Desert Rose Press

I first became interested in type and printing when I was in college, working at a summer job for a small local newspaper. A working print shop is those days (1962), with its antique equipment and fascinating denizens, was still so much like one of the ancient craft guilds that being introduced to the "mysteries" as a youngster made a powerful lasting impression. I can still remember that funky small-town shop and the training I got there in vivid detail.

That training outlined a path; subsequent opportunities seemed always to veer toward printing. I found myself in the early Sixties smack in the middle of the political and literary upheavals of Berkeley and San Francisco and so the craft of printing and political activism and literary bookmaking all came together in an "underground" print shop called Cranium Press.

Through the following years of writing, environmentalism, community work and raising kids, bits and pieces of the old Cranium Press stayed with me until finally, through the discovery of a book I had produced called Printing Poetry, Virginia and I met and eventually combined our lives and resources into the printing studio and publishing venture that became Desert Rose Press.

Poems by Virginia Mudd & Clifford Burke
Monoprints by Virginia Mudd

This work is dedicated to the Galisteo Basin of Northern New Mexico, where we lived for many years. It is a tribute, in image and word, to the endangered life treasures of silence, solitude and wilderness. This accordion fold book was handset in Bell types and printed by letterpress. The monoprint image of the Ortiz Mountains was printed from hand-inked blocks, requiring four passes through the press. Each one is different; most skies are shades of blue, like the banner at the top of this page. The binding is made up of boards covered with Mexican bark paper.

Eight pages, including covers, 4 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches

Poem by Thomas Merton
Offset Lithographic Illustration by Virginia Mudd

Thomas Merton has guided, instructed and inspired my most significant life journey: the spiritual quest. The image of ancient Stonehenge accompanying the text (reproduced from an original watercolor) contains the same power and spirit of Silence that Merton speaks of.

The poem is hand set in the Goudy Thirty typeface and printed by letterpress. The binding is a decorated paper over boards. The paper came from Thailand, where Thomas Merton died in 1968. (The text is linked at the bottom of this page.)

Eight pages including covers, 4 3/8 x 8 1/2 inches

Story and Photographs by Virginia Mudd

In the summer of 2003 we were graced by the lives of nesting and hatching phoebes on a log beam just outside our front door. The phoebe chicks were an ongoing delight to us as they grew up and ultimately graduated from Flight School. This is the story of one of those Phoebe Chicks, who showed us what true courage and determination to live is all about. He is truly one remarkable bird.

16 pages, including 4 pages of photographs printed with an indigo digital printer. The text is printed on an Epson 2200 inkjet printer, 5 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches

Poem by Thomas Merton
Offset Lithographic Illustration by Virginia Mudd

This is a broadside edition of the accordion-fold book, If You Seek a Heavenly Light. It further honors the inspiration and life of Thomas Merton. The poem is hand set in the Goudy Thirty typeface and printed by letterpress. It is ideal for framing.

Broadside edition, unfolded, unbound, 8 1/2 x 18 inches

Broadside poem and linoleum cut by Clifford Burke

A gang of ravens found a bag of spoiled horse feed thrown on the compost pile, and for a couple of weeks they hung out on the corral rails, feasting. Hidden in the barn I could look right into their sharp eyes, hear their wispers to one another. This poem celebrates that intricate language of the raven, reluctant guardian and critic of our life in the high country.

Handset in Italian Old Style and American Uncial types, and printed on handmade Chapin from the Twinrocker mill.

Broadside, 14 x 18 1/2 inches

On each card in this collection of poems, songs, and prayers for the planet lies a mystical monoprint image of the earth (reproduced by offset lithography), and a selected text from such earth lovers as Walt Whitman, Robinson Jeffers, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Chief Seattle and Kahlil Gibran. Each box of eight cards contains eight different images. The unique text on each card is printed letterpress. For us, these cards are akin to prayer flags, and we hope they will touch the hearts and minds of all who receive them in a way that inspires love and healing for our planet.

Boxed set of eight different cards, 4 1/2 x 6 1/4 inches, with envelopes.

