It's about time!

  Small is beautiful in the PrintmakingWorld

  

Power number

At 6:54 AM I got a Skype call from Louie Thadei Chichinoff, in Olympia—about 50 miles south of where I am. Fifty-four, I told her at the end of our half-hour conversation, is my “power number.” Numbers and time for which they stand (in this case, Pacific Standard Time). I noticed, too, that in the course of our conversation she and I are the same age—seventy-two. What brought us together several years ago was her purchase of one of my Legacy Mini Halfwood presses. To cap off our communications, her name, Chichinoff, was an important element in the fable I created around the origins of the design of the Halfwood Press, in that a key figure in the story was a native of the Americas. Thereafter, this figure—a woman—was an Aleutian woman named Chichinoff. In so many ways, Louie Chichinoff is special to me.

Time is of the essence

She has plans to move, but where she will move to is not definite yet. Like most individualistic, creative artists, she’s not enchanted with the idea of a collective, such as those which are ballyhooed in many cities. In those, a derelict building is targeted for renovation, artists are drawn in by the idea of promises of low rent, live-in work spaces, and after a year or two, they have what should be an ideal situation. Lou said she’s not sure about living with a bunch of other people and having to adapt to the differences that are inevitable.

As a 20-year owner in a 35-unit condominium, I know what she means. On the surface, it seems nice to be able to live with a group; but there comes along occasions when you wish you did not. It is a microcosm of the human societies that make up our species—from the level of friction that causes nations to go to war, to that pesky neighbor who drops things on the floor in the unit over your bedroom at 3:00 in the morning. These will always be with us, it seems, unless aliens from a distant planet come along to change us—as in the story, Childhood’s End.

We decided

Lou and I, and my wife, do not have time to repeat the past from which we have learned so many lessons. Lou recounted the process by which she was able to get a 24-inch, half-ton*, $11,000 press and yet has not really been used for big prints. The press I made, a 12-pounder that cost less than a tenth of that price, produced the works she sold at her gallery in Seattle.

Lesson learned? Small is beautiful, to begin with. Where are we to go today, however? In the seven years since we met, what have we learned? In our Skype call today, I think I learned another reason to proceed with my plan to be a publisher—with a school factory producing the products of our thinking and, concurrently—better living design.

I told Lou as we signed off that I would continue thinking about what she told me, and I hope she will do the same. She said a voice is needed to get this message to the right people at the right time.

Thanks, Lou!

*I looked at the Takach website to find the specifications for the 25-inch model Lou got, but they don’t tell us the weight, so I guessed. At any rate, it is more than one person can move, and the freight costs are significantly more than they are for our presses.