Interview with Marta Gomez & Ivan Soll

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Interview #1778 GOMEZ, MARTA (1955) SOLL, IVAN (1938) GOMEZ, MARTA (19-) SOLL, IVAN (1938) At UW: 1983-1993, 1965-2011 Interviewed: 2018 Interviewer: Sarah Lang Index by: Sarah Lang Transcribed by: Teresa BergenLength: 1 hour, 43 minutes This interview was done after an initial interview with Marta Gomez. Second Interview Session (June 2, 2018): Digital File 00:00:01 SL: Okay. Today is June 2, 2018. I'm Sarah Lange with the oral history program at UW Madison. I'm talking with Marta Gomez, book artist, UW alum, and head of the book conservation laboratory at Memorial Library. And Ivan Soll, emeritus professor of philosophy at the UW and cofounder, with Marta Gomez, of Tiramisu Press. So I thought first of all, maybe you could talk about how Tiramisu Press started. IS: Well I believe Marta may have mentioned this, but Marta had already been working on books with a different name for her work, and she--Pijaos Press. And she found out that was actually in use somewhere in South America. MG: In Colombia. SL: Okay. IS: And at the time, I'd been spending a lot of time in Italy. And we were very interested in Italian food. And we knew about Tiramisu, it was this dessert. Very popular all over Italy, but particularly in Tuscany. And it occurred to me that there was a wordplay in the title. "Tirare" has many meanings. But it means to life, to pick up. And "tira," lift me up is really what it means. And that meant there's some coffee in that dessert. And it's supposed to lift you up for various reasons. But we also thought it would be a nice name for books, because you pick them up. It's an art form you pick up. And I thought it sounded cool, Tiramisu. So we started Tiramisu Press. And that came in with my collaboration. I think the first Tiramisu book was the first book we did together. 00:01:55 MG: Yes. IS: So it was a confluence of things. And Marta had been doing what most book artists do, which is to find poetry, preferably in the public domain. Really nice things. And make a beautiful abode for the thing. And she wanted to break out of that. She wasn't sure how. But she wanted to break out. So she asked me if I had anything. And it occurred to me that I had been writing non-academic things, kept a notebook at that time. Before I had things on the computer, a notebook of aphorisms. I'd always been interested in aphorisms. I was interested in a philosopher who was a master of aphorisms, Nietzsche. And I had this idea, it had nothing to do with this kind of publication, I thought maybe regular publication, of collecting famous aphorisms and writing counter-aphorisms. But my idea was for rather much more voluminous volume, and it would be published somewhere, maybe. And I said, well, you know, did I have anything. I had that, but scattered, very. And she said, "Oh, that would be interesting. Maybe you could give those to me and I could make a book." And I thought that was an intriguing idea, but I was busy with my other things, my academic things. And a lot of traveling at that time. So I said, "Oh, yeah, we'll do it sometime." And she said, "No, just, I mean, soon." Sort of pushed it. And I said well, I have some--she said, it doesn't have to be that many, it's not going to be a big, published book. These books have rather limited sized texts. So with some prodding from Marta, I won't say reluctantly, because I liked the idea, just thought I don't have all that much time, I started to gather these things that I had. And as I gathered them and thought of presenting them, I wrote a few more and I changed them. I did some more work and then I gave her these things. And I went off somewhere. Germany, Italy, I don't know exactly. And when I saw the book, I was astounded by how beautiful it was. Marta also mentioned she was going to have another collaborator, Phyllis McGibbon, do some lithos. And I thought oh, illustrations, I'm not sure I like that. But I didn't say anything. But then I saw, when it came together, it surpassed all of my expectations and hopes. I was really enchanted with this. And I don't know who suggested it, but we soon decided, I was very eager, we'll do another thing. Because I realized that I had another project. And that was, I'd written an article, actually, on Hegel. And it was about how we point to things with language that are present to us, using demonstrative this, that, you know. And this table and so on. And as I was writing that article, I thought, it's about what it is, what's the present that we live in. And I realized that it was a very popular philosophical theory that the present doesn't have duration. It's the point at which the future becomes the past. Which always seemed to me very interesting. But I thought, we're all supposed to, also the advice is to live in the present. How do these two fit together? They don't fit together very well. I don't know what it means to live in a durationless point at which the future becomes the past. You couldn't have plans, you couldn't have memories. So I thought, this is really interesting. And I've never seen this treated in philosophy. It's philosophical, but it doesn't seem to be a standard academic topic. So I thought, that might be interesting to write in a non-academic way. So I was very much inspired by what Marta and Phyllis had put together with my writings in the first book. I sat down and started working on a text. And I found, this was sort of the beginning of something else in that book, that I was already thinking visually about the book in which it would be. And I wrote the text and I said, "I think it would be nice to have two images," which I didn't draw or even had visualized. But I had an idea of certain descriptions of what they would be like. And they represented two notions of the present, this present that's a point and the present that I was talking about that has dimension but no clear boundaries. We don't know where it stops, but we know it's not a point. The one you can live in. And I think I went off again, somewhere. And when I, and they, again, just put together I thought a spectacular, small but spectacular book. It was very satisfying. And by then, I was hooked. 00:07:45 SL: And what was the name of this one? IS: This book was called Carpe Diem, which means seize the day, which also means live in the present. I think by that point I was very, very enthusiastic to keep working 00:03:00 together. And it was very interesting how things developed from there. Because the pages with the lithos were not just normal pages. They were foldouts. And to make these foldouts in the shapes, these lithos had to be trimmed. And they were sort of long, pennant-like triangular forms. And Marta saved them because they were on beautiful Japanese paper. MG: Yeah, they were gorgeous. IS: I mean, they were just really beautiful. MG: And they were, again, Phyllis had done these beautiful lithos. And it was very atmospheric. The part that was still in the piece that I had to trim from the folded image. And it was a piece that had, it was like a folio. It had that kind of possibility of sewing it into a book with that very long kind of wing structure. And I saved them. And so I thought maybe I would like to sew it. And first I thought I'm just going to sew it. Because it was just-- IS: It was beautiful. MG: It would have been just an object in itself with nice sewing in it. So I talk it to Ivan and I said, "Look at these. Maybe we could write something that is going to be one of a kind. This is the only one I'm going to do." So then he thought about just one, you know. IS: So I thought about it. And what struck me was that these were very elongated right triangles. Now, you know, there was a book that I thought well, maybe we should, I should write something that has to do with this physical reality, which are triangles. So write something about triangles. And as I started to write, I started to get ideas that had to do with the play between geometric triangles and triangular human relationships. And at first I thought this will be cute. And I'm not going to write a lot of text for this book because of the shape was not really friendly to big text. It didn't have much altitude. But I realized, the ideas started to come. They started to just pour in. And I got involved and I said, "Marta, let's not just do this book. We'll do this book. But then we'll do another book, which is going to be--" Because I had more ideas than I could possibly put in here. I said, "We'll do another triangular book about this." So Marta put this beautiful one of a kind book which for me was, just think about someone who writes for publication. You know, you write an article, and I don't know how, at least several, it was still the hard print days, so there were several thousand things around the world in libraries. And this would be write for this one. So also, you know, just that I wanted to get it out there. Some of the ideas were kind of interesting. So we decided to do this other one. So we called this, this first one, I said, "Let's call it Tryangulations, but with a 'try' with a 