Turkey Press: The Sea Gazer

Printer, Binder, Co-Publisher: Sandra L. Reese
Poet: Michael Hannon
Artist: Harry Reese

Poem by Michael Hannon. Monotypes by Harry Reese.

This limited edition publication features a long poem by Michael Hannon. It is based on a unique artist’s book produced by Harry Reese in 2003 that featured his hand-inked cuts from 8 mil clear vinyl. The type is Dante, printed on dampened Hahnemühle Biblio. 9.5 wide x 14 inches. Edition of 75, in a drop-spine box. The illustrations were printed from plexiglass and wood blocks onto Kitakata Natural and cut from scanned images of the original prints with a Roland plotter. It may be contradictory to assert that each print in this edition is both an original and a copy, but that’s just another example of the paradoxical electronic environment we have lived inside of for many years.

The process for producing the illustrations is difficult to describe, but this is the short version: 1. We scanned the prints from our 2003 unique artist book, and converted them to vector images. 2. In our studios, we printed 12 x 18 inch sheets of Kitakata Natural paper that had been previously mounted on Gudy 870 (aka Gudy O, a double-stick adhesive) onto type-high wood and plexiglass blocks. 3. At the mStudio in the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara, we used a Roland plotter to cut mountable replicas of the original images from the printed Kitakata sheets. 4. Back in our studios, Sandra supervised the application of the cut images onto each book page of the edition. For images of the process see https://turkey-press.myportfolio.com

Produced in 2007 by Harry Reese and Sandra Liddell Reese at the Turkey Press studios and at the mStudio in the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara. Production assistance from Chiori Beck, Tatiana Ginsberg, and Joel Sherman. Signed and numbered by the poet and the artist.