Last year I wrote about Cryptic Species, a proposal for a chapbook collaboration with Lia that we had proposed to JackPine Press. That proposal was accepted, and we got to work. We delivered the finished product to JackPine in May.

After a punctuated evolution, the final title is Husk, and we think it’s a beautiful object. If you would like a copy, click here for availability and purchase information. If you want to skip straight to the pictures, click here.

Lia has posted all the information about the launch and garden party being held in Betsy Rosenwald & John Penner’s Garden (734 7th Avenue North in Saskatoon) at 8pm on June 18, 2008. I’ve given enough information to get you to the launch, but click here for the post on Lia’s blog if you want to find about the other two books being launched that night.

Read on for a description of the finished piece, and information about the edition size, availability, pricing, how to buy a copy, technical details, as well as a sneak peek at some of the interior pages.

Here’s a descriptive blurb:

Husk is a being, a voice, a page that turns, a seed, a transformation. In Husk, Ed and Lia Pas have collaboratively created the tale of an uncanny being. Lia’s sound-influenced text and Ed’s surreal drawings recount—with a touch of dark humour—an evocative tale of visceral, organic metamorphosis.

An exquisite object, this book includes eighteen colour images with integrated text, printed on cotton rag paper and bound in a Japanese style with waxed linen thread.

The piece has changed quite a bit since we proposed it, having become a narrative poem rather than individual vignettes. It is also a story more generally about transformation than specifically about macabre anatomical things.

Edition Size and Availability
As a handmade chapbook the edition is limited to 75 copies plus 10 artist proofs. The artist proofs will not be for sale. Lia and will be using them for our own nefarious purposes. Of the regular edition, a number of copies are reserved for subscribers, archives, and funding agencies. The invitation to the launch says that 50 copies will be available for purchase.

How to Buy
The books are $30.00 each. If you want a copy and are unable to attend the launch, I highly recommended that you click here for the JackPine Press website, and email a request for a copy as soon as you’ve finished reading this paragraph. Their site isn’t set up for ecommerce, which means that you have to phone or write them an email, and then send them a money order or cheque through regular postal mail. It’s not clear whether postage is included in the purchase price. If you don’t want to order by phone or email, you could conceivably send your order and payment together via postal mail, but then you take your chances on whether the edition moves faster than the post office. (As a salesmanesque aside, three of the first 10 people I showed the book to would have bought copies on the spot if I had been smart enough to acquire some copies for sale. One of those people wanted two copies.) (As a neurotic artist aside, I’m going to be mildly embarrassed if the edition doesn’t sell out reasonably quickly. So help me out, ok?) (As a web designer aside, I’m not complaining about the JackPine Press website, I’m trying to give you a realistic idea about what the buying process is going to be like.)

Technical details

Size
The book is 16cm x 21cm, 20 pages plus the front and back covers.

Paper
The covers are Folio Brite White, with the deckle edge folded inside. The the text pages are Somerset Book White, a heavy book-weight stock with a very slight warm tone and a subtle surface texture.

Printing
I printed the covers on my Epson 4800 printer, and the text pages on my Lexmark colour laser printer. The covers are printed on one side. The text pages are printed single-sided except the final page, which has an image on the front and the colophon on the back.

Binding
Lia and I hand-bound all of the books with a 4-ply warm white Irish waxed linen. The binding is a traditional Japanese 4-hole binding with the thread exposed.

Preview

Here are a few images: the front cover and three pages from the inside. You can click on a thumbnail image for an enlarged view, the press the Back button in your browser to return.

My blog post describing our original project plans is here. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll write something about the collaborative process.