My Gordo Adventure, Day 2

Yesterday was definitely more adventure than I was expecting while at this residency. I suppose I should have been a good, hard-working artist and stayed at the print shop making prints, but I volunteered to go with the the gang to pick up "a little type from the preacher". This preacher had originally lived in Gordo many many years ago, where he bought the print shop from a local printer, and proceeded to use it for printing religious tracts to hand out, and to print posters for his revivals. Like most people, he's discovered digital printing and no longer has any use for the letterpress printing supplies in his barn, so invited Glen House to come by and pick it up, gratis.

His instructions for finding his warehouse was simple enough: drive to Forkland (where he now lives), take a right, go about 3 miles and you'll see the gate on the left. Needless to say, it wasn't that simple and we ended up driving down a slew of county roads and gravel driveways, entering every gate that was left open. Along the way we saw some beautiful old abandoned houses and churches, a shrimp farm, a catfish processing plant, and a shiny new oil rig. Even though I knew I was in capable hands, while we were driving around lost in the woods I got little nervous and thought I heard a couple of dueling banjos off in the distance. Such a relief to finally find the Preacher's Warehouse.

One press and five type cabinets later, we were on our way back to Gordo. This is what Kathy called the "Clampett Truck."

Finding my way home

In the past ten years, I've moved 5 times. Before that, another 8 times or so, starting with the big move from Taichung, Taiwan to Cary, North Carolina when I was nine (actually, we moved a few times while living in the city of Taipei, then to Taichung, *then* to the States). I always thought that I would one day go home, to Taiwan, even as my memory of it and my ability to speak Chinese faded. When I finally went back to visit in 2001, it was a foreign place to me, nothing like the homecoming I was expecting to experience. I found myself in a slightly uncomfortable state of having no roots; not sure of where to plant my feet. I guess that explains the constant moving.

A few years ago, I took a printmaking workshop where I learned how to "pressure print" using a Vandercook press. This was in Iowa City IA, one of my many temporary homes. Just playing around with cut papers, I made this print, among many others:

A few years have passed, and now I find myself in the position of teaching this process at  a community print shop here in Asheville, North Carolina. The other night, I pulled out this very print to show as an example, and one of the students said, "Well, that looks just like the Blue Ridge Parkway." I'd made it , of course, years before moving here, and long before the thought of moving here had even crossed my mind. Two days ago, Scott and I spent the day driving on the Parkway, stopping to visit a few small towns along the way: Cherokee, Sylva, Waynesville. Something about this place just feels right, and every now and then I get the feeling that I may have found my way home.