Last years’ election night saw to it that my friend Maureen Cummins would right away launch Tinker Street – A Journal of Visual Art, Writing and Resistance, “a fireball collection of work by writers and artists from the upstate New York region and beyond.”

Maureen and I first bonded back in 2003, during my semester as an intern at the Women’s Studio Workshop. She has seen pretty much everything I have ever made by way of artists’ books, from the limited editions publicly shown to the very folios of my private journals, which I got into the habit of gathering and binding into volumes.

Why, she thought, maybe one of these could make good Tinker Street material? Why sure, thought I, and then she saw to it be professionally photographed.

Then one day she asked if I would consider writing an essay about my bike accident to go along, “from an immigrant perspective.”

You would think she could have seen this coming. Maybe she did. Anyway, the essay I came up with goes about the bike accident by way of September 11th, divorce, the English language, Charles Dickens, the French Revolution, patriotism and, of course, the rise of Donald Trump. It was enormous and convoluted but, after much of us putting our heads together, it turned out only a bit too long and no longer messy – to her credit. She is a tenacious editor, and a fierce friend.

The down side is, now with this 2-headed, 4-handed essay monster we have created, that old bound journal she had gone through the trouble of getting pro images of no longer fit on Tinker Street. Viola voilá, WordPress comes to rescue!

I think it is funny, though…  at the end of the day, pics of the handmade journal taken for another handmade journal get published online. All things digital and all things analogue to love. So the journal is here, but for the above mentioned monster immigrant essay you have to get Tinker Street on your hands.

“Tinker Street is hand bound, hand-printed (in part) and produced in an eminently collectible limited edition of 500 copies. Since contributing artists have the option to buy copies at cost for re-sale at readings and openings, by supporting Tinker Street you are supporting living artists and grassroots publishing.”

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