Per Henningsgaard

Flung Ink

Per Henningsgaard

My ten-year-old son wants to take the lift to the top floor of the building that is shaped like a bisected Doric column. This is the level of the City of Perth Library that is reserved for young adults – not children like my son, nor adults like me. The signs clearly state that we are allowed to visit but not linger.

While my son inspects the collection of superhero comics, I wander over to the new acquisitions shelf. There, I see the lilac-coloured cover of The Greatest Thing, a graphic novel by Sarah Winifred Searle. I have seen Searle at bookish events around the city, though we have never spoken. I enjoyed one of her previous graphic novels, so I decide I will check this one out from the library today.

When I finally read The Greatest Thing a week or so later, I discover that the teenaged protagonist is creating a zine with the help of an independent study that is supervised by an especially supportive high school teacher. The teacher reads her student’s work and says things like, ‘I love where this is going, but Aubrey still feels very passive in her own story.’ I hope that, when my son is in high school, he has an equally insightful and encouraging teacher.

Ms. Smith teaches English at Bemidji High School – the only school, in a town with a population of 12,000, for students in grades 9 to 12. Each year group has approximately 300 students, though the numbers dwindle as graduation approaches and students drop out. Many years later, I would learn that the region has a school dropout rate of 8%, which is surely a contributing factor to the nearly 19% of residents living below the poverty line. The national average is 12% in poverty. However, the privation is hard to spot, especially among the students who live beyond the city limits – their homes tucked away in the rolling hills and dark pine forests.

In my final year as a student, Ms. Smith offers an elective in creative writing. I can’t imagine how she got approval to do it since education budgets are tight and there are fewer than 20 interested students. In fact, even some of the students who enrol do not seem particularly interested. But I am deeply motivated – more so when Ms. Smith returns drafts of my early submissions with rapturous feedback written in green felt tip pen. At the end of the semester, I submit a thick portfolio of poetry and short fiction.

When I graduate, Ms. Smith finds me after the ceremony to give me a palm-sized book titled The Pocket Zen Reader. Inside, I find she has written an inscription: ‘Per, for inspiration! Achieve great things – achieve happiness.’

In the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the United States Supreme Court decides that a government school employee can pray when supervising students. The case is decided on 27 June 2022 based on a football coach kneeling in prayer at midfield after games. What starts as a solitary habit becomes, over time, a team activity. Students join their coach, and the practice of prayer mingles with the tradition of the sports pep talk.

Will the supporters who rally behind a Christian coach be as supportive of a teacher who could be seen to be promoting Zen Buddhist philosophy (much less Islam)?

The Chinese accordion book is displayed like a set of red-and-black stairs laid on their side. Three of the pages are solid red. Seven pages contain inkjet copies – in black ink, printed on red paper – of a photograph of a small jade sculpture of the bodhisattva Kuan-Yin. This photograph has been reprinted many times until it is a blurred

and faded copy of the original. The remaining pages – only three of them – contain dramatic ink splatters that immediately draw the viewer’s eye. These few pages partake in the traditional calligraphy practice of flung ink, which is practised by Buddhist monks. Meditation allows these monks to experience life directly, without any interference from logical thought or language, so the act of flinging ink on the page immediately following a period of meditation is a representation of this enlightened state.

Holding together this combination of emptiness, figurative elements, and abstraction is an unremarkable cover – thick card stock covered in black fabric. An accordion book has no spine, so the front cover stands two metres distant from the back.

On a rare visit from my home in central Wisconsin to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, I opt to pass a summer afternoon browsing the special collections of the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota. My agenda is simple: I want to learn more about the book arts. Within minutes of beginning – even before I have found a table on which to rest my notebook and pencil – I happen upon an exceptional example of work in this field: The Plumb Bob by Harriet Bart.

A plumb bob is a weight that is suspended from a string, and it is used to provide a vertical reference line for building projects. Bart’s book explores the long history of the plumb bob as a symbol for that which is timeless and true. However, it is not the book’s contents that initially capture my attention. Instead, it is the box in which the book is housed, as well as the book’s binding. When I finally reach the colophon, I find a description of the box and binding:

In keeping with the modest origins of the plumb, the binding and case materials are fabricated from common hardware store materials.

The book has brass covers with the chemical symbol for lead, Pb, hand-engraved on the front. Steel hinges enclose the perimeter of the brass covers. PLUMB BOB is housed in a hinged masonite and beech case with aluminum covers overlaid with brass hardware-cloth and trimmed with brass angle and brads. The binding and case were designed and fabricated by Jill Jevne.

I am surprised to discover that the artist, Bart, is not the maker of the book’s remarkable box and binding. I am even more surprised to learn that the bookbinder is my aunt.

I later discover a rare book dealer advertising a copy of The Plumb Bob for $2,400. I find, as well, that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has a copy of this book in its collection.

I learn that the cataloguing software used by libraries and museums does not contain a field in which to enter the bookbinder’s information, so this detail is limited to the optional ‘Notes’ category. Cataloguers enter as little or as much information in this field as they feel is necessary. The bookbinder’s contribution is regularly omitted, so it is difficult for me to determine what other artists my aunt collaborated with in her practice as an edition bookbinder.

But gazing at the blurry outline of my own head reflected in the brass of the book’s front cover – lit from above by the unflattering fluorescent strip lights of the special collections room – I am still ignorant of these facts. I am ignorant – and in awe.

Author’s note Inspired by Lindy Lee’s flung ink technique, I have attempted to disguise the purposeful composition of this work of creative nonfiction as an almost random series of associations. Each scene is clearly connected to the preceding scene, but by the end of this series of scenes, the reader might wonder how they arrived at this place.

Per Henningsgaard is a senior lecturer and the major coordinator in Professional Writing and Publishing at Curtin University. He has published more than twenty refereed journal articles and book chapters across six countries. Fittingly, his research investigates the significance of place in contemporary book publishing. Per is a Fulbright Scholar who received his PhD from The University of Western Australia and has held permanent teaching positions at Portland State University and University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point.

Full negative (detail), 2012, black mild steel, fire, courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, , 2022, John Curtin Gallery. Sydney and Singapore. Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop Photographer: Sue-Lyn Aldrian-Moyle.