'y.'" Because I was interested in wordplay in this book. So that was done. It was really nice. And then it was actually the coolest title. And then we had to name the big book, which became one of our I think major most known works. MG: And the largest edition. (laughs) I went for 90. Because my editions had 00:06:00 progressed. And they were selling out. And I thought maybe 90 won't be too bad. 00:12:31 SL: How big was Carpe Diem? Sixty? IS: Sixty. SL: And Carpe Diem just went. I mean, it just went. We had to hang on to a few to keep at the end. And I thought wow, people really want this, and they're willing to pay prices that seemed consonant with the labor, or at least that were attractive enough. So we thought well, let's do this one. And this became really, I think of all the, there's some books in which I played a very minor role. I'm sort of an add-on at the end. I mean, a few of the one-of-a-kinds, particularly. Some of the pyramidal things that she obviously, I just write a page or two, a title, funny colophon, that's it, and a couple of words. But this one, I think, is the most sort of interlaced, Even Steven thing. Because I was already thinking because of that other book, and the fact that I was writing to the physicality of the book, that I was thinking about visual things and structural things. So this is the one that I probably had a lot of input about how to do this. And that book, that book realizes an idea that was circulating in the book world. But there's a lot of lip service to it. I don't think that it was very often gone after, because you can't do it with every subject. Which is integrate the structure, the physical text and the content of the text somehow. That they had to do with each other. Not just one is the pretty paper and some nice pictures and a nice text. But actually, the structure is in the theme, and the theme's about the structure. So this book opens up into various shapes that are discussed in the text. So this book has really high integration of physical form and content. And also very high integration of our input because we went back and forth. MG: Yeah, there is. 00:14:49 IS: And we also, we also, there's sort of a funny thing we were both reminded of this morning in preparation, thinking about this, was-- MG: One moment. And it's probably the only time we have had some conflict. Because Ivan had never collaborated with anybody in any of his academic work. And the collaborations he had, I mean, with Phyllis, but Phyllis and I were the most, you know, kind of the ones that designed and printed. And Ivan had, yes you said for Carpe Diem-- IS: The two images. The two images. MG: You said the two images. But he didn't really explain it in the way that it should be. And that I figured out how the images should be rendered. And this one was going to be just the two of us. And since everything had been so smooth and it was working out so well, and we have decided on the structure and the size and the papers we're going to use, and this and that. IS: All of this we did together. I mean we sat down and I mean, we actually had these discussions about the dimensions of this book. I remember that Marta said, I said, "No. It's not going to have enough room for text. This side has to be a little longer." We really discussed this very, I just remember that it was very minutely. MG: And Ivan worked on the text much before I started. Because I was more just planning all the physicality of the book. And he was working on the essay and working it out, and working it out. And then I started the setting of the type. And-- IS: And this book is a right triangle with a hypotenuse going from the lower left to the upper right corner. And the pages that don't open up, that remain triangular, you have to have a text that mirrors the triangular shape of the book. It has to be set according to the triangle. It's not a square in the triangle. The text is triangularly set. And in book art, you don't use too many hyphens. That's 00:09:00 considered not elegant. You have to do it with small variations in the spacing. Which at that time you couldn't do in a computer, not that we ever used computers.So Marta would call up. And I had worked on these texts. They were not that big. They were more like poems. And I had really written and rewritten. I set them exactly the way I want them to say. And she said, "You know, that third line has got three characters too long. You've got to rewrite it so that third line has--" And I was first appalled by this. I said, "This is not a constraint that makes sense." (laughter) So she said, "But no, I can't--" MG: I have tried everything possible! I've spaced it differently, I was just changing, and it was primarily in the shapes of the parallelogram. Because that was a real challenge. IS: Yeah. We had a page that was a parallelogram. The others were triangles and so on. So it had to parallel the sides of these irregular--So I would say, well, you know, I felt very put upon by this. I sort of sat down and I figured out how to do this. And I learned something really important. That the language is much richer in resources than you think. You think there's only one way to say it exactly the way you want to say it. And then it turned out I was able to say it in a way that pleased me as much, making some changes, which I wouldn't have thought possible. In some cases, I liked the second one better. But I very rarely thought I had really compromised. I didn't feel compromised in a bad sense at all. So that was interesting. But I was working on something else here and I'd get these phone calls. "Line three on this page. It's got to be a little, a few letters longer. Can you change the word?" (laughter) So this book does really represent, and we picked out images together. Everything, we did together. And that book, I was very happy with the way the book came out. It was a voyage of discovery, in a sense, that all these ideas were able to come out with this kind of shape magic that I first thought was just jokey. But there were some parts where it just, it came together in ways that were really unusual. MG: Yeah. IS: So we were very happy with that book. And it got tremendously positive reception. And-- SL: Can you talk a little bit about that? What do you mean when you say it got positive reception? 00:20:35 IS: Well, you know, I checked today because I'd forgotten this, but I have a record of these things. And when we were working, I counted 49 shows. Marta had a few before I. So Marta's probably been in fifty-some shows. And there eight, most book art is done in group shows, because the work is small. But there are eight one-press shows. And so everybody who looked at it in this country wanted to have it. They were very positive in terms of sales here. And both through dealers at that point, we had developed these dealers. Some by recommendation by other people, some, a few of them we went and talked to them. But most of them through other people calling their attention to us and they would say... So we had, I think four or five dealers around the country. And also there were some direct sales. And people seemed very 00:12:00 excited about this book. And I would go to Europe at this point. I decided to try to sell the work there. And it sold, particularly this one, in great places. The French Bibliotheque Nationale, and the Italian equivalent. There were a couple of really good ones in Germany. One, the Bavarian State Library, the-- MG: And some of them had already collected. Because I think most rare book collections like to collect people that they think are going to keep working on those books. And at the time, I thought it was going to be forever working. And they were very excited about and they had also acquired Carpe Diem in Germany. IS: Well, I don't remember exactly when I hit the shores there, whether I already had the Tryangulations book. I think some of them I had already sold the first two. MG: You were in Budapest. I remember because Reiner, your friend, was with us when I showed you Carpe Diem. I had finished it here. IS: Right. Right. MG: And he was spending a semester in Budapest and I brought it. So that was-- IS: Yeah. So I think after Carpe Diem, after the first couple we did together, I started showing them. And I think by the time we had triangles, some of them were return visits to people already looking. But everybody who had bought before just said, oh, yes, we must have this. And there were a couple of new ones. So I did that. And that was fun. I met people and actually had some commercial experience for the first time in my life. It was kind of interesting and exciting. And then we, what was the next book after? Oh, yes. Then the next sort of big project we did together was the C:o:l:o:n book, which was also very, it a very jokey book. And that had an interesting genesis. Actually someone who had seen our work in California was doing a show for whatever it was, the bicentennial. It must have been around '92. MG: Five hundred. IS: It was-- MG: Five hundred years? Of the discovery. IS: Yes, it was 500 years. Big Columbus celebration. And this was a show of artwork. And it