On Monday, Annie & I set out on the first leg of our self-styled, midwestern craft pilgrimage. Arriving in Cedar Rapids on Monday afternoon we will proceed directly to Iowa City for an informal gathering at printer Sara Sauer's house. The next morning, papermaker Timothy Barret will pick us up and give us a tour of his state of the art hand papermaking facility. From there we will tour the University of Iowa's Center for the Book & meet with students in the MFA Book Arts program.
On Wednesday we will drive up to Decorah, Iowa where we will spend the evening with artist, printer, and prize-winning chili cooker David Esslemont and his family. Last year, David and his son made an outdoor adobe pizza oven & one of our objectives (perhaps our primary objective?) is to obtain plans and advice on how to build one for ourselves.
Thursday morning we will head on to Stockholm, Wisconsin for three days with Gaylord and Brenda Schanilec. While there, Gaylord will give us a two day lesson in multi-chromatic wood engraving and, weather permitting, we will spend the third day on his floating observational platform (ie. boat) in Lake Pepin.
Next stop is Chicago for a few days with Paul Gehl and Rob Carlson, a visit with Inge Bruggeman and the students at the Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts. A final dinner with Bob McCammant of Sherwin Beach Press ends leg one of the tour.
