Compound Gallery, Keegan Onefoot and the Em Space Book Arts Center

This is a long story about part of our trip to Portland.

We paid a visit to Compound Gallery, who had a great show up called “Textbook History”. You can see all of the artwork still for sale here. My favorites:

"The Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia" by Tatiana Krasovski

"The Great Depression" by Keegan Onefoot

"Ann Boleyn" by Tansy Myer

Click below to read the rest of the story…

At some point, we had heard about a recent postcard show at the Em Space Book Arts Center. Most of the postcards were supposed to be available for $5 or less, which isn’t bad for a little letterpressed print. We really wanted to check it out, but the place isn’t exactly a gallery that’s open to the public. It’s more of an open studio with lots of letterpress equiment and cases upon cases of type. In other words, it was like the Disney World of Portland and we really wanted to see it. Luckily, one of the printmakers there made time for us and we were able to choose a couple of postcards (thanks Iris!)

Dennis picked this one by Jenny Craig at Notta Pixie Press.

I chose this one by Keegan Onefoot, since I recognized his name from Compound Gallery.

So like I said, it wasn’t actually a gallery, and the tiny postcards were tacked on the wall behind these huge presses. You basically had to lean over the presses to see the details, and there was a guy in there using one of the Vandercooks.  We kept apologizing for getting in his way…and then apologizing for hanging around and watching him make these cool posters with big wood type….and then he let us shuffle through his test prints. We started to chat about the blog and I asked him if he had a website or anything I could check out. He gave me a card.

So this guy turns out to be Keegan Onefoot himself! And then as a present, he gave us a neat zine! It’s called “People and Objects”.

But the best part of the story happened as I was writing this post. I went to his website, and what do I find? He’s quoted the best pick-me-up in the world: this video of Ira Glass that has become like a favorite dog-eared book to me. Keegan!! You are awesome!! and I say that with the same inflection as Will Ferrell in Old School.

The first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good — it’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit. -ira glass

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One Comment on “Compound Gallery, Keegan Onefoot and the Em Space Book Arts Center”

• oh, rebecca
  

  Wow! What a great story! And I love his stuff – definitely gonna check some more out!

  10-02-09 » 10:12 AM »

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