The nine prints in Ten Views of Florida are inspired by the titles of books that are banned in Florida public schools. In an effort to situate myself in an imagined future where the book banners have succeeded and the lists of banned titles are all that remain, I specifically chose to work with books that I had not read. Now that I have finished printing, and the sheets are on their way to the bookbinder, I am reading the nine books on whose titles my prints are based, and posting my thoughts on them along with process descriptions of the prints.
The first print is inspired by the title, Fade, the second book in Lisa McMann's Wake trilogy. From the outset I wanted the print to be a two-color transition, a fade from one color to another. It was a simple place to start and a nice opener for a book meant to increase in gravity. The narrative arc of the prints travels from sunrise to nighttime, so the color fade is well-suited to the print's "sunrise" position in the narrative.
Initially, I was inspired by some of the more garish color combinations in hyper-saturated postcards, like salmon pinks sandwiched between cyan skies and cerulean seas. The Florida History and Florida Tourism Ephemera Collections at the University of Florida's Smathers Library are full of such images and, as a color printing fetishist, I find them irresistible.
Once I began proofing my own print, though, nothing worked as I planned. I wanted to achieve a subtle gradation from cerulean to salmon. I first experimented with linear gradients, none of which captured the feeling I was trying to convey. I then switched to rainbow rolls and the situation only got worse.
On a Vandercook press, a rainbow roll works by placing multiple ink colors on the oscillating roller in the press's roller assembly. As the roller oscillates it mixes the ink colors where they meet, creating a gradient or ombré effect.
That's the idea, anyway. In practice, maintaining a rainbow roll is a highly precise balance between colors. It is also a race against time, trying to pull as many prints as possible before the colors mix too thoroughly and ruin the gradient effect. This time element was pushed to the extreme in my cerulean/salmon combination. After one or two prints, the pink and blue inks mixed into a slurry muck, more fetid swamp than cheery coastline. With a controlled rainbow roll I expect to have to clean the press and re-ink after every 15–18 prints. Having to clean after every two prints was not going to work. In my frustration I laid proofs of all the prints side by side and noticed that there was a lot of blue, but no yellow, in the book. The resulting orange to yellow gradient is more delightful and satisfying than any of the other prints I tried—another reminder (I need a lot of them) that what is in my head needs to be adjusted once it comes into contact with the outside world.
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The driving force behind Florida book bans is Moms for Liberty, an organization whose Orwellian name makes me shudder every time I hear it. Their Wikipedia description: "Moms for Liberty is an American political organization that advocates against school curricula that mention LGBTQ rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination.[6] Multiple chapters have also campaigned to ban books that address gender and sexuality from school libraries.[2][7][8] Founded in January 2021, the group began by campaigning against COVID-19 responses in schools such as mask and vaccine mandates.... Moms for Liberty was co-founded in Florida on January 1, 2021, by former school board members Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, and by then-current school board member Bridget Ziegler, the wife of Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler.[20][21][22] In spring 2021, Christian Ziegler was removed from his position in the party because of a sexual assault allegation.[23]" [italics mine]
I include the last bit about the sexual assault allegation because schadenfreude is particularly satisfying when aimed at the self-righteous. Of course the husband of one of the "Moms for Liberty" was accused of sexual assault. No one thinks about sex more than the censor.
Sexual assault is also relevant to the content of Lisa McMann's Fade. The book charts the fluctuations in the relationship between Janie and Cabel, two eighteen-year-old high school seniors who work as narcs for the local police. Their primary means of crime fighting is a supernatural power of Janie's—dream catching—in which she is pulled into the dreams of anyone sleeping nearby. As the story unfolds, McMann delicately traces the conflicting feelings of teenagers colliding against the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood.
Janie and Cabel are a couple but, for eighteen year olds, they have a surprisingly non-sexual relationship. They are in love, they fool around a bit, they even stay at each other's houses, but sex is off the table for most of the book. When they do finally consummate their relationship (as consenting adults BTW), Janie presents Cabel with a condom and their ensuing safe sex is barely described.
The main sexual content of the book is a party put on by three of the male teachers in the school. The host is the chemistry teacher who makes homemade roofies that he and his friends use to dose the booze and the food. They then proceed to rape, or attempt to rape, multiple students. Where other writers might seize on this scenario for its shock value, McMann shows restraint. The situation is described, the assaults are not. The story is not about torrid sex, it's about surviving. In the lead up to the party, Janie, who is attending as bait in a sting operation, does extensive research on the types and effects of date rape drugs. She arrives at the party prepared for the worst case scenario. All the same, she succumbs to the drugs. Who thought they'd drug the meatballs? Ultimately she is saved by her self-defense skills and her cohorts in the police.
Fade is not a book about hyper-sexualized teenagers. The teenagers in the story are the survivors of prurient adults. Maybe the Moms for Liberty don't want children to be prepared to fend off sexual predators.
