18. Timothy Ely Part 2, Bookbinder and artist at APlanetaryCollage.com

SO ep 18 tim ely pt 2 descript

[00:00:00] John: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 18 of stationary orbit, where we're all here to learn more about creative letter writing. I'm your host John West and today's episode is a continued discussion with Timothy ele. Timothy is an artist with a broad scope of skills. He is an author of a multitude of art books, and he has two soft cover books available today.

We will be talking about ink, manufacturing and ways to use his art techniques to level up your creative letter writing. You can find his two soft cover books on Amazon, and they are light into Egypt and eight books. You can commission new works and find reproduction prints on his website, a planetary collage.

I will also be including a link in my show notes to the documentary for Tim's art book line of sight. So let's get back into the conversation with Tim. Do you have a favorite snail mail? 

Tim: [00:00:49] Yeah, that's an excellent question. I love taking ordinary business envelopes or if I get an envelope from say a bill, it has to be paid.

I always save the window envelope. [00:01:00] And so if I'm sending something to you, the address will go inside of the window. And I really like taking chunks of pastel, rubbing it onto that envelope. And rubbing that into the envelope with something like a paper towel or a chunk of Shami, so that the coloration on the envelope is just not something I can ever duplicate again.

Then naturally rubber stamps start playing a big role in this. And once the stamps are on, I like to go back in and start adding more color either with colored pencils or. Sometimes markers, but I like the play of, putting down something and then putting cancellation stamp over that and coloring into those little interstitial voids.

So the envelopes are really beautiful and I've sometimes I get the envelope finished long before I decided who it's going to. I send them empty just because it's just okay, I don't have anything else to say here. I'm really done. And the mailman will be here in a half an hour. So here we go. Yeah, it's an [00:02:00] envelope.

I did my job and I have one correspondent and he writes lovely, long. Elaborate letters. And I sometimes feel like I should, I need to pay this back. In kind. I, so we do this. So I have some people that just, they get fragments, they get ideas, get purely visual things. I got one yesterday from my friend in Utah, which had another envelope inside of it actuallyI got abox yesterday.

And there was an envelope, it was piece some mail art in that. So it didn't get canceled, but it was just full of wonderful fragments of everything from. Labels off of a Walnut sack where it's, the nutritional info labels that might contain walnuts. And then below it was a line that's has that ingredients walnuts.

He loves that sort of irony. And I do too. And then there were just bits from his sketchbooks and other fragments of things, and it was just a wonderful little gathering. I'm going to probably build a box in the next two weeks to start putting those small fragments. And it just isolate that out. From [00:03:00] everything else, but yeah, rubber stamps, pretty much everything I, anything I use in the in my books can go I'm I always use something that's very waterproof for addressing the envelopes and I will frequently either print pre-print out addresses and actually in case I'm undertake because it rains a lot around here.

And sometimes the mailman parks, a block away and everything. Things get wet. So sometimes I get things that are pretty much starting to wash away. 

John: [00:03:32] Yeah. I tend to use a lot of indelible ink on the stuff I use for envelopes and then hope that the interior doesn't get soaked. 

Tim: [00:03:39] Have you had that happen?

John: [00:03:41] Yeah, I haven't had a problem with the interior getting, so I think getting the exterior. Hit with waters just inevitable. But yeah, I haven't had a problem with having a whole letter wash out. I don't think 

Tim: [00:03:52] in my first month in graduate school, I was down in the coffee shop down in the base of the art building.

And some guys [00:04:00] spilled some coffee, not a whole cup onto my sketchbook that I was working in and I was using some kind of a Water-soluble marker. And so probably 25 years, I only use technical pens with India ink in my sketchbooks, just fearing that. Somebody's going to tell me is going to spill something or I'm going to get caught in the rain.

And I changed that maybe about 20 years ago and began working more with fountain pens because I just decided I needed to get over that resistance. 

John: [00:04:31] It's definitely something that. When it happens and you lose something where I've dumped water onto fountain pen, ink pages before, and it sucks, but at the same time, you've, it's what you signed up for using a fountain pen with non waterproofed links.

So you just get over it and move on. 

