House Oracle
Bibliomancy

About

The House Oracle Bibliomancy is a 144 page three-color risograph printed book with a screen printed cover.

The ​House Oracle began with 45 drawings of household objects, creatures, and plants that were channeled in a single night in 2020. 

The 45 House drawings became hand-made decks made from 100% local paper waste and wildfire charcoal ink. These decks have been used as a collaborative tool to reflect on the personal and relate to the collective, while integrating rituals and conversations that unite us with land based practices. Organically this became a vehicle for intimate spaces of reflection with family, friends, and complete strangers throughout COVID-19's uprisings and systemic shifting. The collaborative meaning-making from hundreds of readings across the country was distilled into poetry which accompany each drawing within the book.

A limited run of 230 books were self-published in collaboration with Jai Knight and @futuretman during an artist residency at the Lookout Arts Quarry.

The House Oracle Bibliomancy is available for purchase in-person by appointment.
Learn more about the House Oracle Decks on Jai’s website here.

My ROLE & process

For months Jai and I collaborated remotely – digitizing and editing drawings, writing and rewriting poetry in Google docs, iteratively pulling text and images into InDesign. We finalized the print design and produced the books during a month long artist residency at the Lookout Arts Quarry in Bellingham, Washington.

This project has been a whirlwind of learning and collaboration! Throughout this process I –

• Created a custom Header and Body font based on Jai’s handwriting

• Edited scans and photos of original drawings

• Designed print layouts

• Proofread, edited and placed poems

• Printed book proofs (including a very ambitious 3-color edition which was ultimately simplified)!

• Prepared files for print, creating separate masters for each color (46 total masters!)

• Selected and ordered paper

• Printed each page, one color at a time, on the Risograph printer (including navigating a multitude of errors with the support of @futuretman – unjamming the printer, scraping ink from one risograph drum to another…)

• Collated pages

• Chopped book blocks on a guillotine

• Packaged the book blocks in boxes for the book bindery

• Made candles, dropped into portals and

• Threw a book launch party at a paragliding launching point!

Initially completely underestimated the ways this project would evolve, teach, and consume, but honored for the journey.