was about the fact that Columbus discovered America, and its good and its bad side. It was called Columbus: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And they said, "Would you do something for this?" So we put together a triptych with, we had plates made. There were three images that related to the names of Columbus. One in Italian, one in Spanish. Of course, he sailed for Spain. And one in English. And we had these rebus-like images. We collaged images, which we worked together on. I remember going to the libraries. We didn't do it on computer then. We found an image, you know. And we put together these kind of funny conglomerate image. So I was involved in those designs very much visually with Marta. And we sat down together. And it's sort of interesting. Marta really was always, she would put it together. I don't have the creative ability to make the images so well. But I can actually with collage. I have a very good eye, kind of a passive eye. We would kind of, she'd say, "What about this?" I said, "No, let's move it over here." So we really worked together. MG: For Ivan, that was a very, because it was, had never done it before, and just been able to. So visually, get involved, was good. Because you know, it did really, from then on, I was very kind of, I trust his eye very much. So I never before wanted an input, necessarily. And then it was really working out well. This was a triptych, so it was a flat piece. 26:50 IS: So actually with three-- MG: Three panels. IS: And it was pretty big on the wall. And again I said, we're going to do this, just one of these. And I said, we could have done an edition of the triptych. But I said, let's do the book. Because there's enough stuff here. And in addition, each triptych had some text underneath. And the guy who put up the show was very positive about this. He said that was the best thing in the show. I don't know. But in any case, I realized there was some, having thought about this and come up with those texts, I had more to say, also. So I said, let's do a book. So 00:15:00 we did the C:o:l:o:n book. And again, I was very happy with that. And we actually did that one in the basement, right, on this press we had acquired. MG: Yeah. And the C:o:l:o:n has different meanings, and is very critical of, so that was, we had a lot of fun working on that book. And it was more a codecs kind of binding. So that one was really that we could really integrate it into some kind of voyages. IS: But there was no integration of the book structure. The pages folded out, but they weren't particularly thematic with the structure, just folded out because it was interesting. But there was a tremendous integration of text and these images we had come up with. MG: Of course. Of course. IS: Those were rebus-like and they actually had this kind of, they had puns built into them, and then they were in the text, too. So that was great fun, too. And then Marta did some really wonderful one-of-a-kind books, which I didn't do much for those. I did very little. MG: Well the one about what goes around comes around is one of a kind, and there was a lot of work done, a lot of text in that one. IS: Oh, yes. No, no, that was, I forgot about that one. MG: But that one, I had sense the structure, somebody was showing that structure and I thought it was cool. But I'm always a little hesitant about those books that you have to assemble. I don't know if you've seen them. They come in a box and you're supposed to start putting it together. And then once it's together, you can view it as a book. I'm a little hesitant about that. I prefer immediate access to the book. IS: Excuse me. That's what this book is. You get it in a box and you put it together. SL: Okay. And what is this book? This is It Goes Around, Comes Around? MG: What Goes Around, Comes Around. IS: There are a bunch of rods that go into a base. And then these signatures radiate out in a circle. SL: Okay. 30:02 MG: So they will come and then you can read the book and it's endlessly. IS: So Marta said, "I want to do a book with this structure. Can you think of anything to write?" And that went back, that's also, I forgot about that for a minute. But that's very heavily integrated. Because I wrote that again, like the triangle book. Started with the structure, and I was writing with something visual in mind to begin with. And I thought, what can I write that fits the structure? In this case, it almost seemed like an imperative. Because why would you build that structure if you weren't going to, although some people have used that structure and just put a text in there. And I thought, this is something that goes around in a circle. What goes around in a circle? So it seemed to me that this would be a great structure to talk about the idea of infinity. Because the circle, two images of infinity. One is a line that never stops. The other is you go around in a circle. Has no beginning, has no end. This called up all sorts of associations to me. Magellan going around the world. So I wrote a text that was about that. And also about-- MG: The numbering of the page. IS: And also, for example, the pages, I don't know how many pages there were. But let's 00:18:00 say there were eight signatures. So the first page would be 1,9, what would it be? One, 9, 17 and then dot, dot, dot. So each page, the pagination suggested an infinite series with no end. So that was built into the book. Also the idea of, I'd written this essay a long time ago, I was very interested in this idea of what's called the turnover term. That the world history repeats itself eternally. And that we are not the first time here. So I thought, I can put that in the book, I can put Magellan in the book. And I can put just the idea of the circle, make an image of infinity. So we did this text, and it's called What Goes Around, Comes Around. So that was again, that stands with the triangle book very much where the text is written to a physical shape. And we just don't say, "Oh, that's a cool shape, we're going to write a nice text and it will be in this shape because it's unusual." No. It's actually the text, the text utilizes that particular structure. And I think if there's anything that distinguished our work from what I saw, and I was looking at book art at that time, is the degree of integration that we aspired to, and, I think, sometimes achieved to some degree between the physical form of the book and the content of the text. And I think that was unusual. People remarked on it. And one person said, "Oh, everybody talks about this but no one really does it." Because it's not easy to find a text that goes with the structure that way. You can't write about anything that way. So we were trying to do that. And that seemed, it seemed almost magical. It was like getting into number magic or shape magic. It was very exciting. And it also, for me, was a, they used to talk about right and left sides of the brain. It was like switched sides of the brain for me from doing normal philosophy. Yet it was very much related. Some of those books were very related. Almost every book had things in it that came from my interest in philosophy. SL: Speaking of, did your colleagues see your books? What did they say? 34:48 IS: (laughter) Let me say this. This was, this happened just before academia decided that inter-disciplinarity was a good thing. It was before that. MG: Otherwise, we would have been very-- IS: I think it still would, the idea of inter-disciplinarity, very strange. But in any case, my colleagues viewed this as probably my-- MG: Hobby. IS: A hobby and also a distraction, and maybe one that robbed my attention from what I should be doing. So it was, if anything, neutral. In some cases maybe negative. I remember when we were in Minneapolis and saw an old friend who was interested in this sort of thing. Not a philosopher. He was literature. Interested in book art. And we were up there to, we had a part of a show and Marta was one of the jurors in a competition up there. He wanted to see what we had with us and I showed him. And he said, "What do your colleagues think about this?" I said, "I'm still writing regular stuff." And he said, "Oh. Okay." But once we had a show at Canterbury, just one book. They would show different pages-- MG: This is a bookstore in town. IS: Yeah. MG: It's now no longer, but it's still the building there is beautiful, yes. IS: And at that time Marta, with seemingly endless energy, would actually do letterpress invitations and announcements. And we sent them to all of my department colleagues. MG: You did? (laughs) IS: Yes, I did. And no one, not only did no one come, that was okay. No one ever mentioned that they had received it. It was very strange. No one said, "Oh, I couldn't come, but it sounds interesting." No. It was this omerta. There was silence. (MG laughs) I think people didn't, no, I actually said at some points, I think these things are in some way an expression of some philosophical interest. Especially, I would say, the Carpe Diem book really develops a philosophical view about the present, the present you're supposed to live in. Now there was no, we didn't have