Sunday, July 24, 2005

Lipstick & Magazines #21: Art

I'm hoping to wrangle up a trip to LA before this show closes. Margaret Kilgallan's art has a very folk-art meld of text and image - really big and bold and, I think, strong and lovely. Almost like textual quilts. Incredibly sadly, she died of ovarian cancer at 33 leaving behind a husband and infant daughter - while this doesn't change her art, it may change the eyes you see it through -does for me at least. She lived in San Francisco, and, I believe, used to work at the SF Public Library in book preservation.

Princeton University Library has made available a great new resource for anyone interested in book printing and design - Unseen Hands: Women Printers, Binders, and Book Designers. You can explore by name, date, occupation, or just browse a thumbnail gallery. Quite inspiring - read about Emily Faithfull, who in the 19th century hired both men and women to set type, and was met with "enormous hostility from the printer's union, supposedly on moral grounds. Presses were sabotaged and ink poured on the women's chairs."

And check out current craftster Sew Darn Cute for some remarkably reasonable vintage-fabric homemade baby quilts. Yes, yes, so darn cute.

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