Jungle Garden Press ~ California
(Marie Dern)

Baa Baa Black Sheep
By Martha Weston
Fairfax, California: Jungle Garden Press, 2008. Edition of 15.

7.25 x 9"; 11 pages, 5 of which fold out revealing 10 additional pages. Printed letterpress with Garamond type on Hosho paper. Drawings digitally printed. Typeface: Claude Garamond. Bound by hand in a black Momi "bag" of wool, wool "tail" on the spine. Text reinterpreted by Marie C. Dern. Line illustrations by Martha Weston.

Marie Dern: "Delightful drawings of lost sheep eventually found in the pages of the book."
$400

Miracles
By Marie Dern
2006. Edition of 50.

6.375 x 9.125”; 36 pages including free end papers. Printed letterpress. Prints and cover papers hand silk-screened by Martha Shaw. Typeface: Centaur; paper: Somerset.

A short story by Marie Dern about the small miracles: growing plants, growing hair, growing love. Luminous silkscreen images by Martha Shaw.
$200

Counting
By Marie Dern
2005. Edition of 10.

10 x 13.5" with eleven pages - title page plus one page per number one through 10. Each number uses a different font. Pages laid in paper covered boards with title on front board. Title of "1, 2" is on paper to resemble a chalkboard.

Dern uses the nursery rhyme 1, 2 Buckle My Shoe to produce a lovely wood type book. Each of the numbers 1 through 10 has its own page using a different wood type. The book is produced like a portfolio of wood type so that the pages are not bound but laid in a binder with a ribbon tie.

1, 2 Buckle my shoe.
3, 4 Shut the door.
5, 6 Pick up sticks.
7, 8 Lay them straight.
9, 10 Big fat hen.           

$350

By Jean McMann
2005. Edition of 100.

9.5 x 9.5" with 11 sheets including title and colophon laid in a clamshell box. Box covered in green raw silk made by John Demerritt and Kris Langan. Letterpress text printed by Marie Dern. The 9 x 9" carbon-based pigment prints were made by Urban Digital Design in San Francisco.

This series of seven portraits of Irish kerbstones were photographed by Jean McMann. Kerbstones are part of a prehistoric ceremonial center about 50 miles northwest of Dublin at a place called Loughcre of Sliabh na Calli (the hill of the witch or hag). Along the crest of this hilly ridge are ruins of at least 35 stone structures now called cairns or passage chambers built around 5,500 years ago during the Neolithic Period.

These cairns and the symbols carved in stone by their makers have been the primary subject of Jean McMann's work as a photographer and scholar ever since she first visited Loughcrew in 1976. Her dissertation for her PhD in History of Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley focused on the plans and history of the site. But her most powerful means of connection has always been the camera.

Jean McMann: "I photographed these kerbstones again and again from 1989 to 1992, lying behind my splayed tripod in the wet grass of Irish summer mornings. They stand on the rest of a hilly ridge now mostly called Loughcrew, about fifty miles southwest of Dublin in county Meath, Ireland. For centuries the place was known as Slieve na Callighe or Sliabh na Cailli (the hillof the witch or hag). The stones are part of a Neolithic ceremonial center, a site of veneration and pilgrimage built sometime around 5,500 years ago to house and honor the dead. It also may have served as a tribute or means of connection to the sun, moon, stars, as well as to the earth and its seasons. Together with sacred architecture worldwide, the many stone monuments in ruins at Loughcrew speak to us of the purpose and meaning of human existence - our births and deaths, the deeds and events of our lives over time. Deep-rooted and comforting, these stones represent the power of human imagination and our connection to the cosmos."
$650

Winter Orchard
By Marie Dern and Carl Dern
2005. Edition of 60.

One 6 x 8 x 3.75" metal tree sculpture and one two-sided accordion 4.25 x 10.5" book housed in 12.75 x 11.25 x 3.5" sawn-pine box.