the program for visual culture or anything like that-- MG: But I think-- IS: It was, I would say, ignored or viewed in a dim light. MG: Yeah. But I think that 00:21:00 in part it's because they wouldn't know what to say. They cannot, in conversations that I had socially at parties where his colleagues were, and when they asked me what I did and I said, "Oh, I'm a book artist," the conversation ended there. (SL laughs) Because they wouldn't know what to ask me next. And I think, I don't know what it is with people that, it's more in some fields than others, they are afraid of asking what that is. Because it's like, oh, I'm supposed to know it all. If you're talking with people in the English department, and they want to know more and more and more. And even in Europe, his friends that are also academics, they were all interested. And I think it is, I don't know if it was a period where-- IS: It was. MG: --what you just said about-- IS: I think specialization hit academia earlier in the United States than in Europe. And I was feeling much more comfortable in Europe where people in the humanities were supposed to be educated and still interested in other fields of the humanities, not just in what they did. In the United States, this has happened all over the world now. There has been a narrowing of the mental outlook of humanists. There may be a counter movement now. But this was really in full swing in the United States, and particularly in philosophy, I have to say. And in Europe, there was a very different, different approach. In fact, one of my friends in Germany who knew my work, a friend in Berlin, when he saw Tryangulations, Tryangles, he said, "This is what people will remember you for forever," he said. (laughter) He just thought this was terrific. Here it was considered--I have a friend, I have several colleagues who have done non-academic things recently, younger colleagues. And one of them said to me, I said, oh, I couldn't get to the, he had a talk in town and I couldn't make it. So I told him I thought it was great that he had done this work, which wasn't an academic book. And he said, "But I'm not claiming this as part of my academic work." And I was thinking-- MG: Still-- IS: --why not? Because it was about philosophical things, but it wasn't, he's a very productive person. He doesn't have to. But there was this idea that you should only be doing this very professional stuff. So there was that kind of tension. I also once asked the graduate school, since I had a fair amount of success at this for a summer grant. I said, "I have an academic project, and I also thought about applying to do one of these books." And the person who interviewed me said, "I think it's great that you're doing this. But it will never be funded. Because you weren't hired to do this." That if you're hired to do one thing and you branch out, this wouldn't be funded. It would be if you branched out within your discipline, perhaps. You started doing 18th century and you went to the 19th century. That's okay. But to cut across disciplinary lines at that point was the kiss of death for a grant from the grad school. So I applied for the other project and got it. That just shows you that there was a strange attitude abroad in academia about this sort of stuff. Perhaps tolerated 00:24:00 if it didn't interfere with what you were really supposed to be doing. But the idea that this was part of what you were doing as a philosopher or humanist, it's, I think it's better now. I really think it's better now. There wasn't much encouragement there. MG: And later, later on your colleague Lester was very interested in that aspect, in that part of your work that he wanted to put it in the newsletter of the philosophy department-- IS: Yes. MG: Or had to like integrated it. But that was more recently. IS: Yes. But as we were doing it, it was not-- 42:42 MG: Yeah, not a lot of-- IS: There was not a lot of encouragement for this. But I was very happy just doing it. It seemed like it-- MG: And I would probably feel even better that there were no philosophers in our presentations. Because we actually gave a talk. It wasn't just the exhibition. But we were asked to give a talk about the work. And it was very well attended by, you know, people that were, at the time, book arts was very lively here. And even to my surprise, some people from the library. And at the time, this man who was not kind of in administration, like second to the director of the library, that had lived many years in Germany, or gone to Germany to study or something like that. So I think you know, he came and he was very complimentary of what we were doing. And the head of the library was very-- IS: Yeah, she was interested. MG: Very interested and very encouraging. SL: And the head of the library at the time was? IS: Ken Frazier? MG: At the time was Ken Frazier. Before the man that just retired. And not necessarily with funding. But with, you know, comments. And that was very acknowledged. How is your work going, if we run into each other at social events, he always wanted to talk to me not about the work I was doing in the library, but about my artistic work. Because he also was very interested in poetry himself. And he published these chapbooks that were from poets around Wisconsin, I don't know exactly. But yeah, that was actually very nice that that was really very much acknowledged with some of my colleagues within the library. Yeah. SL: And what about other book artists? Because this was not poetry. What did they think of what you were doing? 45:04 MG: Well, no, a lot of people were also doing-- IS: Positive. MG: Yeah, they liked it a lot. But also, for instance, Phyllis, I don't know how much book work she's done. But at the time, she did a beautiful book where she drew some opera as a theme. And it was really beautifully, beautiful lithographs. So other people that wrote their own thing, sometimes they were not necessarily poetry, but just lines. Maybe they kept a journal and they wanted to do a book and use some of that. It was not strictly poetry. But most people used poetry. IS: But I think the reception was, in the book world, was good. Generally very good. And then there were a lot of things we did that were not full books. I mean, this is a form that's a killer, essentially, because there's so much labor involved to put out an edition. It's just an enormous amount of work. And a lot of people don't do it for that long because-- MG: They have somebody who binds them, so they outsource that part. So they have a binder, they have a papermaker. And they would be in charge of the print, I don't know-- IS: Yes. MG: The work is divided although it's the idea of the person and everything else. But in my case, in our case, I did most of it, including the paper, when I was making paper for the books, later on I bought some beautiful handmade papers. But so then you don't really produce more than two a year. IS: That would be a lot. MG: And then the sewing, because I did also the sewing--And I enjoyed every aspect of it. I don't think I would have necessarily, you know, pass it on to somebody else to do it. It was, all those different elements of making a book I enjoyed. IS: We did a lot of smaller projects. Ephemera. I think we did, and we really worked at, the ephemera, 00:27:00 they were also letterpress. The same kind of thought went into them except that they're smaller. And I even thought at the time we were having all these shows that I was a little--I thought that the standard book show should be superseded, in a way. Sometimes I said it might be better to have a show and just show every page of one book than one page of every book. MG: (laughs) That's what everybody says. You go to a book show and if you don't have access to the book, then you're going to be seeing only one page of all these beautiful books. And you want to be able to touch them. Some people don't want to--I always, I had a copy of when there were a group shows, and I always had that copy if they wanted that book. Because if it was going to be handled just by the people that set up the show or something, you know, it's just--and that is a conflict for people that show books. That you would like the book to be gone through, but you know, if it is in a gallery on a pedestal, people come from outside, they just ate something, they're not careful. And if a book, like we like to do books where the viewer discovers a way of opening the page that is not the codecs, just turning pages, you have a lot of interaction. And people get involved with them in doing these unfolding of the things. And that all required some supervision or some like guidance. Oh, you now opened that. So that's sometimes the frustration of book shows. But I also know people that like their book to be just open. Like just look at it. And it's nice. 00:49:32 IS: But also in the book arts there are people who, there's a spectrum of I would say sort of precious quality of the book. (MG laughs) We're sort of on the precious end. The papers were hugely expensive. These Japanese papers. A whole village has to make them. They dye-- MG: (laughs) Not anymore. IS: