sailorBOYpress ~ Wisconsin
(Jeff Morin)

14 Stations
By Jeffrey W. Morin
Stevens Point, Wisconsin: sailorBOYpress, 2008. Edition of 45.

9.75 x 12.25 x 3": 56 pages.Type: Gill Sans as cast by Mackenzie & Harris (San Francisco). Outer papers by Caren Heft and Brian Borchardt, inner papers are Indian Village. 14 reduction linoleum prints with two additional variations for the title and colophon. Metal crown of thorns a with a rosary intertwined and book housed in black leather box with removable lid.

Colophon: "This is a story about a contemporary soldier of Hispanic origin; hence, the name pronunciation is HEY ZEUS and not the one that you were probably using with your internal voice. It is a story that is true on many levels but is also a story crafted from the combined lives of a few people that I have known. No disrespect is intended. This is a work in a line of projects that attempt to take an artistic theme from history and explore a modern application....

"The cover stock is formed by Brian Borchardt to emulate the crown of thorns with the spikes coming from the 1867 Common-School Grammar by Simon Kerl. The illustrations are from reduction linoleum blocks that are printed with a heavy hand to produce a more painterly image. The found inclusions may seem cryptic but are purposeful and like the detritus of one's life."

This book meshes the 14 Stations of the Cross with a story of a modern Jesus (of Hispanic origin and hence pronounced Hey Zeus) who is dying of aids. The mix is so skillfully done – in text and in image supplemented by "inclusions," which include stamps and clip-art type images that are debossed into the prints — that a third layer emerges subsuming both.

A passionate story in many senses, but not a polemic. The tone is one that nurtures tears of understanding.
$1500

my darling, my reason
By Jeff Morin
Stevens Point, Wisconsin: sailorBOYpress, 2006. Edition of 48.

7.75 x 10.75 x 1.25"; 25 pages. Type: 20th Century Light. Designed to look like a photograph album with black photographic album corners used to tip in photographs. Bound in brown mottled paper endboards with postage stamp adhered to front board. Ration stamp used for edition numbering. Housed in brown cloth dropback box.

my darling, my reason appears to be a photo album with text from letters written home by a World War II sailor. His thoughts – unexpressed, or at least not included in his letters to his wife – provide the subtext and tension .Colophon: "The substrate is gelatin-sized Hahnemühle watercolor paper. The photographs, with the exception of two obvious photo postcards, have never been published and are part of a larger collection of such images of sailors. They are editioned using an archival inkjet process on Kodak Ultima paper."

Jeffry Morin, Colophon: "The letters came to me in an anonymous way with no knowledge of the author or the relationship with his wife. This book has evolved over time from the original intention of being a photo album to a book that presents the possible thoughts of Roger D N who wrote to his wife faithfully while a sailor during World War II. Misspelling and grammatical oddities remain from the original letters. He is opinionated, perhaps stopped in time, and in the company of men. He both misses his wife and embraces a community separate from women. At what point does the mind wander and begin to consider the alternatives? What makes distraction and lust permissible?"

Excerpt:

4/16/44
"Have met many fellows and hear plenty of harrowing stories. Theres one fellow in the band Ive been with quite a bit. Hes from Denver Colo. His name is Ray Beam Very smart fellow. Independant thinker, well read etc. Why I always or almost always have to get to know fellows with such divergant ideas or religion, and general way of living kills me. Guess the appeal lies in that they think even if I disagree with them. Hes a fine fellow however."

What am I hoping for? Do I want one of these fine fellows to convince me to cross the line? We stay up most of the night talking, drinking, and being inappropriate.

$750

Martyr Mercury Rooster
By [Arcadian Press/sailorBOYpress] Caren Heft & Jeffrey Morin
Stevens Point, Wisconsin: Arcadian Press/ sailorBOYpress, 2004.
Edition of 50.

12 x 8.75". Three individual books of handmade paper, housed in a 13 x 10 x 2.5" clamshell cloth covered box. Papers: Root River Mill cotton, Larroque, and Hahnemuhle. The Hahnemuhle gelatin sized (with pigment added-in). Typeface throughout: Cochin Light.

This powerful, exquisitely rendered 3-volume collaboration between Caren Heft of Arcadian Press and Jeffrey Morin of sailorBOYpress is done in the spirit of the ars moriendi (the art of dying), 15th-century Christian texts with instructions about how to die well developed (perhaps) in response to the Black Plague. Heft and Morin use the format ironically to look contemporary scourges: suicide bombers, the destructive effect of mercury in the environment, AIDS. The woodcuts from the Middle Age-originals are replaced by an assemblage of tape, pins, stitchery, beads, and pieces of metal. The effect is powerful, even overwhelming .

For images and more information see Arcadian Press
$2,250 (Two copies remain in the edition)

Sacred Space
By Jeffrey Morin
Stevens Point, Wisconsin: sailorBOYpress, 2003. Edition of 35.

Book: 6 x 14.25"; 17 leaves. Sculpture base 15.75 x 11.5", height 12". Book: reduction linoleum prints with typographic illustrations using overprinting of letterforms; open spine sewn with brown cord binding; brown cloth-covered boards; title and design on front board; endpapers of handmade paper from Nepal. Chapel kit: six walls, roof, base. Walls: copper rod skeleton with Okawara rice paper skin covered with a casting resin. Book and kit housed in wooden box. Box lid becomes the base for the chapel. Brass holes in the base allow the rods to fit exactly. Print pattern on the base becomes the floor pattern. Letters indicate which wall is placed in a particular set of holes. Roof copper-leafed Davey board. Roof forms the tray in which the book rests. Box painted with copper leaf.

Colophon: "Sacred Space is an extension of Steven Ferlauto's research in The Sacred Abecedarium, brought to the public's attention in the year 2000. Inspiration for the project comes from an examination of the role of geometry in the development of the Roman alphabet. With their visual characterization reminiscent of stained glass the chapel concept and design is a continuation of Seven's exploration of this sacred theme. This alphabet has been used to adorn classical architecture and now clothes an intimate chapel."

Caren Heft, curator Carlsten Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point: "Sacred Space is a letterpress book housed in a box that also contains the parts for a chapel, to be put together by the viewer. The chapel incorporates elements of a previous book as the stained glass windows feature the sacred alphabet….This book departs from the conventional perception of what constitutes a book by the incorporation of the 'glass' chapel kit. It looks back to do-it-yourself books, to erector sets, to a time past, before television, when people used their hands to make stuff for pleasure….This book requires that the viewer be an active participant as to fully understand the book, one must build the chapel, locate all the parts, and understand the printed book as part of the whole. In this departure from the traditional book object, Morin has also incorporated more traditional book elements. The book has a text, printed letterpress, an outdated, laborious process in which individual letters are set by hand, as Gutenberg did. He uses reduction lino prints to great advantage here as well as typographic illustrations—overprinting letterforms to make a whole that is more than the individual letters."

Quotations in text by Galileo Galilei, William Bunce (former director of the Kohler Art Library), Thomas Merton, and William E. Barrett, explore the concept of Sacred Space.

The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics...the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word. –Galileo Galilei.
$1,750

sailorBoy Press Out of Print Title:
• The Twelve Articles
• Two Months