Book composed of nine panels featuring 18 drawings. Type is Bembo. Drawings printed with photopolymer plates an printed on Arches watercolor paper. Sculpture made of steel, brass and tin. Binding by John De Merritt. Box design by Marie Dern. Lid to box hinged for opening with cord. Interior divided into two compartments for holding sculpture on right and book on left. Book wrapped in lightweight white gauzy snowflake design Japanese paper. Sculpture nestled in the same paper.

A collaboration of husband and wife, Carl and Marie Dern. The accordion book of Carl's drawings can be moved around to form various configurations to simulate an orchard setting. Carl's accompanying metal tree sculpture can be placed 'among' the pages or off to the side.

Simple, elegant, appropriately stark. A nice combination of the book and sculptural art.
$850

HAIRDO
By Marie C. Dern
2003. Edition of 10.

3.5 x 5.5"; six paneled accordion structure. Printed letterpress. In paper covered boards with raffia tied at board ends to simulate hair.

Collage and three vignettes about hair. Word and illustration play on hairdos: Pixie, Bob & Weave, Mohawk, Conk, and Crew Cut.
$300 (Last Copy)

Marie Dern: "From the beginning I have printed books using a Chandler & Price and a Vandercook letterpress. The books are bound by hand by me or professional bookbinders. Early on I was almost exclusively interested in printing poetry by contemporary authors, but in the past few years, I have printed short prose and have collaborated with visual artists. I also write, print, and bind my own books, some in small editions, and some one of a kind."

This section is devoted to Jungle Press Garden poetry editions.

Metta Fugue
By Marie C. Dern
2003. Edition of 30.

4 x 6"; 20 pages including free end leaves. Handbound in a red paper wrapper. Single red bead tied into exposed spine thread. 1 x 1" title label attached to thread which trails across the front cover. Buddhist prayer printed along the top of the page in black. Dern's response printed in red at the bottom half of the page.

All living beings, whether weak or strong, in

high or middle or low realms of existence,

small or great, visible or invisible, near or far,

born or to be born, may all beings be happy.

Another original book from Marie Dern with her special stamp, this time about loving-kindness. A Buddhist prayer is said out loud (or silently) to request the well being for others (and oneself.) It is a dialogue or fugue between the sutra and what is going on in Marie's head (which is mostly irreverent and amusing!).

Small mind doesn't care if

Republicans are happy or not.

$150

Believe it or Not
Poems by Kay Ryan
With drawings by Carl Dern
2002. Edition of 125.

5 x 10.75"; 30 pages. Letterpress printed from handset Bell type on Lana watercolor paper. Dern's drawings were transferred to polymer plates and printed in a variety of colors. Handbound in red cloth over boards with black cloth spine and gold-stamped spine title. An large, inset exclamation point illustrates the cover as well as the title page.

Ryan's entertaining poems were penned in response to a selection of absurdities from Ripley's Believe It or Not. Ryan, a Ripley's fan, owns many of Ripley's collections and set herself the task of writing a poem a day based on a reading from one of the books. Of the hundreds she wrote, some have been previously published, but this collection is new. Her witty verse renderings each include, as epigraph, the bizarre fact from Ripley's that inspired the quote. Many of the poems are accompanied by Carl Dern's delightful drawings. As ever, publisher & printer Marie Dern's sense of whimsy and play is evident.
$325 (A few copies remaining in the edition)

POEM
By Marie C. Dern
2002. Edition of 5.

9 x 9" square; four pages. Printed on deckled Twin Rocker paper. Housed in a gray cloth box.

POEM is literally a poem in a box. Each page is a letter of the word POEM, conceived because of some donated wood type. It is printed on deckled Twin Rocker paper where the type leaves a shadow because of the bite.

A conceptual piece.
$480 Last Copy)

Jungle Garden Press Out of Print Titles:
• Chairs
• Mayhem, Pestilence & Disasters
• Salt Water Poem
• Seeing Things