Not anymore. And you know, Marta liked thin papers. And some of them you had to know, and you could see they could be ruined very easily. So you work, tremendous amount of money in even one book. We didn't want to leave them out just to be gone through. So sometimes I thought, if someone asked us, I'd say, how about just doing one or two, but we'll show almost a whole book. You'll be able to see it opened up in various ways, and you get an idea what it is. Otherwise I had the feeling-- But we also had people, a couple of times we had these very fine binders who would buy a copy of your book. They will rebind it. Of course they're already beautifully bound, but they rebind it in leather or build a new box for it or something. MG: No, there was only one time. IS: I think two. MG: And it was a very good friend of mine who is leather binding, I mean, they call them fine binders. And she was very hesitant to ask me. Because as a person who designs the binding, they don't, they said well only if you're willing to give me a book. But the only way that I could sell it and ensure that this person would love your book is if I do a leather binding on it. And at the time I thought, that's kind of funny. I never felt like oh, my binding is going to be transformed! I said, "Do you think?" And she said, and she did beautiful work. And she said, "I just already have some ideas in how to do that particular one." And it was Tryangulations. I mean, Tryangles. And she, I gave it to her in sheets because the books were not all sewn. So she didn't have to undo the binding. And she made a binding that I never saw because she took it to Europe. She had all her clients in Italy. And she sewed it. So probably it was in a good collection. But as soon as I gave it to her, it wasn't necessarily my book. And since she had shown me drawings of how she wanted to do it, I said, "Well, why not?" I was not-- IS: There was also, there was a man who rebound Carpe Diem and it went all over Europe with his binding. In Paris, let's see. It was in Paris and also in Brussels and also in New York. So it happened. But he didn't even, he just bought the book and did it. It was his book. And then we found out that once these guys rebinded in vellum, it increases like eight to tenfold in price. MG: Yeah. 00:30:00 00:53:10 IS: They were selling it for thousands of dollars. But I was very happy with those venues. MG: But usually they do only one. If they have only one copy. SL: Yeah. IS: Yeah. MG: That's why those bindings are so expensive. IS: So that was happening. And then there were these collaborative projects where they'd ask different artists to do a page or signature. MG: Yeah, those were fun. IS: They were fun. But these things we did were things like solstice cards. We did a number of those. MG: Equinox. IS: Equinox cards we did once. And then there was a thing that we had, I took one of the texts from Tryangles, it was from Tryangles, about means and extremes. The virtuous action is always between the two extremes. And I kind of developed that and we did a little piece of ephemera. So we did a number of those. And they were really nice. MG: Yeah. And we did have a, I have a manuscript that I even had worked, and it was ready to become a book that had a lot of interesting ideas. And it's never come to be done. So maybe that's something that I, the one on Schopenhauer. IS: Yeah. MG: But that was a good, and now there is more accessibility at the time, we wanted these important pictures of these men that we were in Berlin when we went to the library, and they don't allow you to photocopy any of the images. And we wanted, you know, to have them photocopy those for us and they didn't do a good--so we were still looking for these images. And I'm sure right now we would have more access to that. We needed pictures of him as a young man, as a middle-aged, as an old man. And these pictures are not that available here. So. IS: Well I'm sure they're online. MG: They're probably now online, all of them. Yeah. IS: The idea was to do a book about desire was actually what it was about. And he had written about this. And I had written about him on desire and why he was wrong. And I thought, that's a topic that people can relate to. They don't have to be that deeply into philosophy. And he had written that desire's a bad thing because when you're designing something, that means you don't have what you want to have. You want things to be the way they're not. And then when you get it, you get bored with it, you desire again. So this was why life wasn't so positive. And I had written an essay actually called "In Defense of Desire." It was published in a journal in England. And I thought, this would make a great book. This constellation of ideas. And there are these famous, iconic pictures of Schopenhauer through his career. They're actually on the covers of the standard edition in Germany when he was young and he was old. And how he gets more embittered looking as he gets older. So I wanted to make fun of what old guys say about desire and what young guys say about desires. And I thought this stuff here, I'll work this out. So we were looking for images and we did go to Berlin where they had images in some special library. And we had them made and they were not entirely satisfactory. But at that time, to do a book with images, we had to have plates made and mounted. We'd print them on the press downstairs. MG: but there you need a very fine reproduction of it to have a really good plate made. IS: Yeah. So 00:33:00 that was the project-- MG: Yeah. That was going to be next. IS: That was going to be the next project. Yeah. That was the unfinished symphony. (laughter) SL: Do you think you'll go back to it? 00:57:28 IS: I'd like to think we might. We'll see. MG: Yeah. Me, too. IS: We'll see. MG: (laughs) My studio still has the smell of ink. I visit it often. Yeah. It's a possibility IS: I really enjoy just being in that kind of space where I would do wordplay and jokes, and yet there would be ideas. If you've seen the C:o:l:o:n book, it's got content there about what happened here. It's political, to some extent. I just like to be able to play with it in that way, rather than write a kind of didactic essay making an argument, making sure everything is well-established. It's a kind of freedom that I, a playfulness that I really enjoy exploring. And another thing that Marta just touched on, but I think we were talking about it this morning, that because the books have unconventional structures, not only on the outside but on the inside, for the reader, it's a kind of, it's a voyage of discovery, in a sense. You know, you will discover things. Not just what it says and what the pictures are, but actually how the book is constructed. You don't know even when you see a book in triangular form what's about to await you structurally on the inside. So you discover it as you go through it. And you do it by opening the pages yourself. So it's an experience, a kind of hands-on experience that the book gives you. MG: There are now a lot of books, I've seen books that the structures are really interesting, and you get so involved in manipulating the page. A lot of people are working on more visual things in that, visual in that way, you know. Unconventional structures. SL: Did you want to talk a little bit about your exhibitions? I know you mentioned that it's a little bit disappointing to have them only at one page. But you were, last time when we talked after recording you mentioned Woodland Pattern and the Milwaukee Art Museum and some other places. I think in Budapest you had an exhibition. 01:00:21 IS: Yes. MG: Yeah. SL: Did you want to talk about any of those in particular? Or more generally, what those meant to you and the press? MG: Yeah, we did, we did have very nice opportunities to show the work as a solo press. So the one in Budapest was a major show. IS: That was terrific because-- MG: We lived there for a year. And I was teaching at the academy. And Ivan had been there before, he was hired for a year. IS: I had been there for, I was directing a program for a semester in '89. And I came back in '93-'94. In '89, they wanted me to stay on for another year. And that would have, without the context of my life, that would have been great, because I was really enjoying, I thought it was very interesting. And we had a very interesting life in Budapest. But I knew that that wasn't a good idea. For a number of reasons I wanted to come back here. But I told the people I can't do it next year, but I'd be very interested in returning, and for a whole year. So they did invite me back. And before I left the first time, I showed some of our work around. And one of my friends said that they were sure that they'd be interested in having Marta be involved in the academy there. So we set that up. And we came back-- MG: And also when you were there for a semester and I came to visit, I showed slides at the school. IS: That's right. Showed slides. MG: The academy. IS: Showed at the academy. And they decided they really wanted her to 00:36:00 come and teach there. So I came back in '93, we came back. And she had a job-- MG: Which was wonderful. IS: --at the academy. 