talked about in yesterday’s post.

One of the most popular things we’ve ever published–The Come Along Weekly Planner by Lart C. Berliner–was inspired by a scroll we saw in the Ehon exhibit at the New York Public Library. In 1767, a monk named Daiten and his artist friend Jakuchu took a one-day boat journey, sketching impressions and writing poetry as they traveled down the Yodo River on the way to Osaka. Wishing to share what they’d done with their friends, they combined Jakuchu’s 15 sketches and Daiten’s 22 poems into a continuous printed scroll, which at that time was a new print format.

a section of the scroll from the Ehon exhibit at NYPL (image from nypl.com)
translation: “Mountains colored high and low, pale mist far off; people’s dwellings here and there, kitchen smoke nearby”

For the Come Along, since our design for the planner was short and wide and had lots of long space to put art, we liked that idea of having a long continuous drawing that went from page to page creating a landscape and world over a series of pages as you go through your year. So over a month or so, Lart created a 64-foot long colored pencil drawing on paper posted along the walls of her apartment in Berlin.

an example spread from the Come Along planner

Later on she made an amazing map showing the whole drawing on one page, but the original files were lost. Luckily we still had a low-res version and were able to make a postcard out of it.

the Come Along Postcard by Lart

There was some crazy hail at the store last week that Amara was lucky enough to capture in these great photos.

Thanks to The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler for including us and our Tour Diary in his SF/Mission article in today’s Travel section!

Little Otsu regular & good friend Jennie Smith is having an exhibition of her work at Rena Bransten Gallery simply titled, “Drawings” in San Francisco March 11-April 10. The opening is on March 11th from 5:30-7:30.

Rena Bransten Gallery
77 Geary Street (between Kearny and Grant Streets)
San Francisco, CA 94108

images from Rena Bransten website