This card, measuring 5 x 25 inches in an accordion fold, is a prayer for peace. Wisdom from ancient and present sources is presented on each fold. The calligraphed peace sign becomes a circle, encompassing our connectedness, as we all become one in our desire for peace,

Featuring the well-known quote by Margaret Meade about how a small group of committed citizens can change the world, this accordion fold card measuring 5 1/2 x 15 inches extols the power and hopefulness of working together for common dreams. Other quotes by ordinary and extraordinary citizens such as Granny D and Martin Luther King, Jr., are on the reverse. There is room for a short greeting as well. Envelope included.

The first edition of this card was created for Valentine's Day over 10 years ago. This second edition is our first project combining letterpress and inkjet printing techniquesâ€"a fun collaboration. The poems by Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila and Mirabai will enlighten and enliven your heart. May your every day be a Day of the Heart.

"I have often thought that just as the sun while in the sky has such strong rays, that, even though it doesn't move from there, the rays promptly reach the earth, so the soul & the spirit, which are one, could be like the sun & its rays."

The Sun and Its Rays is a reflection of St. Teresa of Avila, a 16th century contemplative, mystic and reformer of the Carmelite Order of Spain. The type is printed letterpress in Centaur and Arrighi typefaces, and the sun and its rays are handpainted in gouache

Shared by word of mouth, quoted on the Internet, recited over radio, and read aloud at conferences and gatherings, Oriah Mountain Dreamer's prose-poem has been passed along and treasured by thousands who are moved by her unique message. Most remembered are the lines which begin I want to know…

Printed on handmade paper by inkjet printer. The cover is the image of my Boa's shed skin.

5.5" x 8.5 "

it doesnâ€^TMt interest me what you do for a living,
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heartâ€^TMs longing.

It doesnâ€^TMt interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesnâ€^TMt interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your
own sorrow; if you have been opened by lifeâ€^TMs betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of future pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the
limitations of being human.

It doesnâ€^TMt interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true
to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.

i want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even
when it is not pretty everyday; and if you can source your
own life on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver
in the full moon.

It doesnâ€^TMt interest me to know where you live or how much
money you have. I want to know if you can get up after
a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesnâ€^TMt interest me who you know or how you come to
be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of
the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesnâ€^TMt interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from
the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you
truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

The Gates of Hope
by Victoria Safford

Whatever our vocation, we stand, beckoning and calling, singing and shouting, at the gates of Hope. This world and our people are beautiful, and we are called to raise that upâ€"to bear witness to the possibility of living with the dignity, bravery, and gladness that beWts a human being. This may be what it is to â€oelive our mission.â€�

Matthew Fox writes of â€oethe small work in the Great Work,â€� the place in your little life and love, daily days and earnest effort as a solitary person within the larger Life and larger Love that some call Holy, some call God, some call History, and others call simply larger than themselves. Like everybody else, we are doing small work within the Great Work of creation, and thus do we aid it and abet it in unfolding.

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hopeâ€"not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; not the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); not the cheerful, Ximsy garden gates of â€oeEverything is gonna be all right.â€� But a diVerent, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about our own soul Wrst of all and its condition, the place of resistance and deWance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.

I was looking for a way to tell about this much-photographed wonder of nature in a new wayâ€"a way between art and journalism.

Desert Rose Press has been a way to express our passion for Earth & Spirit since its inception in 1990. Contributing to the greater vision of a healthy Earth and a thriving sustainable culture united in Spirit through printed work is the true mission of the press. Late in 1998, we expanded the work of the press into more public media in order to reach a broader audience, an outreach entity called Raventalk ( www.raventalk.com ).

These days, it is impossible to escape the reality of the planet's distress. The facts are constantly around us, and we continually see for ourselves the many signs and forms of social and environmental deterioration and destruction. It is not only the Earth that is suffering, but we human beings along with her, both physically and spiritually. We are suffering great cruelties, casualties and losses. Sometimes, it is easy to feel small and helpless and despairing in the face of so many problems. Added to that psychic distress, we are handicapped by our culture's inability to deal capably with the pain we feel in encountering those losses and the resulting despair. Our culture wants us to have the highs, but not the lows; the bright side without the dark. We would rather cover up or numb the pain and continue on our wayâ€"albeit a destructive oneâ€"than experience the depths of our feelings. Denial is perhaps the most serious epidemic we face. These days, denial is not an option.