01:02:30 SL: Could you talk about that? IS: Yeah. MG: Well, Ivan travels a lot because of these programs abroad. But I like to come and just visit, because I wouldn't be able to do any more than being a tourist. So this time when he talked about going for a year, and then the possibility for me to work, that made it very, very attractive, because then I would really have something to do that was interesting to me. And it just worked out beautifully because I had access to the facilities to teach my classes, but I was also able to work in the type, they have letterpress, they had more in Budapest even when computers were already here. They did everything letterpress in the school. Like the forms for the students to apply-- IS: Letterpress. MG: Everything was done letterpress. IS: Still. MG: But they were using very powerful machines. Because the way papers, newspapers were printed before, they had moved from there. And I had access to the shop. But the machines were machines that I'd never used before. And the people that worked on those machines were not students. They didn't teach letterpress. They only taught, they did a lot of book-related things. But the students were never in the type shop. So I was meeting the people that run these presses and they were older people with no apprentices. And they were like really up in years and they didn't speak any English except Hungarian. So I'm there with no language, and these very nice men, too, two very nice men. IS: Spoke a little Spanish, I think. MG: And one of them had been in a prison during the war. And he hated to learn German or to speak with German speaking, I don't know, soldiers, I don't know what they were. Or prisoners. I don't know. So he had a friend who was from Spain. And he learned a few words that he never forgot. And I was taking Hungarian while I was there. I took classes. So we were kind of trying to communicate by dictionary. And we managed! We managed, I managed to do a book. And he assisted me in certain things because of the way that machine worked. And he was just wonderful because I was there for a whole year. And we really became good buddies. IS: And during that year, we were invited to go to the National Library, which is in the castle on Buda Hill. This huge-- MG: On the Buda Hill. But I taught on the Buda Hill. The academy was there. IS: And so they looked at our work and said, "We would really be interested in having an exhibition." And we said yes, that would be great. And in the library there was this majestic sort of central staircase that you'd see in an opera house or built by the Hapsburgs when they were there. And they said, "We'll bring in vitrines all the way up these two steps," they were double steps, right, they came both ways, I think? Anyway, it was this magnificent place. MG: So they had a lot of big vitrines. And we were able to double the books, show more pages or have things a little more spread out. And that was at the time when things were changing in that part of the world. And the man that used to teach the language class for the American students that Ivan was directing the program there became an attaché for-- IS: Culture. MG: Culture. So when we were going over the following year to have a show, he had all these now different position, you know. I don't know if it was a show, but I think might be a tradition. They open it up and there are a couple of politicians there. (laughs) And he has to talk about the artists. And we knew him very well because he had been here in Chicago and we invited him to the house, and he had seen our studio. He was really wonderful. So it was very personal. It was a really nice event. IS: So we, in those days, you could take more luggage on a plane. We actually would take the books in, what do you call those large flat things? Those big portfolios right into the cabin. We didn't want to check them. We didn't want them to be lost. So we would actually, they were our essentially carry-on luggage, which was much more liberal, much more liberal than now. MG: Yeah, I don't know how we did it. 01:08:31 IS: Because it's usually expensive to insure them and send them. So we put the show up. So our friends from the year before, and then there was the opening. And then the plan was we would go away, and after the show was up for about a week, and we come back-- MG: It was about a week, no. IS: No, no. I mean, we were there about a week. MG: Yeah. And I returned here and Ivan stayed in Europe. IS: And I went to Europe and then I would come back at the end of 00:39:00 my time in Europe, which was probably six weeks later. MG: And pick up the show. IS: And take the show down and take it home with me. And that's what we did. So that show was memorable. We also were invited, again, we were invited to go and show our work when we were in Germany. And there's this old city called Lubeck which is an old Hansa city. And the guy wanted to do a show of our work in the library. And that turned into an event. We did talks. We had to, I had to translate, with the help of a very brilliant friend, the wife of my friend, she was really great at this. We sat down and actually prepared all the announcements in German together. And we translated those text from the book. We actually did a lot in about a week, right? And we stayed there and we put that show up. And there were talks and presentations of the show at the library. So that was a big event. So it ranged from this kind of involvement to things where we just sort of sent the work off and there was no funding so we didn't run after the books all the time. And we just hoped that they'd be taken care of. So there was a show in Dallas that Marta's sister went to because she lives in Texas. But we never went down there. There were a few others that I noticed. So those two shows are quite memorable. And then the last one was a kind of retrospective, we had stopped working, but in the gallery in Chicago. And that was in a very nice art gallery and they did a--we went down and helped put up the show. And then it was--and that's sort of intense. You have a few days to do that. MG: But it's nice when you can set up your own show. Because then you really know how best to display it, which page is the one that you really want to show. And then we had a, for opening night, there was a talk. And then we were able to show really more the work from the beginning, what we've done, and the ideas behind. And you know, the parts that you don't see when you see a book, how it's collaborating. How those things go. So that was nice. I like those shows when you really are able to get more into the background of things and how the ideas develop. IS: There was also this show that Marta had been included in a group of book artists to go be shown in the Gutenberg Museum in Germany. I think it's called Americans in Print, or something like that. And I happened to be, it was teaching in Germany at that time for the summer. And Marta said, "This is the show. It's going to be opening next week." And I was staying near Frankfurt in a little town called Bad Homburg. And I said to my friend and host, I said, "You know, there's going to be a show in Mainz, in the Gutenberg Museum." He said, "You want to drive down?" I mean, it's not that far. It's like half an hour with no traffic. So we went down and being in the Gutenberg Museum was thrilling in actually, gosh, this is like the home of the book, in certain ways. And people seemed very interested. And I noticed all of these, and the books, Marta had I don't know how many books, maybe three or four. MG: No, I don't remember. IS: But I think that was '89. It was after Tryangles. And we had some things open. And I noticed that-- MG: Well, second thought it was open. And you said that some 00:42:00 people were taking notes. IS: That's right. I walked by the case where our stuff was. There were all of these Germans that had, they were copying, (laughter) they thought it was interesting enough to copy. That sort of touched me. I thought, this is interesting. We ended up selling a book to them at the end. They bought something. MG: Yeah, which was nice. A couple of things. IS: But that was another really nice experience with a show where at least I was able to, shame Arthur wasn't there, but there Americans weren't there. And they had sent the work over. And some, and you know, some of the-- MG: Some of the interactions with the people in the rare book collections, for instance, we've had a couple of interesting interactions in the Victoria & Albert, and then there was a woman that is part of the British Library but she does the Ibero-America area. So she got more interested and focused on the books that we did with Spanish. IS: Yeah. That's what she bought MG: And poets, or, but then you get to know them. That part sometimes is very enjoyable. We got to meet different people in the New York Public Library. Because when you have a dealer, and the dealers really are the ones that do these routes. They go because they have the clients. And once in a while, if you visit and they said, oh, yeah--I said, "We