#Matthew Lawler Zimmerman

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It’s Fine Press Friday!

This Friday we highlight another book by Gaylord Schanilec and Midnight Paper Sales, out of Stockholm, WI. It’s Come to This, by Twin Cities writer Patricia Hampl, was printed in 2023, in a limited edition of 70 copies signed by Hampl, Schanilec, and Lila Shull – who drew and printed the cover lithograph of ginkgo leaves. The wood engravings are by Schanilec – the large river panorama based on a photograph by Hampl. Typefaces used include Oldrich Menhart’s Monotype Menhart,Hermann Zapf’s Michealangelo, and an italic cast by Nick Gill. Molly Brown assisted the printing “in the wilds of Western Wisconsin,” on the Vandercook Universal III. The paper was handmade in the mid-20th century, at the Velke Losiny Paper Mill in what is now the Czech Republic. According to the colophon, this was when the formula included more sizing, and the formidable paper therefore "retains its pleasing 'rattle.'" Matthew Lawler Zimmerman bound the edition at Studio Alcyon.

“Life’s a journey—no wonder it’s our most ancient metaphor. A platitude, but only truth can harden into cliché.” Written during Covid isolation at her home in St. Paul, It’s Come to This explores escape – that “Midwestern birthright, the desire to be somewhere else” – as well as the significance of a long pandemic: “At your age, a year is a serious percentage of what’s left.” With the background of Midwestern summer storms, the George Floyd protests, and menacing Boogaloo Bois, Hampl walks her dog along the Mississippi feeling both isolated from and deeply connected to the events around her. The text first appeared in The American Scholar in October of 2021. “What exactly, has come to what?” Hampl wonders to her dog. “What is this it I sigh into, what is the this I keep falling upon? What distress and what comfort does this muttered mantra express?”

Shull’s rich pattern of ginkgo leaves across the cover speaks to the dog’s favorite spot to stop along their walks. “I get it.” Hampl concludes to her companion. “And now, standing by the side of the moving water, apparently we have achieved our destination, the ghostly This.”

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--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

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A Novel Corvid Feathursday

Noted Wisconsin/Minnesota wood engraver and fine letterpress printer Gaylord Schanilec sent us his most recent artist’s book American Crow: Report from Quarantine printed in Stockholm, Wisconsin, in an edition of 88 numbered and signed copies at Gaylord’s Midnight Paper Sales press in 2021. The book consists of seven four-page, French-folded sections printed on translucent gampi papers, with the text handset in various typefaces and five wood engravings, three of them printed multi-color, and various other elements engraved, or cut in wood. The sections are housed in a chitsu case made by Matthew Lawler Zimmerman at Studio Alcyon.

American Crow is Gaylord’s personal meditation on the Covid-19 pandemic, the persistence of death, and the socio-political environment surrounding it, using the American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) as his principle metaphor.

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