If we allowed ourselves to feel the grief of these losses of life's gifts in its many forms, if we followed the pain to its source, we would discover an immense love for all living beings, and realize how connected we are to each other and to all of life's infinite expressionsâ€"in stars, dolphins, bears, roses, ants, bats, rocks, each human being. We could discover our instinctive compassion for the Earth and all life, a feeling which is our birthright and spiritual inheritance. Paradoxically, it seems that only by experiencing the depths of pain and grief are we able to free ourselves from the depression, despair and immobilizing apathy to release and create a new vision for our world.

A person who has done great work in pioneering this psychic domain is Joanna Macy. In her early book, Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age, she says, "Experience the pain. Let us not fear its impact on ourselves or others. We will not shatter, for we are not objects that can break. Nor will we get stuck in this pain for it is dynamic, it flows through us." She continues, "The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe. Your heart is that large. Trust it. Keep breathing. Through our deepest and innermost responses to our worldâ€"to hunger and torture and the threat of annihilationâ€"we touch the boundless heart. It is the web we have woven as interconnected systemsâ€"or as synapses in the mind of God."

I find truth and hope in Macy's and others' work toward healing ourselves and the planet. The great energy that is used to block our deepest feelings can be released for our individual and collective good. There is much-needed comfort and strength in knowing that there are many who are engaged in the same work and who share the same vision. And amidst the suffering, we can each feel the delight and beauty of the Earth, and feel the joy of the Spirit. It is in the spirit of joy and prayer and connectedness that we at Desert Rose Press offer our cards, books, broadsides and gallery.

Dedicating our work as printers to the spirit of Planet Earth involves a fundamental contradiction which, if we are to find truth in this craft, we must face squarely and work to resolve.

The contradiction is this: Trees apparently are our Planet's lungs, as well as the moderators of many intricate processes such as the control of water and the management of carbon and topsoil. But as printers, because paper is literally the foundation of everything we make, in our very attempt to articulate our understanding of the Earth as holy, we help to damage one of the most magnificent and essential aspects of that holiness.

Now it is true that most paper is made from the pulp of fast-growing evergreens husbanded like crops, but even the world's rainforests, where the Earth's breathing is mostly doneâ€"by the tropical hardwoods and the venerable cedars, firs and spruces of the northern zonesâ€"are systematically and rapaciously chipped and pulped to feed the world's insatiable demand for paper products.

For the craft printer there is some consolation in knowing that, even given the impressive number of books published every year, they still consume only a tiny percentage of the millions of tons of paper used briefly and then trucked off to landfills. And books are meant to last, anyway. They are not throwaways like newspapers, magazines, catalogs and junk mail.

So it is possible to duck the contradiction, to a certain extent: we are not as destructive as some. But the problem really is one of consciousness. Unless we all can learn to honor this precious material for what it is, and honor its rare and dignified sources, then we will continue to destroy forests, degrade water and spew toxics, merely to create waste out of a truly magical stuff.

An important first step is the recognition that paper does not have to be made from trees. In fact, trees don't make very good paper anyway. Other fibers make better paper, can be grown as annual field crops (often on marginal land) and could very effectively relieve the pressure on major rain forests.

Printers of fine editions have traditionally used the specially made papers incorporating cotton and linen fibers. Sisal, hemp and wheat straw are all durable fibers that could be used more extensively in papermaking, and other plant wastes such as tobacco and banana are also currently being used as a paper fiber. Much of the paper we use at the press is made from kenaf, a tall reed-like annual native to Africa, grown for commercial paper production here in New Mexico. Good tree-free paper really does exist!

Recycling, demanding recycled paper products, and supporting the use of alternative fibers wherever possible are more than just solid environmentalism. Honoring the majesty that stands behind this most mundane of objects is to stand among the guardians of our lovely Home.

The craft of letterpress printing has been renewed again and again, despite the advances in publishing technologies. For there is a strong desire among many of us in the book arts to feel words in our hands, to assemble them letter by letter in order to deepen our understanding of their shapes, an inner meaning that comes to us in a way not possible when only seen on a page. Type gives letters weight and substance, a physical presence; there is a contemplation that attends the assembly of every piece of lead. Thus the printer learns the poem in a very deep way, letter by letter.

There is a reward in mastering the skill of this assembly, the plan taking shape as a matrix, visual beauty hidden ihn the lead forms, which must be elicited. Design and inspiration follow a slow path, ideas sprung from the poet's language and held in the mind's eye till the inked proof comes alive.

