Periwinkle: when life makes me cry

at times
life makes me cry. 
poetry allows me to embrace these emotions.
philosophy allows me to put them into a logical form.
art allows me to record them.
Periwinkle
Artist's books and Broadside ballads
Letterpress broadside
Letterpress Broadside ballad, Periwinkle
I created broadside ballads with 
left over pages from my limited edition
artist's book Periwinkle.

Why broadside ballads?
Traditionally, broadsides were songs or poems
printed on one side of a single sheet of paper.
From the 1600s to 1900s, broadsides were daily 
forms of street literature, and printers 
used low quality, inexpensive papers. 

"Sold in the streets by itinerant vendors,
broadside ballads ranged in size from tabloid-sized
and larger sheets to small 4"x 8" slips of paper.
As a general rule broadside ballads were,
like newspapers, intended to be ephemeral,
and were usually printed on the cheapest, 
thinnest papers."
source: New York State Library
Street Literature and Broadside Ballads


Like most broadsides these days,
I use acid free handmade papers or
archival printmaking papers and
letterpress lead type for the text.





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