And so, with Brandon Warren Alvendia’s “Silver Galleon Press” unpacked and ready to go, he held a scintillating Bookbinding Workshop in Nomadic Studio’s Workroom. Brandon ran a clinic on the Publishing Process as a means of democratizing the way people consume the written word. Brandon takes a real shine to the creative way people can disseminate information, and his work often uses large swaths of text and images in the public domain, and a low-cost black and white printer that definitely recalls the beginnings of zine culture in this country. As a former zine reviewer for Punk Planet, and a general fan of the format, this was right in my wheelhouse.
Brandon taught us how to cut, clamp, and set large amounts of paper, how to use a tiny saw to score the edges of pages before gluing them together, and how to select and design an interesting cover. A lot of the items he used were things people could conceivably have around the house, but I will admit to coveting his giant paper cutting station with the set-wheel that would let you chop through hundreds of pages at a time. That thing was neat.
We learned a ton from this workshop, and even built a lesson plan around Brandon’s simple instructions. I even managed to use it when I was teaching a comic book making course several years later. Zines and other small format books made up a large part of our interests when developing Nomadic Studio. The desire to describe, collect, and condense all of the knowledge we gained working with the myriad artists in the exhibit was a huge driving force. Sometimes it takes a while to process it all, and hopefully these posts give you a bit better of a window into the minds of some remarkably creative folks.
Faiz