Tim: [00:04:49] It's a thing I, when I teach sketchbook making workshops, one of the concepts that I think is really important is understanding. What is soluble and what is insoluble. [00:05:00] And so things like we use, let's say PVA to blow up a spine and that's pretty close to a waterproof material was dry and things like animal glues can be softened with water.

And so for some binders, that's a drawback. . So I want that understood, but I also want people to understand that if you're working with watercolor or fountain pen inks most of those will go back into solution if they get wet. So I have fountain pens charged with different colors and I will draw with those.

And then I will hit them with just a mist of water to let them fuss a bit. And then when it's all dry and maybe I will give it a puff of spray fixative and burnish that. And then work over it again. And then there are lines that I want to hold no matter what. So those will be applied with a rolling pan and liquid acrylic, which is not really an ink, but a thin paint or India ink.

And I'm finding India inks today or not as durable as they [00:06:00] seem to have been. When I first started working with them, I don't know what's going on, but it's weird. So I boost those up with a little bit of additional Schlack on my own, just so that. They're tougher, but that play between allowing something to bleed out and having something be pretty stable is a really cool thing to have an understanding about.

John: [00:06:20] Yeah. I've seen a lot of that where artists are using like Pigma microns that have an indelible ink in them or a waterproof ink. And then watercoloring over the top of those. And it's a very popular technique.

Tim: [00:06:33] Yeah. Oh yeah. All the old illustrators I studied when I was starting out. We're just great pen ink users.

So the ink would basically hold the concept of whatever they were illustrating. Say a men's dress shirt, and then over that would be beautiful marking. So washers or watercolors or colored ink. It was a way that a lot of comic books were colored. So you were dealing with something that also could be. You can wash off a lot of the watercolor.

If you were [00:07:00] working on a durable paper it's a really good thing to understand. It's just wrapped, it's the first principle. 

John: [00:07:05] And actually that does bring me into the next question, which it sounds like you have quite a bit of experience making inks and what kind of considerations, chemistry, physics, engineering.

Do you have to put into making an ink 

Tim: [00:07:21] mine are really simple. I have some acquaintances that make much more complicated inks. I think when we were talking earlier, I buy really beautiful commercial. Inks. So I don't have to make eggs for fountain pens because I don't like putting something I would make through one of these delicate mechanisms.

But for things like, Oh, Tim Lee's folded pens, the ruling pens that pays on pens, eyedroppers, I'm really happy to make things out of what let's just stick with carbon as a main color on here. So I've got some really gorgeous lamp black. That's extremely fine. [00:08:00] And it makes just an elegant black, I just I've always loved lamp black as a color.

And depending on what I want, I can make a binder out of thin book Bookbinders starch paste, or usually there's something like gum Arabic or some other gum extract I've used. Methylcellulose send out so that it little, if it doesn't flow out of the pan, I wouldn't say a ruling pen is useless to me.

So then I just play with that viscosity. And I usually mix some water with some carbon and work that in and start adding gum Arabic to it. And then I just start playing and it takes very little time. I do it in a small mortar, so I can just mix it all together. I usually don't make up so much so that I have to worry about keeping it subtle, preserve it.

Another favorite is to Oh, I'll make breakfast in the morning and after I've cracked a couple eggs, I'll pour off whatever white is left in the shell, which is not much [00:09:00] now I've got a half a teaspoon maybe, but that's enough when added to another teaspoon of water to make a bit of a binder.

So I can make a quick mock a temporary, and I can mix that with some dry pigment or a bit of water color. And if that flows out of the ruling pen, I am set. 

John: [00:09:18] You had mentioned before about wanting to buy a fountain pen inks from established makers. Do you have a favorite fountain pen ink?

Tim: [00:09:27] I have. I pulled one because I figured if I pull them, they're all kind of favorites. I usually just scarred to things I don't like, but the two I pulled off the shelf is detrimental to their document. Black is just beautiful. And I'm a real fan of noodlers dark matter because it's gray and I just love gray things.

So it's a bluish gray. Those are my two. I'm going to say current favorites because I'm always shopping for ink and , I'm easily seduced by shiny things. So if somebody comes up with a really compelling [00:10:00] argument for why I should have that ink buy a bottle for me, if it's really compelling, I might get a second bottle and gift that to someone.

