Despite taking my first letterpress class more than twenty years ago, I myself am admittedly newer to the community, but we all start somewhere. That said, I am also a fast learner, with my eyes and ears always open. Social media is sort of great for that. Doom scroll through tons of creative accounts feeds around the world endlessly, no end to the content, hard to be content at times. One can get almost too much info in a short amount of time and burnt out, which is understandable. One can also build some great connections as well, I have connected with several around the world and found quite the camaraderie. I had been following along with Felicia Rice aka Moving Parts Press, well before she unfortunately lost her press in terrible massive fires in the generally quiet mountains above Santa Cruz, where it was located. We here in Sonoma county are by no means strangers to that form of disaster. My cousin and his family were evacuated in the dead of the night when the infamous Coffey Park neighborhood entirely burned to the ground. They lost everything they owned except the clothes on their backs, thier kids and dogs, and the car they drove out on.
So it was great to follow along and finally see Felicia rise up, relocate, and rebuild her press in Mendocino. Moving parts indeed. She makes some amazing stuff, and typically works with a solid cast of creative characters. So when she made the announcement for Heavy Lifting, her first collaborative book project with poet Thersa Whitehill done since the fires and relocation, this was certainly cause for celebration.
Some folks in our circle made the trip up the coast to Mendocino for the premier presentation of the book, and returned with high praise. So I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if they could come down this way and share this project with our community…
Ask and yee shall receive…and receive we did. Felicia was gracious and enthusiastic about dropping NBLA as a location on their book tour. So yeah, long story short they will be here in November. Don’t worry, I have been called verbose for good reason.
While we discussed and planned, I asked her if she would mind that it coincides with our Corita Rules! Spotlight Month, and her reply was “She is my gal. Social justice r us.” and so yeah mark your calendars 11/11 2-4pm.
HERE is a link to video about the project, as well there are flyers below for more info.
Best - Andrew Mecum