know you have our work. And we just have a new book. And we were wondering if you want to look at it." And the woman in the New York Public Library, she said, "Oh, yeah, we'd love to meet you." So we came over. We had a really nice talk. And then at the end she said, "But you know what? I'm a client of your dealer. So I'm sure I will get it through your dealer." And I liked that, too. I like the fact that they're very upfront. And we said the thing with the dealers is that sometimes they don't necessarily tell you where they place the work. Not always. So it's always kind of nice, and if they want to buy directly, perfect. But now as I mentioned earlier, that dynamic has changed a lot. There are still dealers. But less, because people are selling directly through their websites. Which is great, because sometimes you lose some money in-- IS: Well you always lose a percentage. MG: But losing the way that they do such a good job. Our dealers were wonderful. I have to say that they did, and show the book a lot. IS: One shouldn't generalize. Dealers and dealers. I mean, there was one I liked a lot. She was very straightforward and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She said, "Here's the deal. Once I sell one of your books, then you don't sell to them. I keep selling your books to them." SL: Oh, okay. I see. Yes. 01:16:55 IS: And it was, I developed that client. MG: That client. Yeah. IS: And I said, "Well, you just tell me who they are." But of course, sometimes the dealers have a lot to show and they don't show everything. And you go around like New York had already bought a book. And we were the ones who took the trouble to come in and show this book. And they said, "Oh, yes, we really want that. But I'm going to buy it through the dealer and you'll get whatever percentage they got." I can't remember what it was. That was okay. But we had another dealer who wouldn't tell us where she was selling because she thought maybe we would then try to, you know, sell on her clientele, the clientele they developed. I said, "No, if it's yours, it's yours." But there are places I go to Europe that no dealer had gotten to. Or they weren't carrying every book they had, so they didn't develop, you develop yourself. That was, in a way it was fun for a while. It was energy-consuming. There were great experiences, and of course there are frustrating experiences. Some people very nice and receptive, and other people not so. I mean, any artist will tell you, whatever the work is, it can be unpleasant to sell your prints or paintings, or it can be terrific. But we did get involved for a bit in that sort of thing. And it was a good way, also when I travel, I had something to do not just be a tourist. I'd get involved. I'd meet people. Get under the surface. And I enjoyed that part of it, too. SL: Did you do any trades with other book artists? I know sometimes that would happen. 01:18:46 MG: Yeah, yes, of course we did. We did exchange books and ephemera. A lot. That was part of-- IS: More ephemera. MG: More ephemera. But yeah, I have, more the people that were here. For instance, Kathy Kuehn, I have 00:45:00 some of her books. She has some of my books. With Diane Fine. Yeah, it's very satisfying to give something that you know is going to be received in such, you know. And the people that we have given some of our books, they have them, they have, like their work, they've been in many ways very supportive. So, yeah. SL: I know last time you had mentioned that with working fulltime that it's hard to find time for your projects. And I think that that's something that a lot of artists struggle with. And I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that, about your experiences, or not. MG: Yeah. I think that's when I started doing less and less work. Because for a long time my job allowed for me to have quite a bit of time in my studio. The same job that now I have fulltime. And then at the beginning I struggled. I kept doing things. No, we were working on one of a kind pieces. Because you always, people always want to know, are you working on something new? I would love to see it. And for a long time, I identified myself not as a conservator. I love what I do in conservation. But I was primarily a book artist. So I kept busy with my hands or with my head, just thinking about the next project. And just as it always happens, the job becomes more demanding. I unfortunately have no assistants except the students who I have to train, I have to do all the training. It's just time consuming. I run the lab in every level, at every level. And the computer, I mean, things have changed so much in the library with the digital world that the university is putting a lot of effort and money on that. So they have to take away from other places. And we have never been able to create another position where I would be able to have somebody to assist me more. And then I just get consumed by the work. And when I have free time, it's not enough to really do quality work in my studio. And also I like to travel. And usually that's where we sometimes do. Yeah. IS: Yeah. You know, let me just mention one other thing about the book arts, not on your list. And that is the, for me there was always, it was both an attraction and an obstacle, this preciousness and the delicacy of the product. We mentioned you couldn't just leave the book out and people go through, because then it would be gone. You couldn't sell that again. You'd lose that. I often thought, maybe we should let some time go by and do more popular editions. Which would mean farming the work out, you know, go to someplace. Because sort of the images and the text are there. So Marta doesn't have to sew every one. We're not going to go through that. A couple of those things, not for financial reasons. I'd like to see them maybe more widely distributed and available. More people get to take a look at them, because I think there'd be interest. Like if there were, I'd never try to organize this. But I thought, wouldn't it be nice maybe to get some one of these places to do three hundred copies of a version of Tryangles or something like that. MG: Which places? 01:23:54 IS: Well there were some places that were doing, they weren't huge editions, but they'd do like 300 copies of Claire Van Vliet's books. MG: Like where? IS: I don't even remember where it was. But somebody, there might be a press interested that does something of that nature. I don't know if it exists now or ever did-- MG: I'm sure it does. I mean, I never, we never discussed this. (laughs) SL: I wanted to know what your opinion is. MG: I don't know. I just think, yeah, if it is more popular, then we'd be more accessible. I don't think from what I see now in people's websites, the prices they're asking for some of the work, I'm thinking, could I still make these books and sell them the way I feel, you know, is one, the amount that I need, that I want, that I think it is, which is what we did before. I don't know. I don't know if people are willing to pay that much money for the books that are published with such cause and such, I just wish I could see the books that 00:48:00 they're selling for 25 dollars on the website. IS: Yeah, some of them are just-- MG: And I'm thinking wow, this is, this is--since I'm not so much in contact with how the dealers are doing, I don't know what the quality of the work is. SL: I think that there still are a lot of books that are on the higher end. MG: Oh, yes. Oh, I'm sure timeless work and I've seen books by very established artists. And not all the books are that inexpensive. I recently saw books that are thirteen, fourteen hundred dollars. The fine editions. You also have, they've done that where they do the fine editions and they have some fancy something. And then they do the less, the more popular edition. IS: For me, it's not very practical. I just think it would be nice if these things got more exposure somehow. Because I can imagine someone doing, for example, C:o:l:o:n. And you know, it would still be our images that we put together. So it would still be our work in that way. Still be the text. I could imagine C:o:l:o:n being put out by somebody. I don't know if there's anybody who's really interested in doing that. MG: Maybe that will be the next thing to approach. So we just (laughs) outsource it for a popular edition. IS: I think, yeah, but the truth is that it would have to be outsourced because it's just-- MG: Well if it is going to be commercially printed, they would probably do everything else, the bindings and everything. IS: Yeah. But we would, you know, it would be nice if we would collaborate on some of what it looks like. We don't want to have it come out some horrible color or something like that. MG: (laughs) Yeah. IS: If we could find someone who'd work with us, but they would have machines, probably. MG: I'm sure. (laughs) IS: Well, that's what we're talking about. MG: I'm sure, no, but I'm sure that's happening. IS: I'm not talking about hiring Bangladeshi to do this. MG: (laughs) Yeah, it's something that we've never explored. And I'm sure there is a lot of people probably