Staple Day 22

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

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Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 22nd monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: FNFF, Over Iowa, Boxing, Paint By Numbers, Used & Abused, Personal Space, Various.

An Evening at The Music Box

Thanks a million to everyone who came out for our film festival and filled up the Chicago’s premier movie house a couple Mondays ago. We really didn’t know what to expect and to be honest, we were a bit nervous about the whole thing. But after Aaron warmed up the audience and the silly gag at the end of the first film got a big laugh, we could take a deep breath and enjoy it. It was great to see everyone and we appreciate all the posts and pics. Who knows? Maybe we’ll do it again some day, or take it to another city. What do you think?

Contest: Attendees received a custom letterpress-printed FNFF 2-Pack and we have few of those left. So here’s a chance for Staple Day readers to win one. Send an email to [email protected] with FNFF in the subject line and include a favorite quote from one of our films. We’ll select fifty entries and send those folks a festival 2-Pack.

Commencing Countdown

We were asked a couple times about this description in our film festival program, “Three Field Notes Memo Books have been to space; the two we launched for this film and one we can’t talk about.”

Our “Three Missions” Edition from 2018 celebrated American space flight. We thought it would be fun to organize a launch of our own in order to capture a key shot for the film about the release. To achieve this we decided to mount a “Punch-Out and Assemble” Apollo Crew Capsule (which came with the 3-Packs) to a rod. Connect that rod to a box containing a camera and GPS tracking unit. Attach the box to a parachute and a big weather balloon filled with helium, and then send the whole rig up into the sky. Easy, right?

Bryan told the story of two of the space flights in this Dispatch, Small Steps and Giant Leaps. Mum’s the word on the third.

True to the Blobbiness

This film, “A Six Tone Scale,” didn’t make it into the festival, only because it’s not specifically about Field Notes. It documents the creation of a 12 x 8 foot mural that we commissioned for our HQ in Chicago. We had long-admired the dynamism of a painting that once hung on the north side of the Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of Commerce, on Ashland Avenue. When we moved into our new studio space, we decided to track down who was responsible, with the idea of doing something similar for our main work space. Thankfully, the artists, Gwendolyn Zabicki and Kent Smith, were up for the idea, and also for us filming them while they painted.

Fresh from the Brain

While we were in Clear Creek Canyon in the Rocky Mountains with author Robert Macfarlane, discussing Is a River Alive?, he took a few minutes to show us the Field Notes he used while researching the book. Watch that chat here. We’re always interested in how our note books are used and where they’ve been and with Robert, they have been all over (and under) the world. The “Is a River Alive?” Edition is the second time we have worked with Robert and artist Stanley Donwood. In 2021 we collaborated on a release to accompany his previous and amazing book, Underland.

A Fine and Private Place

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

It’s funny, when I took this studio ... I thought it was tiny ... But the longer I stayed, the bigger it became. I could fit anything I wanted into it.

Note: Sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti worked in the same twenty-three square meter studio in Paris for forty years. Ernst Scheidegger made beautiful photographs of the space which illustrate a feature at The Tate. Also, I love Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Giacometti Going Out for Breakfast, Paris 1963.

“It wasn’t that I was happy — but that I was okay. And okay was even better than happy because I thought it had a better chance of lasting... Okay is underrated.”

Note: When you read Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness, somehow, right from the first chapter, and completely without your permission, you are transformed into the narrator. Amazing.

Miscellany

Thanks to GareTheBear for reviewing everything BUT the note books. And to Elissa Sanci at Wirecutter for getting her ideas out of her head (and her face out of her phone).

For the balance of the summer, HQ is open Monday through Thursday for local pick ups and The Shop is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9-5. Come see us when you’re in Chicago.

We’re currently working on a couple fun collaborations, with old and new friends, and putting our Fall and Winter limited editions together. Now would be a good time to start a year-long subscription.

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.