Currently highlighted on the Sidereal Fine Art Press home page is the accordion book by Lou Cabeen titled Field Notes Companion, completed in 2022 and printed by Sheila Coppola. It was designed to accompany the chap book by Ann Batchelor Hursey titled Field Notes to Maya Lin’s Confluence Project Landscapes. Lou spent several sessions at the press working side by side with Sheila and her book is a beautiful example of what is called pressure printing. A form of relief printing, pressure printing uses a flat fully inked plate in the bed of the letterpress with a slightly 2 dimensional artwork placed behind the sheet of printing paper. Lou created artworks by hand embroidering text letters onto shear fabric, 11 separate handmade artworks, one for each of the 11 pages in the book. As the paper passes through the press the raised portions of the artwork underneath the paper exert more pressure against the inked block resulting in darker print areas than the non-raised portions. The resulting prints have a lighter tone surrounding the darker text marks. Each page has 3 colors; 2 pressure printed and the final Columbia River shapes printed from hand carved linoleum. Ann’s haiku’s are letterpress printed onto thin Japanese papers and bound into each book by hand. The haiku placements in the book correspond approximately to Maya Lin’s artworks along the Columbia River. When fully displayed the book measures 12 feet long. Edition size is 24. More information can be found at Lou Cabeen Art.

Photograph by Lynn O C Thompson