Leonard Seastone
Tannersville, NY
tidelinepress.org
leonardseastone.com
A Long Hill Homeward
2022
Handset type throughout, Relief-Offset printmaking, handbound with portfolio
8.75” x 12.125” x 1.125″ (closed) 17.25″ x 12.125″ (open) one double gatefold: 34” wide. portfolio: 9.5” x 13.25” x 1.625″
Artist Statement
A Long Hill Homeward, Tideline Press, 2022, 80 pages, Edition of 25 copies:
Writing, design, hand set composition, relief-offset print making, and letterpress printing by Leonard Seastone. Sew board bound by Craig Jensen at Book Lab II in quarter leather with gold titling, and Saint Armand handmade, raw flax paper with inlays of paper and leather by Seastone drummed onto boards. The book is laid into a clam-shell portfolio box in quarter leather, with gold titling with Cave, raw flax, handmade Granite paper on boards.
The primary text is the story of the 13,000 mile journey, hopping freights, hitch-hiking, and hopping a lumber truck in the summer of 1969. This story is set in 14 point Palatino Italic and composed mostly in large sweeping, curved lines that span the double page spreads throughout. A series of secondary texts, vignettes, are of other journeys, poetry, songs, and philosophical musings.
The primary text spans the double page spreads in continuous fair curves by a method created by Seastone, the author/artist/printer, in a visual representation of the journey. The handset curved lines most often printed on separate sheets is an accomplishment that appears to be unique in handset type letterpress printing. It is juxtaposed by the relief-offset prints derived from large wood type visually deconstructed in the process. This method of printmaking was developed by Seastone within the past 22 years, see an outline of the process below.
Together, the text, the prints, the design, and the printing took 16+ years to complete and represent a culmination of fifty years work by Leonard Seastone. A Long Hill Homeward was launched in October 2022 on the 50th Anniversary of Seastone’s Tideline Press at his exhibition at the Center for Book Arts in New York City.
A Long Hill Homeward ultimately is a haptic experience and the above description is but an introduction.
Leonard Seastone
Relief/Offset Printmaking: Large woodtype printed on one press with overprinting on a secondary and possibly third press offset by relief impression on a fourth letterpress. I discovered, while developing this process of Relief/Offset, a significant shift in my position as an artist to my work where I have, for the past two decades, been conceptualizing my book art in order to accommodate my interest in reducing the distances between my various functions. Specifically the relationship of me the artist/designer with me the printer. Having one aspect of my self serving the other appeared limiting, predicated as it were upon the linear, typographic form. Merging my creative selves, allowing for a personal gestalt, follows an earlier intent to be a creator not a producer of books. A philosophical continuation of the differentiation between production and re-production.
Relief/Offsetting printing posited me between two or more presses. No longer directing the work as a designer that specifies the final print with the expectation of a particular, resulting image. Instead I could discover myself in a process that is not physically between multiple presses but rather philosophically inside the presses providing an deeper visual understanding of the codes embedded in the letter forms. on pages 8-9 the text reads: “Rides posed questions to meditate upon, as if the answers sought were within the questions themselves – and the questions had not words until the journey was begun.” The Offset/Relief prints mirror the words still unformed for the writer. Both prints and text are the journey for the reader. The offsetting creating a softer surface, more lithographic, and a better juxtaposition to the crisp type impressions.
The prints also provide me a return to an early fascination of magnified type. in A Long Hill Homeward the image no longer under a magnifying glass but on the page in great dimension. Still, to achieve this work and process required all my fifty years of making books by hand. Here a gift to understand a deeper method, more complex, layered, and nuanced. The binary code of ink diffused, interestingly softer, layered, less didactic, and more pilant for the reader’s imagination.
The experience inside the press is revelatory. A more complete positioning in order to direct and enjoin text, and image, and sequence. Synesthetically satisfying, this dissolution of our 90 degree technology inherent in our inherited letter forms.
Likewise A Long Hill Homeward was not traditionally designed but conceptualized. Each spread created while positioning the type in relation to the prints and composing on the press not before. The book was allowed an indeterminate number of pages until the end of the story was visually told.