But I'm planning some this document black is just wonderful. And so gradually all the pans are being cleaned and refilled with that. Now I've got fountain pens on three floors in this house. So there's always something to draw with. There's always a sketchbook near that pen, whether it's the bathroom or down in the basement of the print shop or a pier.

It's rare if somebody calls on the phone, I can never find something to write with, but otherwise we're just swimming and tools up here. 

John: [00:10:36] Do you get a chance to play with any of the newer, like brighter color ink, some of the multi chromatic stuff that sailor has been making, 

Tim: [00:10:45] not played with those. I been experimenting with turning well, textile dyes. I suspect it all comes down to the similar chemistry sources. What I've been using textile. Guys to make inks and I'm really [00:11:00] liking the results. And they're just, they're just as bright as the psychedelic shirt, so they have their place, but I'm more of a fan of mineral pigments because of their durability and the dyes aren't as durable.

Things like the book of Kells has passages that were painted in Berry juice that are just about as bright today as they were, when they were painted. So I'm really not going to quibble over. The light fastness of some of these things, but I'm always eager to try things. I'm not a fan of metallics that much.

It's just, it's just a weird thing. I can't quite deal with them. Chromatically very well. So if I'm going to use metal, I'm probably going to use silver or gold leaf on a book page. So it kind of mimics or echoes that. Medieval illumination idea, but I've got a lot of metallic pigment. So I scored by accident, all jars and jars of pigments from an auto body shop that was still doing, candy, Apple, red paint jobs on hot rods.

And if you ever need any, let me know. I [00:12:00] can lay it on. Yeah, 

John: [00:12:00] I do remember that, that paint color, because that was something that I ended up on motorcycles in my family. 

Tim: [00:12:07] Oh my God. It was just, it was. Overpoweringly sweet. I, it took me a while to realize that what I'm really attracted to is the smoothness and the shininess, because there was a painter whose name just left me, but he would make these gorgeous sprayed paintings on plexiglass and then surface them with a second piece of plexiglass.

So they were just mechanically accurate. But below them was this layer of say sky blue paint. With just enough metal flake in it to be squirrely. And there were really simple, hard edge triangular shape paintings, but they really, they were, at that point when I was formative, so I was impressed by stuff like that.

And I still am attracted to that kind of elegance and precision. I think the word I want is consensus, which means technically sweet. 

John: [00:12:55] Okay. Yeah. It's definitely something that. [00:13:00] You see something that's striking to you, and it's cool that you went into trying to find out exactly how that was made.

Tim: [00:13:11] First year of college. My painting teachers seem to be teaching me more about what painting is about and how to actually do it. And a rep from one of the painting companies. I think it was Grumbacher. Was touring around and he came to every community college and in about two hours, he demonstrated half a dozen things that I had been curious about ever since I started like putting masking tape down, putting a bit of clear medium over that painting up to the masking tape.

And when you peel it off, you've got a dead hard line or he was explaining in very simple terms, how Andrew Wyeth was achieving these marvelous. Textures with his watercolor. I just went on and on and off, it was all basically a how to session. And I realized I'm [00:14:00] perfectly capable of figuring out why I want something to be, but I need to know how to make it.

And so I got really interested in. All the technical side of it. What is this material made of? What'll it stick to? How do I Mount paper to canvas? How do I make my own adhesives? And I have books called things like formulas for pagers that I've had for 50 years. And when I got into book binding, there was a host.

Section on making adhesives. And so I was making glue, I was making sizes. I was making pace and there was a little different from Bookbinder formulations, but the principles were all the same. And, gradually I got Harold McGee's on food and cooking, which just changed everything. Yeah. 

John: [00:14:42] So I'm going to actually take a step back here. I want to go back to the fact that you've got pens on all three stories of your house. And I want to know what is your favorite pen? 

Tim: [00:14:52] My favorite pen. Right now is an old fountain pen style repeater graph with a [00:15:00] size zero point in it in college. I realized that if I diluted the India ink and got it.

Nice. Mid-value gray. I'd have a lot less trouble with them clogging up on me. Cause I was forever cleaning them. You might even be able to hear it click when I'm shaking. It still works. Now there are the technical pens I use in this style are filled with thought and panic and they don't clog at all.

