Aren't we lucky?

 
It's here: Lucky number 13. Kalamazoo Calendar Project celebrates the thirteenth year of collectively producing handmade, original, limited edition calendars.

What it is. 
         12 artists living and working in Kalamazoo come together to collectively create a new beautiful thing that didn't exist before.

12 people spend months:
- making decisions together,
- individually conceiving and designing,
- and collecting and divvying paper.

They spend (almost, sincerely) countless hours:
- wrestling with the tempestuous process of stretching, coating, and burning images onto screens,
- hoping those screens don't rip or catch fire,
- hoping the emulsion wasn't too old to cover the screen evenly and completely,
- and (maybe) crying a little when they realize the screen didn't burn properly three times in a row (each try accompanied by hours of coating, drying, and burning).

Each color its own screen, each color requiring 500 separate walks through:
- setting paper in just the perfect spot to line up with the screen,
- applying ink to the screen with a squeegee,
- lowering the screen to paper,
- passing ink through screen with squeegee
- and hanging paper to dry without dropping it, without smudging it with a finger, without catching floating lint or pet hair.

The 2017 calendar is the collected result of 31 screens, which means approximately 15,000 passes with a squeegee, which can be translated to roughly 150,000 separate aches and pains, though you might want to check our math.

Why it is.
       These 12 artists not only love to make things, they love taking in the furious and fantastic energy Kalamazoo feeds them on a daily basis and converting it into some distinct thing, something now that we can contemplate for months and years to come.

Where it is.
          Right here at Brakeman Design, 8a – 5p, M – F, but especially for the Art Hop Dec 2 from 5 – 9 pm. We ship them, too, so send us an email if you're out of town.

In December and January (while supplies last) it will also be available at these neighborly and big-hearted locations:

Bell's General Store
Bookbug
Fourth Coast Cafe & Bakery

Pick one up from these local friends and be sure to buy some of their wares, too, because they've got the goods and they support Kalamazoo in any way they can. Aren't we lucky?

 

Just another fantastic Friday

Art Hop at Brakeman is a time-honored tradition. We've been hosting them for nearly 20 years, offering a platform to new and diverse perspectives, inviting a broad and inclusive view of Kalamazoo. 

We strive to work with and promote artists who have a deep and abiding connection to this community, responding to and reflecting our culture in a locally specific way. We are driven to a free and questioning exploration and host artists who share this ethic.

Simon Borst's work, undoubtedly, embodies questioning, exploration, and inclusion. His journalistic comics provide accessible entry into the urgent matters of our collective life: sustainable food systems, environmental management and protection, green spaces and their use, cooperative economics, and innovative community growth.

About this medium, Borst says, 

"Comics, or graphic narratives, have specific power in their accessibility and potential to clearly illustrate complex ideas. Written language and drawn image are tools of communication wielded by many artists, but these tools’ ability to compliment and enhance each other’s effectiveness and beauty is the basis of comics. … under the umbrella of comics’ “accessibility” could be depth and clarity in communication, generation of empathy, and unique documentation of the human condition."

We are thrilled to host Simon Borst this Friday, and hope you'll join us. You can check out more of his work on his website.

Calendering year round

It takes a year to make a year.

Decisions have been made. Thousands of sheets of French Paper have been cut, drilled, and dispersed to the (not very) far corners of Kalamazoo. 12 returning calendar artists are planning, sketching, revising, and procrastinating. 

Available Black Friday 2016, but an ongoing labor: The Kalamazoo Calendar Project, for 13 years running one of the rare specimens uniquely specific to Kalamazoo.

“One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, Midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience.”

Mary Norris’ essay for The New Yorker is a meditation on the investigative life, on careful study, on the difference between intuitive and curated response and the relative value of both in any given moment. Because we are human we can continue to sculpt and whittle and chisel the comma for centuries only to find one of our highest arbiters of usage reflexively resistant to stolid terms. This is progress, and it demands a liberal education. Whether that progress is maddening or thrilling likely depends upon some cocktail of one’s academic background, brain chemistry, familial birth order, and generational identity, but there is undeniable value in holistic (a word we’ve lately drained the life from) living. 

Where a comma lives matters, whether or not we can articulate why. Dots and lines drive invention, build relationships — and dash both — every day. When we bring to all of our communication with others the full experience of pumping gas, reading literature, wading in lakes, and watching reruns, we can more carefully and potently connect. When we walk around in the mud boots we remain alive to the subtlety, and we become better equipped to tend with due care our exchanges with one another.