Appropriately enough for a Print and Publishing Symposium, in addition to informing, teaching, and entertaining visitors, the weekend’s activities at the old Dawson Daily News site also brought forth three separate publications. It appears that, even when creating art, those who toil in the print world produce some of their best material when working to deadline. The diverse trio of publications was unveiled at a concluding Open House gathering on Sunday evening, much to the delight of the visitors who came for the big reveal, and the artists who made it all happen.
Paul Henderson’s ongoing open workshop was run from a “news desk” located near the entrance of the heritage building, and resulted in The Malstrom Free Record. The classic-looking, deceptively somber, black-and-white, broadsheet-style newspaper proved, upon closer examination, to contain tongue-in-cheek content that incorporated and poked fun at various Dawson-related themes — from gossip and editorial musings to horoscopes and weather reports.
In contrast, you can tell from first glance that Marc Bell‘s The War With Paper Dawson City Edition 2014 is a colourful, comic-style zine. Marc made clever re-use of existing printed materials, including pamphlets and advertising, incorporating them into satirical collages, and blending them with his own hand-drawn comic creations. It was labour-intensive process, but he made his deadline and was doing the final collating and stapling of the edition as the first guests arrived for the finale.
Although most of the interior content for their Patina Overhang journal had been written weeks ago, in addition to selecting, supplementing, and editing the content Amy Ball and Elif Saydam chose to be ambitious by hand-carving not only the cover design for their publication, but the contributor credits as well, doing most of the work today. John Steins and Peter Braune lent their expertise in helping press the final run of the covers, which looked great and were very distinctive.
Postcard Story Competition
As part of the symposium, a Postcard Story Competition was again held this year. Submissions could be up to 150 words and had to be on the theme of “My Inner Animal.” They could be humorous, dramatic, poetic … anything goes, the more creative, the better, as long as they were written in the English language.
This year’s winning entry came from Dawson artist/writer/filmmaker Meg Walker, and was read to the final gathering by Berton House Writer-In-Residence Anik See. It was definitely a beautiful creation, and we have reproduced it below in full.
I don’t have to see the sky-kite blue poured at the A.B.Co., 1924, dug up by a miner and brought home to gift his lover. My nails know I’ve hit a glass wall. I scrabble, curious and quick, scoop and flip. Regular tunnelling speed. It’s not a thing to stop for, this impassable surface with no aroma.
The smoothness curves. The wall’s not long in my way – now a backfoot push; now a flash on the day’s horizon.
A subterranean shiver. Squirming shape falls to tunnel floor. Some see a star in the contours of my nose. I’m the last constellation the earthworm knows before I eat its heads.
When I feed the compost to its backyard crib at midnight, mole diaries rise through my feet. Their shine devours ghost – worms falling towards my sleep.