Spring Lounge

Yes, yes, YES! Mel Kadel has recently self-published another amazing art book. Mel's first two art publications, Rough Cookie and Honey Pool, are two of the highlights of my ever stacking and sun-faded collection. Always top sellers for the few days our artist's bookstore has them in stock, Mel's artwork has a way of connecting to almost everybody and the craftsmanship that goes into her books is just astounding.

If you haven't already, you can read my review of Rough Cookie here and my review of Honey Pool here. I continue to stand by all my gushing comments for the artwork and the books themselves. Spring Lounge takes the bar that Mel has already set ridiculously high for herself and kicks it up a notch. All the things that made the previous books great is still here, but the artwork has slowly progressed. The work has gotten a bit more complex, yet somehow more accessible. The pacing of the images, from symbolic landscapes to figurative interactions to detailed patterning, is well managed. The colors are perhaps a little bolder, and the few more risks are taken.

The high point of the book comes with the two-page, 16-paneled storyboard piece that has just about everything you could ever want from a Mel Kadel illustration. I won't reproduce it here in the blog because it is just too damn good. It is a step up, or a step sideways, and I always admire an artist willing to push themselves and see where thing can go (even when the risks don't reap rewards). When the experiments do pay off, like we have here, it's pure gold.

Like the previous books, Spring Lounge is full-color inkjet printed onto coffee soaked paper. I hear each page is hand-soaked, hung to dry, and hand-fed into the printer one at a time by the artist herself. The printing is near perfect. The book smells like coffee. The cover is a 3color screenprint onto fancy printmaking stock. The book is 6" x 9" and has 40 pages. Hand signed, dated, and numbered from an edition of 100. Retail price of $24. Minds blown.

Frankly, these books, at these prices, with art this good, with art printed this well, in editions this limited, are starting to make all other small-time art publishing projects look like piles of garbage. Mine included. Spring Lounge is so awesome I really can't praise it enough (though I'm trying). You can see more images from the book and of Mel Kadel's artwork at melkadel.com. Spring Lounge is available for purchase direct from the "buy" section of Fudge Factory Comics, or we still have two copies available (as of August 8th) at Rowan Morrison Online Artists Bookstore. You should buy yours now or be an idiot and wait two years and buy it for several hundred dollars.

And, once again, I can't resist the crass plug for the limited edition Mel Kadel serigraph from Rowan Morrison Publishing. Only $20, signed by the artist, shipped flat, and we only have about 25 left.