WHAT A BIG WEEK!
Hello everyone,
It has been a MASSIVE week over at Matty Dunne Head Quarters. Pretty much all great stuff.
So, first of all, Tall Poppy Press’ FIRST BOOK for 2025 is now ready for ordering! The books are wending their way through the ocean to Melbourne and in the mean time we have advanced copies - it all came together so well.
What else has been keeping me busy?
Doing some substitute teaching work! I worked three days last week and will work two this week, I’m settling in to a bit of a pattern and I think it’s good.
I am neck deep in book making - I’ve been working on my own little project, as well as getting a few things ready for their next steps. I want to give you folks a small idea of what’s involved - with just one book I’m working on this year, the artist sent me the better part of 1000 images. So I sift through them, select the ones I want to try and fit in the book and then print those out, that’s about 350 images. I then cut these out and start laying them out on a table/wall/floor to see which fit together well. I make a document for the artist to review, and they come and meet. I am hoping to more or less have this year’s designs finished by March - so I can not have to worry about the design work any more.
I am in admin land - accounting, shipping, customs forms, etc.
I got accepted to be at LA Art Book Fair! I have wanted to visit a USA fair for ages, and LA is so much easier than New York. So off to LA I go in March. It’ll be a sizeable outlay of $ and we’ll see if it’s worth it! I hope so :) - in the mean time it is the SAME WEEKEND as the Melbourne Art Book Fair, so I have to try and find someone to staff our table at MABF!
My upcoming exhibition in Canberra is getting close - I still need to spend a day at the table saw and router building some plinths, that’s next week or so I think.
The rebranding is looking so schmick - I have a few more admin tasks to do here, taking more photos, exporting photos for the website at the right sizes, moving my working systems from free emails to appropriately branded ones, etc, etc, etc.
I taught my first workshop in the new space - the feedback was so so so so good - people commented on the space, the teaching and the quality. Workshop 2 is this weekend and we’ll see how we go (it’ll be a hot one!)
I’m also trying to learn how to make good coffee - it’s a sort of two steps forward, one step back thing, but we’re getting there.
I’ve also been running again - over summer I was just doing weights in my garage and had a great time doing it, but I’m enjoying running again. My favourite thing is just letting my mind wander and seeing what things I’ll think of.
Anyway - love you all! Hope to see you all soon. If you want to support please consider a copy of the new book (and I’ll have a book of my own work available soon too :) )
Matt