Dispatches from the Lizard Brain

New York City: Gaspara Stampa, Inc., Russell Maret, 2022.

Folio. 15 x 9 3/16 inches. (134) pp. Half-title, color photographic frontispiece of Ms. Campbell, title page printed in 3 colors of ink, the sections of the text are divided by printed text on colored papers, the entire text is illustrated with a variety of samples of work of the press, mounted, tipped-in, bound-in, mounted on stubs, printed in the margins, and so forth, color photographs, list of exhibition catalogs, Ninja Press type collection, index; text clean, unmarked. Blue-green leather spine, boards covered with patterned paper adapted from an ornament designed and punch-cut by Carolee Campbell, spine titled in gilt, the volume is protected by a five-sided chemise covered in cloth and held closed with a magnet, paper lining, paper spine label printed with the title; binding square and tight. SG822-002. Fine.

FIRST EDITION of 102 copies, 25 reserved hors commerce, and 77 copies to the public, this is copy number 46. Bibliographic descriptions by Nina Schneider; Commentary by Carolee Campbell; Foreword by Harry Reese; Afterword by Russell Maret; Photographer, Annie Schlechter. This volume documents the output more than 38 years of Carolee Campbell's life as a fine press printer. It is sort of an autobiographical bibliography of the printer and the physical work that will survive her. The last book in the bibliography appears as a tipped-in pre-publication prospectus, as Carolee is not finished yet. In the Foreword to this volume, Harry Reese asks us to "Imagine this movie: A Self-possessed teenager in Los Angeles, brought up by a grandmother because of her mother's infirmities and her father's alcoholism, flees to New York City after high school to pursue a dream. Working first as a hatcheck girl in a famous nightclub, and then waiting tables in Mafia restaurants, she reinvents her life from the inside-out in classes taught by elite drama teachers and is offered a bit part on daytime television. Avoiding temptation and putting everything at risk again, she evolves into a television star and eventually a soap opera queen. Meanwhile, she exhibits photographs in New York galleries, practices Japanese martial arts, and competes with her team in Japan. She wins an Emmy for a dramatic role, but abruptly quits acting, returns to California, and takes up whitewater rafting in the Southwest. Nearly fifty, she turns her back on every success she ever knew to start all over again as an entry-level art student in a program she has to explain. Twenty years later, she gains recognition as one of the most accomplished, distinctive, and influential printer-publishers of her generation."