And they're just gorgeous. This black document ink is in the one I'm holding. And I collected, I probably got. Eight of them. Here are the old style. I don't know when they stopped making them. Probably before 1980. Anyway, I love them because they're heavy. I got my first one when I was like a junior in high school and it still remains my favorite because they're they just, they speak to me.

But I could get over that quickly and pick up a fountain pen. That's lighter. I've got a road train arc pan here with a let's see, what size is this? This is a. 1.1 size, that's a nice little edge pan. Then I [00:16:00] got my grandmothers. I'm going to have to figure out what the brand is. It's a hundred years old and works like that.

A couple of others. And I have a beautiful Waterman that I bought in England when I went to a bookbinding conference 20 some years ago. But the favorite, Oh, I always go back. If I want to draw in my sketchbook to grabbing this is old repeater graph technical pan. 

John: [00:16:24] I actually just picked up a whole pile of old technical pens.

And thank you very much for the tip of using the DeAtrementis Document Ink, because. I was going to be struggling with what I was going to ink them up with. So that already gave me my answer. So thank you all

Tim: [00:16:41] . You're welcome. 

John: [00:16:42] Wanted to ask the entire idea behind stationary orbit was to allow myself and my listeners to learn more about snail mail and how to do more creative letter writing.

And I wanted to ask you if you had a technique that you could think of that would help myself [00:17:00] and my listeners elevate our snail mail game. 

Tim: [00:17:03] I've been reading. I'm looking to expand my collection of letters between people like a thousand years ago. I read the letters between, I think Buckminster fuller and Usama new Gucci.

And these two men were exchanging ideas. And somewhere along the line, I found a book of letters between Arnold Toynbee and. Someone else, I think maybe Suzuki, but it's been a bit too long. So I thought I'm going to do a Amazon or a Google search and see if I can find more books between up with letters between people.

I find this a beautiful way to exchange ideas for myself. My mother used to write letters and report in on the news of what my sister's doing, what somebody is doing, how the dog is and stuff and go, all those are really wonderful letters. I'm looking for something different. And in my inheritance from Richard Simon's son, One of the things I found was a book of poems by [00:18:00] AAS Merwin.

And I realized that Dick had gone through and made pencil, no pencil notes in the margins of. Certain chunks of this poetry. And I remember getting those chunks or fragments of the trumps on postcards sometime, even in, up until maybe 1990. And so I have a pile of books over where I tend to do some letter writing correspondence and I open them randomly and look for a word or a sentence.

And that might be something that triggers an idea and. God, the world is just full of them. I'm sitting in front of a wall of books here and I could probably pull off any one of them and open it up. Randomly find an interesting thing. Might be one word might be a sentence. It might be an idea. And if I start to write about that, what does that thing prompt?

And so there's that method. The other one is I'll take a handful of [00:19:00] interesting papers. They're all different sizes and I'll get out. I get out of collection of stamps. That I might use for a week and they go into a box and they go over onto one of the work tables. So I've already made my selection and I'll randomly, but carefully and precisely stamp some things.

And so I know I've got an illustrated sheet that maybe needs captions and, or maybe something will happen during the week. Like I just got a very interesting commission from a guy. And so I'll tell somebody about that. Our lives are full and they're rich and they're probably richer than we think. And it's impossible for me to go to a grocery store and not come back with a story.

So I look at ways to, to trigger things and other ways to do it. I'll punch holes in paper, and sometimes they're big holes or like an inch across. And so as I fold a sheet down, something happens that might be a place to trigger a drawing and all the letter [00:20:00] writing. All the snail mail techniques come right out of manuscript, bookmaking and vice versa.

I was writing letters before I was making manuscript books. And so a lot of that stuff just cross fertilizes. And I was also learning that I don't like telephones per se. So I would never phone up Buckminster fuller because he's a busy man and a lot of other people, but I would certainly write him a letter.

And I was I write letters two ways. One, sometimes I'll have a question which I may get answered or not other times, I just want to thank a person for the work they have done because it had an effect on me. And that effect can sometimes be really profound to the point where. I can never use this effect because it'll be me making a painting, like Richard said a dart or somebody else, but I can certainly thank him for the work he did to make that painting because, Oh my God, is that thing cool.

