Leah Eisenbeis' Interview with Gaylord Schanilec – artist and book maker, October 2004. I'm sure you have had to hear, or had to read, many different people's interpretations of what your work is "about." But what do you think it's about? My roots are in poetry, and I'm still walking down that road. When something strikes me as interesting and significant, I work with it. The result these days is a book. In my younger days it was a poem. You could say my work is "about" road side attractions. I'm often amazed at how one can take a seemingly insignificant detail, and by putting time into it, it grows into something much larger: like a grain of sand turning into a pearl. Where did your press name come from? In 1979, when I first began printing, I was living in a warehouse in Saint Paul, Minnesota, across the street from the Anchor Paper Company. They had a loading dock, and on the dock were large wire bins filled with off cuts of paper. My friend Gary Egger and I would go over after dark and root through the bins. It was Gary who came up with the phrase "Midnight Paper Sales". I lived there for four years. Then Anchor Paper Company walled off the loading dock and I moved on. What project(s) are you currently working on right now? Right now I'm working on "Mayflies of the Driftless Region", and have been for three or four years. I hope to have the book finished in time for the book fair season next fall. I collect specimens, study them under a stereo "zoom" microscope, and produce wood engravings of them. I am collaborating with a biology professor with an infectious love of mayflies. I send him the specimens and he sends back formal scientific identifications. I love the language: "costal angulation; apex of penis lobe not reflexed; an anteapical protuberance on mesal margin of each penis lobe". At this point the identifications will be the heart of the text, although I am considering interviewing him about mayflies, because his love of the subject would undoubtedly come through. Love is always worth capturing, if you can. I also have in hand a collection of poems by Robert Bly. I have the type, but haven't started setting it yet. I hope to print it in the spring. It will be a "little" book. I began a series of "little" books a number of years ago, and try to produce one each year. They are smaller projects, and are useful as places to try new ideas without the time investment of larger projects. They also help with cash flow in between large projects. "Little" books generally take a year. Larger ones take more like five years. I'm also piecing together few sets of the various broadsides and posters that I've produced over the past 25 years, as I have a few collectors who would be interested. It's difficult, but interesting. I've been going back to places, and seeing people that I haven't seen in 25 years. Sometimes I find a dusty old box with something of mine in it, or a photograph of an old friend who has died along the way. It was once suggested to me that I keep ten copies of everything I produce. A good idea. I wish I had. Obviously your home landscape inspires you, judging by books like "Farmers" and "Waterfalls of the Mississippi." Can you talk a little about that and also address: what's it like to be an artist in rural Wisconsin? Landscape has always been interesting to me. I grew up in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, and when I was in my teens, the big theme of the local poetry scene was "spirit of place". This made an impression, but more potent was the horizon line there: a straight 360 degree line. The Red River Valley is as flat as the floor you are standing on. The world was half sky. Exactly. I love the sky. The beauty of a sunset, or lumbering buffalo clouds dragging their tongues across a summer day. Very dramatic. Where I live now, society is poloraized in two camps: the locals, and the urban transplants. I'm of the latter camp, but having been here 15 years, and with a daughter in the school system, I'm between the two worlds more and more. The locals seem content with pictures of ducks, western novels, and bad poetry. They are impressed if they read something about a local artist (like me) in the newspaper. There is an element of reverence for art, but very little depth of understanding. The urban transplants have a more worldly education, and seem very happy to have a character like me around. What's your dream project? Some time ago I was on a canoe trip in the boundry waters of northern Minnesota. and a big storm forced us ashore. A very big storm. When it finally passed, there was a rainbow, and another, and another, and another, and another. An infinity of rainbows, one after another, each a little smaller and fainter than the last--like a series of hoops in a green house--but going on forever. I look at work that way, but of course, there is a final rainbow, and as I approach my 50th year, I realize I don't have time for more than a half dozen or so more major projects. It's a sobering thought, but perhaps the rainbows do continue on into infinity. Somehow. What is my dream project? They all are. What advice would you give to new book artists, just starting out? Take business seriously. Believe your own eyes. Time is everything. Thank you so much Mr. Schanilec. Contact information: A Fall 2004 interview with Paul Moxon.
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