Salty by Michelle Vaughan

Slurp by Michelle Vaughan

Oys-terrific greetings collector friends! I'm bouncing back and forth between New York and San Francisco again—spending more time in the air than on the ground it seems. Somewhere between here and there, I'll be serving up some super special editions this week. If you caught our little game of Twitter-hangman on Friday, you already know about tomorrow's photography edition by T_DD H_D__. While he currently calls the Bay Area home, Todd's a photographer beloved everywhere and we couldn't be more excited to be working with him. Be at the ready tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. EDT sharp to snap up your Hido print.

Today's prints are a treat for connoisseurs of both oysters and the art and craft of letterpress. Salty and Slurp by Michelle Vaughan are the handmade fruits of hours of labor at Brooklyn's own The Arm. Like Dylan Fareed's We Are So Good Together, Michelle's prints are hand-pulled—the product of ink pressed onto paper. Of minimal proportions, it's the details that make these editions so sweet—soft, slightly off-white paper, deckled edges and a velvety pale pink ink, the color of oyster shells' interiors. Slurp and Salty are the simple sums of the acts of eating and tasting oysters—delish. Goodies from the sea aside, these prints are just plain fun. Sometimes a bit saliferous myself, I like the thought of these words hanging overhead.

As are most letterpress aficionados, Michelle is pretty particular about her type-faces. (Unlike our friend Lawrence Weiner, she is a fan of Helvetica.) She picked the Hamilton Gothic type—a.k.a. Franklin Gothic to the design nerds among you—for these prints because, as she put it, "it's a clean, honest face for everyday use. [And] oysters were once the everyman's food, eaten by rich and poor alike." Michelle's also an ostreaphile and a member of the Meetup group "New York Oyster Lovers". She's pretty much obsessed with food and art and these bivalve-licious editions are the print-perfect marriage of the two. Art and oysters for everyone!

Before I go, be sure to mark your calendars for this weekend's events at the JBG. On Friday, from 6 to 8 p.m., we'll be toasting the opening of Gregory Krum's ...Practice.... If you miss us then, please come by on Sunday, from 2 to 5 p.m. for a LES gallery walk with JBP's Philae Knight. The tour will begin at 2 p.m. at Invisible-Exports and end at JBG, where you can relax with a glass of wine for a brief talk about Krum's exhibition with Associate Director Jeffrey Teuton. Artists Penelope Umbrico and Ryan Humphrey will also be around and talking about their work at LMAK and DCKT galleries, two stops along the way. Space is limited so please RSVP to info AT jenbekman DOT com by Saturday, May 15th.