That's one of the starts. If I look around the [00:21:00] space, I also have, I have drawers full of cast off drawings that were just, not quite, they didn't quite make it, but flip them over and there's either a blank side or. Sometimes they can be tossed in a tray of water and most of the material rinsed off.

And then that can become a great thing to write a letter off. And I don't think letters have to be profound. I don't think we have to always share ideas that are only our own. You can come up, you can bump into something that somebody else just said, if you respond to it, it's good to share that.

John: [00:21:34] I think the one thing that I heard that really. Resonated with me is the idea of randomly stamping pages because I've actually gotten completely away from buying normal preprinted stationary, just because I prefer doing my own stamping and coloring and embellishments. And all of that kind of stuff.

So I've really gotten away from buying a lot of preprinted stationary, just because I prefer [00:22:00] to do it myself. And it sounds like that's along the same vein of what you're doing. 

Tim: [00:22:03] A lot of regular commercial papers. Aren't very interesting to write on. And some of them are poorly receptive for some of the inks I use and, they just bleed.

They're awful. And I've got a 12 inch. Rolling ruler. I got tons of ways to make parallel lines, but if I make a series of parallel lines and pencil, they don't have to be equally spaced. They can be, but I'm not a calligrapher. I've always been chided for having sloppy handwriting because I'm really impatient.

So my hand is working faster than my hand. And so using a fountain pen and. Respecting the advice a calligrapher gave me, which is just a slow down. I can actually make my handwriting legible. So a lot of these fragments that receive some rubber stamps as triggers also be really fabulous drawing and painting papers.

You know what I mean? People get. Scraps of [00:23:00] a hundred percent linen rag paper with some of my scratchings on it. The other thing I've been doing lately, like since we got computers is I will generate a document and I'll crush the margin. So at the interior space is maybe only three and a half, four inches wide.

And that's where my text goes. I'll type a letter. To a friend and I'll have these massive margins where I can add corrections and rubber stamps and images, add little color fields, really illustrate the letters, or sometimes I'll shove it over to one side. Sometimes I will stamp the paper and then pass it to the printer.

So that, or a rubber stamp, right on top of the text, it's just very casual and playful. If there's a rule involved, I kind kinda like to Disregard it somewhat, I do. Try to communicate. And I I'm trying to deal with my own eligibility. 

John: [00:23:52] Yeah. I found that when I'm addressing letters and addressing envelopes that I slowed down and it dramatically improves my [00:24:00] handwriting.

So I definitely need to carry that over and continue slowing myself down while I'm doing the letter writing for the exact same reason of legibility. One of the ask you question that I ask all of my guests. And I'm always astounded by the answers of this, but are there artists out there, and this ought to be an amazing answer from you artists out there that are doing amazing work that the stationary lovers need to know about.

Tim: [00:24:24] Wow. Yeah. I figured that might be a question and I'm gonna say I don't have a tight answer, like a, a handful of specific artists, but I would say, look at the drawings by contemporary architects. Because I think that is a place where I am finding the most juice right now.

People like Lebbeus woods, the visionary architects, the guys that are making things that are never intended to ever be built. That's one area. I look at it a lot. I look at anybody doing collage or anybody doing [00:25:00] what they call now. A Semick writing I a few years ago when Pinterest was really interesting.

I made dozens and dozens of boards, and most of them are not secret. So if you can log into my pages there, you'll see a number of dozens of hundreds. So people that I am really interested in the older guys, I'm really intrigued with the people that were working when I was being impacted when I was, I was 18.

During the summer of love. So 1967, and I felt, I still feel that some of the music and some of the paintings sculpture going on at that period were really pivotal for me, maybe. Certainly, and maybe for much, much more of the world. One of the guys that I was interested in was Eduardo  Paolozzi and I found.

A book by Christopher Finch on pop art that I read when I was 20 and I had underlined a part about sketchbooks. And then I underlined another part about Eduardo [00:26:00] and made a note in the margin that I would like to meet him one day and 20, some years later, I'm doing a lecture at the Victoria art museum and he comes to my lecture and we had just a marvelous conversation.

And I was all I could remember from. My early experience was, I want to talk to this man about how he's basically quilting together. These gorgeous chunks of erratic. Chaotic imagery into these machines. I still find it amazing work, and I wish I had gotten to know him better. And I wish I had also known that I had made a note.