doing that. IS: Yeah. I always thought that might be interesting. Because a couple of those things are worth just putting out there. I think it would be satisfying for both of us to do that. And maybe actually get around to Desire and Schopenhauer at some point. (laughter) MG: Yeah, that's our desire, to finally get to that. (laughs) IS: Yeah. SL: Marta, I did want to get back to your teaching in Budapest. What did you teach? Did you teach book arts? 01:28:21 MG: Yes. I taught book arts. And it was a whole year. But it works in, I divided it in quarters. And I was doing all my teaching in English, of course. So the students were, I had a group of nine students. And they were all aware that the class was going to be taught and directed in English. But I think I did it in a way that was very comprehensible with handouts. So we did one that was just book structures. So we played a lot with different kinds of structures, and things that were, it was a small class. I was able to work with each person. And a few of them spoke English very well. They had never been outside Budapest but their English was very good. And they kind of explained to the others that were not completely able to understand certain things. And then we did bookbinding. And this classes, most of the time I was doing the teaching so they did what I asked them to do and they brought another structure that they did on their own. But the last class was more about making, now they had all their tools. They knew how to do the structures, the bindings. And they were working with some visual things. So the last class they just had to produce a book. And we made for critiques and that. And they were a little intimidated, because that's not the way the other classes. They said, "No, we were always told what to do. I cannot just come up with my own idea from beginning to end. I have to have some guidelines." I said, "No. you're going to have your book. You can bring any text you want to it, and develop the idea around that text." So it was a class, very interesting. They came up with very interesting things. Very visual. Since my work was very 00:51:00 tactile and very visual, and I work usually with structures that were fun and, you know. So at the end, they did really interesting things. Some were very conceptual. So it was a very, very great experience. Great experience. They did have this way of relating to professors. Like oh, the professor's up there and I'm up here. And I used to, every time we finished a quarter, I used to invite them to have coffee somewhere and they were a little shy. And we developed very good friendships-- IS: Yes. MG: --with some of them because they wanted to bring us to their home. And we kept in touch with a few for many years after we came back. And some came to the United States to do their graduate work. So it was a really, really interesting group that developed nicely. They used to send me, you know, reports of what they were doing at the moment. But they were primarily graphic designers. Yeah. IS: And I think that, I saw some of the work and I think Marta had a huge impact on these people. Their work really sort of came out of that. I think also it might be interesting for Marta to talk about experience, we officially both went to Haystack to teach, but I had a relatively small role there. That was a very interesting experience. That was what, a two-week? MG: Two-week. And we lived all on this place which is beautiful. IS: On an island. MG: And people work, the studios are open for the whole day and night if they want to. And the classes are within a certain amount of time. But then I always was accessible in the studio, so if they wanted to learn some more. If they wanted to, I was there to guide them. And at the end, there's an exhibit, there are many different crafts taught there. And at the end, the studios put up everything they've done, the students have done. And then a lot of people from outside come and look at the work. And it was really interesting to see the work finished. They had been very productive. So it was a great experience. I love teaching the small groups. Kind of workshops. Because they really, if they're signing up for it, they bring a lot of energy. I had very, very accomplished people in my course. Somebody that had a show at the Modern Art in a completely different field. She was a, she worked with fabrics, and she had done this show. So another person was a writer but also book artist. IS: There was an architect. MG: Graphic designer. And architect. So people that were all ages. Some more mature than others. And then you have these people being really responsive and excited about what they're doing. So it's good. It's not a classroom when people are taking that class because they have to. Yeah, that's part of, one of the aspects I enjoy also in my conservation work. I have, I develop my students' skills. And it's always very rewarding when they, and for them as well. Because sometimes have not, they don't have any art background. They're engineers or English majors. They just love books. You know, even though it's very technical what we do in conservation, they also have to become resourceful and bring some of aesthetics with them. And you know, they're good. And it's just have really good interaction, that part with the students, the way some have decided to change their field and go into conservation. SL: I wanted to ask you about that. How many are, can you talk a little bit about that? How some of them have gone into conservation? What they've done after they've worked with you? MG: Yeah. There are a couple, although they had an idea, or they had an interest. And these are students that have come from art history majors. And so they, you know, they just want a job in the library, in the conservation lab. They start working with paper and books. And they kind of see that maybe developing into something else. And two of these students have gone into conservation and done very well. They went to the program for book conservation, which doesn't exist anymore. So the others that now, that I've had after these people, and after they closed the program, have shown a lot of interest as a possibility. And I said, "Well, there are places where you can go and further your experience, and work on different--" You know, different conservation labs approach things not totally different, but it's nice that they can get an internship somewhere. But there is no such thing as a 00:54:00 degree yet. I think some universities are developing some conservation programs. NYU, I know, they are doing, I don't know if it is just conservation, book conservation, or if it is art conservation as well. But it's interesting how they really get into it. And they inquire about the possibility of continuing doing it. And the most recent student that just graduated, she's pursuing it and trying to get, she just got an internship in Seattle at the university. And her interest, her background is art history in Asian art. And also she was taking a class, the book class, Jim Escalante's class. And also she learned a lot in my lab. She said that that brought the two things together. And she's going to pursue conservation and wants to spend, she already spent time in Japan in a conservation lab. And so she's, just not because of the lab, but she needed to work in the lab to see what the more possibilities are. So it's very brave, because there is no such thing as a program yet. I hope the one in NYU develops really well. Yeah? You wanted to say something? SL: I just had one more question. I wondered if you had any thoughts about how your background in book arts impacted your work in the conservation lab. Like how do you see the connection? 01:39:11 MG: Oh, I think it is, one of the reasons why I wanted to get a job in conservation. Because you know, books have always been my interest, in making them. And when you work in conservation, you are exposed to so many different types of books. And you sometimes have to take them apart to put them together. And I think it complements really well, the skill in particular that you have to have to be confident with your skills. Because you're going to be dealing with books that are falling apart in some cases. So I think that sometimes that complement each other. I know of some people that work in conservation that never thought about doing book arts. And then they also go the other way. So it's not that uncommon. I know a lot of friends that do both. It's kind of interesting that way, that a lot of book people end up in book conservation labs, or the other what around. Some people want the job of book conservation because it's more reliable as an income. (laughs) Although I'm not so sure anymore. I was doing pretty well when I was able to do my own work. I mean, I think that the aspect of being, you know, working on a book that is really falling apart and bringing that book back to life is almost as, I wouldn't say as satisfying as really making a book of our own from beginning to end, but it is, you feel like an accomplishment. Yeah. SL: Thank you very much, both of you. I'll stop it here. End of Second