The closer the artist approaches the realization of word as image, the closer together come skill of hand and acuity of eye. Ink laid accurately on the type forms; paper carefully chosen and handled; the meeting of the two by the care in the use of the tool, the press. How we come to love those tools!

After the ideas, the assembly, the attentive presswork, come all the processes of handling the printed sheets: the folding and gathering, the binding and decoratingâ€" the finishing that makes the creative impulses of author, artist, designer and printer into a unified, whole thing. One of the intriguing aspects of bookmaking is that, if the idea is well realized, there are no surprises at the finish.

But somehow, after all this, the real care demanded seems to be in getting those objects out into the world, the distribution, as it is called. And there is a lot of the spirit of the hand felt here, too, gathering mailing lists, labeling catalogs, wrapping the packages, dealing with money. Here perhaps the hand is most impatient, and the printer's dedication most severely tried. Yet it is by attending to these humdrum details the we practice our right livelihood, and it is through them that the poet, the printer, and their community, join together in celebration.

One of our broadsides, the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra, is the essence of Buddhist teaching. While we don't consider ourselves exclusively Buddhists any more than we consider ourselves exclusively Christian, we practice and learn from many traditions. As one Buddhist teacher says, "Buddhism is a clever way to enjoy life." We are equally inspired and instructed by the Tao Te Ching, by great American leaders like Chief Seattle, Walt Whitman, Martin Luther King, Jr., by the Christian mystics, Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila. All, and so many more, offer us a new way of looking at where we come from, and how to be fully in this present lifetime and moment.

These teachings all challenge us to expand and deepen our perception of the universe, our relationships, of who we are, and how to live creatively, and in harmony with our Earth and all beings. They offer us different interpretations and perceptions of the ancient teaching that "we are all one." Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist master, poet ad peace activist, offers another way to interpret this essence of oneness in what he calls "interbeing." The cloud, the sun, the tree, the logger, your mind & ours, are all in this piece of paper you are reading. (As you can see, this essay was written before the web took the place of a great deal of paper. What do we see now as you read this on the screen?) Without any one of these elements, it would not exist. Each one depends on the other, and all others together. it is a great challenge to our small perception and limited view to see how we are all connected. Our native peoples knew this, and continue to convey that wisdom to us modern people. For if we are all interrelated, then what we do to ourselves, or to another creature, or just how we live our lives, has an effect on someone or something else. And what we don't do for ourselves, we don't do for our planet.

An extension and expression of this idea is that we are all things. We are both victims and victimizers, both sufferers and the cause of suffering. We can see this more clearly if we witness a harm that a person we know does to another. Since we know a little of that person's history and situation, we can realize how that person might have committed a harmful act, and if we had been in that person's shoes, we might have done the same thing,. We could have been that person; we could be that person; we are that person. We are one. As Thich Nhat Hanh says in his poem, Please Call Me By My True Name, "I am the 12 year old girl, refugee on a small boat / who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate / and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving."

Where does this perception lead us? For one thing, it can lead us to experience the qualities of interbeing from an ecological perspective as we interact with our local, bioregional community. Here in the arid southwest, we are constantly reminded of the preciousness of water. We are asked to find our own role as participants in this particular limited situation, rather than ignoring the reality.

A student of Thich Nhat Hanh asked his teacher, "Thay, there are so many urgent problems, what should I do?" Drawing on another beautiful Buddhist text, the Avatamsaka Sutra ("Adoring the Buddha with Flowers") he said, "When you destroy one area, you destroy every area. When you save one area, you save all areas. Take one thing and do it very deeply and carefully, and you will be doing everything at the same time."

Where else does this perception of interdependence and interbeing lead us? To the door of compassion, for ourselves and our fellow/sister beings. If we truly know in our hearts that what we do to the Earth we do to ourselvesâ€"and what we do to ourselves we do to the Earthâ€"we would think very carefully of the consequence of each action, each word and gesture, each thought. We would think and see beyond our immediate needs and desires, and see how our lives affect the seventh generation. We would be gentle with ourselves, and with our planet for the wonder and love of life we would feel as we realize the miracle and magnitude of our creation. We would love the planet as ourselves.