Stephen Hannock - The Luminescent Diary of a Unique American Artist

Images of the Connecticut River conjure up memories of childhood for me. In the summertime, my family would drive from New York to New Hampshire crossing the Connecticut River in the early part of our journey. Then later, we would meet up with its wilder relatives, the tributary rivers Ompompanoosuc in Vermont and finally the Ammanoosuc in New Hampshire. In addition, my parents were great fans of the Hudson River School painters and Thomas Coles' Oxbow (the distinctive view of the Connecticut River near Mt. Holyoke Massachusetts) was a favorite. I liked this picture too, it turned a familiar river landscape into a kind of end-of-day, nostalgic revery.

I was fortunate to be in Verona when Hudson Hill's beautiful new monograph of Stephen Hannock's work was on press. Hannock is particularly known for his luminous paintings of views of the Oxbow, which refer back to the same scene by Frederick Church and Thomas Cole. I was on press with publisher Leslie van Breen and designer/art director David Skolkin as they painstakingly saw sheet after sheet of the book's jacket which depicts this famous landscape. There is this particular blue-green-yellow-gold glow in the sky that had to be just right ....

I love Hannock's drawings, too, of his travels around the world, of his friends. And I like the way, in some paintings, he includes long passages of handwriting that - from a distance - meld into the landscapes and add this subtle entryway into the artists thoughts, dreams, unconscious.


The Oxbow, After Church, After Cole, Flooded, Green Light. By Stephen Hannock. Currently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Forest

In April my beloved four-footed buddy, Forest, was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Despite the best efforts of our vet, cancer specialists, and a wonderful canine surgeon, we lost Forest last week.


You hope until the end that somehow you will beat the odds, even thought it was clear from the first diagnosis that we would not. It is very hard to come to grips with this loss and hard to accept. And it has tinged these past weeks with sadness.


But I want to keep writing about books that I love and what's going on out there in the big wide world of publishing and printing, at least from my vantage point.

So, do stay tuned. There's more "Art Book Talk" to come ....

Book Expo - One Week Later

I guess the fact that I am posting this entry a week later says something about my rather low enthusiasm level for Book Expo.

I can't help it, I just like the London and Frankfurt Fairs so much better. When you are in London or Frankfurt, you feel as if you are in the middle of the whole big wide world, you soak up the glamour of being in an international city. And of course the huge array of publishers from everywhere makes you feel that publishing IS somehow still alive and well and relevant.

These days, when you come to New York - particularly if you fly in, Heaven Forbid, to Kennedy or LaGuardia - you feel like you are arriving into some crumbling backwater. Yes! I said it! Crumbling backwater! You disagree? Well just compare getting into the city from Kennedy or LaGuarda - to riding the Heathrow Express!!

Complaints aside, I did have the chance to see some of my favorite clients, including Phil at National Geographic, Judith from Stackpole Books, and Kristen at Hudson Hills Press. And I got a distant glimpse of John Irving, who still looks really good.  But otherwise the fair seemed quite unremarkable to me and rather small this year. According to the New York Times attendance was down 15% from the last time the fair was in New York. 

Well, looking forward to Frankfurt in October!

Printing - It's all about the People (and also about the food)

A stay in Verona would not be complete without many good meals!






I had a chance to have dinner with my old friend Enrico from Mondadori, who used to work with me on The Black Book account and now handles pre-press for many of my clients including The National Geographic and Hudson Hills Press. Joining us were his wife Elena, and their daughter Elisabetta. American parents be advised: Here in Italy, five-year-olds do not clamor for chicken tenders or french fries - they eat plates of proscuitto with bruscetta!





Now, if only Enrico could stop calling the plant to see how that job is doing on press ....










I stayed in my favorite hotel, the Colomba D'Oro, and listened to the sweet sound of swallows flying outside the window, calling to each other across the piazza.

Printing - It's all about the People

I am just back from three days in Verona, spending time with my colleagues at the factory.


Not that I needed a reminder, but here are 10 really good reasons to print your next book with Mondadori. And there are many more, it's just that my camera battery died before I could capture them all!! For that, my apologies.




















And that's just the beginning of everything Mondadori has to offer. Thanks everyone for a great time! xxxx

London Book Fair - Tuesday Evening - And yes, there was more eating

Its important in the middle of all this bad news to stop and smell the flowers, which is exactly what my colleague Maria Luisa from Verona decided to do.




Dealing with all the uncertainty is just plain exhausting. At the end of the day, a group of us who had come to London to represent Mondadori put business out of our minds and took a leisurely walk down London's side streets, in search of some place to have dinner.






I designated myself "Leader in Search of a Cute Place to Eat" and marshaled the group which included Italians who were too cold to eat outside, a Brit who need to stop for a cigarette break, and a noisy American like myself who was GETTING REALLY HUNGRY NOW.



We settled on an Italian restaurant serving Buffalo chicken wings, and everyone was happy.


And then sad, because really we did have an awfully good time together, despite all the gloom and doom, and these times when we can all be together are too short.

London Book Fair -Tuesday

I think most people were relieved to see that the London Fair was crowded, packed actually. A comforting mass of people jammed their way down the aisles. I had to hold two meetings standing up, as the Mondadori Booth was so crowded there were not enough seats for everyone.

And still, there is overwhelming uncertainty in the air. And so, many of us took comfort in just getting together and talking with old friends from the business. I was glad to share thoughts with Leslie van Breen of Hudson Hills, Dan Farrell of the Antique Collectors Club, Sherry Babbit of the Philadelphia Museum. I also had a chance to pitch ideas to Leslie Stoker of STC, Michael Jacobs of Abrams, Frank Oppel of Book Sales, Robert Abrams of Abbeville. There might even be a few resulting sales from these meetings, we'll see.



Paolo Scaramuzzo from Imago was proud to display a kit designed for children in the British school system by the Kew Gardens, that allows them to perform various horticultural experiments and learn all about Darwin's adventures and discoveries.





Steve Bryant of Everbest was looking suave and unflappable as ever, and expressed confidence that we'd all be making buckets of money by the end of the year.