Fragments From a Journal of the Secret War

I recently designed and created the artwork for this broadside of Ron Offen's poem, "Fragments From a Journal of the Secret War", published by Leonard J. Cirino's Pygmy Forest Press.

This was an exciting project, as Ron and I worked quite closely from the very first sketches to come up with imagery that both satisfied his ideas about the content of the poem and interested me visually. I believe, as I think he does, that the combination of image and text creates a third thing that is a real collaboration between us. I wanted to go beyond illustrating the text, while still creating something responsive to it, and we both were very happy with the results.


The lower half of the broadside is primarily this linocut. You might recognize a few of the vultures from Circling, that linocut that went to Estonia earlier this year. Those animals from Casting Call were also an offshoot of an earlier version of the artwork I was putting together for this project, that Ron and I eventually abandoned for the final concept you see here. This linocut is about 7" x 10", and I'll probably sell an edition of it once I've got all the Zero Sum Art Project in the Blogger Show craziness finished in mid-January.


Here's a detail from the linocut/broadside. Rats! Maggots! Cockroaches! Flies! Definitely the most vermin infested print I've made. They were a lot of fun to cut.


I especially enjoyed cutting the flies.

If you would like to purchase the broadside, I believe that they are $5, including shipping. You can order them from the publisher, Leonard Cirino, by sending him an email: cirino7715(at)comcast(dot)net

There should also be versions signed by both Ron and myself, though I'm not sure what the price is. The 10.5" x 14" broadsides are beautifully printed on a warm off-white cardstock. Very handsome work.