So I could tell him that, I've been wanting to meet you for 20 years and here's the proof of it in this little paperback book, but he's important. Joseph Cornell of course, is important. Anybody that did correspondence, Ray Johnson, my painting teacher, Robert Allen Jensen to somebody very worth looking at.

No. I'm interested in the people that tend to take ideas and [00:27:00] not only push them in terms of how deeply they dig into the idea, but how many objects manifests out of these ideas? So I'm speaking here about someone who is prolific, somebody who's made piles and piles of work. My painting teacher, the last time I visited him was, he's over 80 and he's still making 20 drawings a day and they're not quick.

And. Easy. And his studio and his barn is just full of this amazing work. I can put together a list for you and we can tag it onto something. 

John: [00:27:32] Yeah, no, that'd be great. I can definitely put something into the show notes for that. I'm going to come into the last question for you here. And this is a nice little almost like piece of dessert after all of the other hard questions.

What is your favorite purchase stationary or not in the last six months? 

Tim: [00:27:48] What have I done it? Let's see. I bought a big pile of color plan paper from talus for summer workshop and I cut it down and all the off cuts are [00:28:00] a really lovely, very bright colored and paper stock. But I'm, I was looking at those just yesterday thinking, yeah, this is going to be the basis for a bunch of envelopes because.

It's a lonely street paper. It's not quite cardstock, but it's also not quite copier weight. It's really quite good. I also bought two breath, paper books. One of them is a, is a perspective drawing guide. So thank blue lines on biggish paper and I'm probably gonna make a sketchbook out of that.

And, but, I make all my own sketchbooks and I'm still a real victim of anybody who's making cool books. I got field notes books. I've got. Sketchbooks blank journals and account books I bought in Japan. It's always hard to pin it down to something, but I'm getting my, I'm finding myself attracted to the most gains just because they've really nailed the paper and I'm finding that's workable for me.

So I use those in the kitchen as places to write down recipes, [00:29:00] processes. It's crazy. 

John: [00:29:01] That's interesting that you, your take on the mole skin paper, but I'm going to ask you, since you brought up field notes. What is one of your favorite things about the way the field notes are produced?

Tim: [00:29:12] I only have two and first one was sent to me is like a stocking stuffer gift from a friend some years ago.

And I it's small enough that I could carry it in my go out into the world kid. So what I liked about it was that I actually could work in a really humid environment like. I think Alabama and, it just worked for me and I still carry it. It's not quite full yet. I have also those little, those weird little Brown, probably six by four books with a black cloth spine that are just so in the middle, they're really cheap.

And I've carried those in various manifestations for 50 years. I still have them. Several blanks. I used them as a diary during my year in England, and I couldn't find [00:30:00] those in England. So I had just switched to something else, but I've got a little pile of four of those things, all rubber banded together.

And I can read those things and they worked I'm departing on the subject. Why would I like to feel? No, I think I like to feel those they're really small and I make tons of single section books that are about that size. So there are sketchbooks all over the house. So if I'm going out, I can just grab one.

So they're dated, but they're squirrely. Some of them might. Not be written in for three years. The field notes are very vivid, so I can stop those. And  I can grab them easily. 

John: [00:30:34] I have a, actually the expedition style field notes specifically because those are waterproof and it's something that for me in my field is important along with like pressurized, ballpoint pens that I use out in the field quite a bit.

So I completely understand the always having a field notes handy. 

Tim: [00:30:55] See, you're outside far more than I, I have all, I grew up in Seattle, so it [00:31:00] rained all the time. So I was a kid that stayed inside and made drawings and made things. And, kitchen table scale is where it all sinks down to.

And so when I started making books, there was almost no change in my emo. So I rarely was outside working. Except in the summer, then everything moves out. To the side porch. And I've got another can full of writing tools that are right by the door. And I can take a sketchbook and my phone if necessary and just go outside and work for an hour or two in the fresh air.

John: [00:31:30] So that's going to wrap things up for us. If you are interested in seeing more of Tim's work, you can find him on the internet at the following places, a planetary collage and as Timothy Eley artists. on Instagram.