Meet: Jessica Jane Charleston

Jessica Jane Charleston

.... is a printer, poet, illustrator and publisher based at Bow Arts in East London. We met her in her studio on a sunny Tuesday evening.

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”The Cat Circus is as marvellous as it is mundane. There isn't a huge difference between your standard household cat and the cats in the circus, except that they are stripey... And they can balance on things, like one another. Oh - and they swim in the sea.”

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“I am inspired and fascinated by other printmakers, and it's wonderful to know so many successful ones. James Dodds is a friend of the family and master of all things print. I feel very privileged to be able to see how he works.”

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“I would like to tour with the presses, like a music band does, but I would visit other private presses instead, setting up workshops and making books. The first place I would go is India. To Tara Books in Chennai, a fantastic independent publisher.“

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"You can't really control the ink all the time, sometimes it just does whatever it wants and you go 'arghh'. But then you see an opportunity in those little mistakes, like with "Next-to-Nothing", where we used spotted pages for the inside covers. That gave a really nice look and made each book unique, because they each contained a unique mistake. And you can't digitalize this, that's for sure."

(Note: "Next to Nothing" is a limited edition print in 102 exemplars. It was published by Shed Press, Jessica's co-venture with fellow printess Amelie Genestine-Charlton. "Next-to-Nothing" contains poems by Jessica's father David Charleston, who by the way owns an independent bookshop in Suffolk.)

“Shed Book is working on a book with poet Tony Mitton where words take the shape of pictures. It’s, well, technically fiddly – but I like that.”

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As an extra feature, we have the great honour (and permission) of bringing you a poem from Jessica’s own hands. According to the author herself it’s on the “darker sides of love”:

lover

i know you’ll find me

when i’m not looking

you’ll plough right through

as soon as i’m resting

and you’ll be terrible

and beautiful:

the sickening cure

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To learn more about Jessica and her work, visit her website: www.jessicajanecharleston.com and Shed Press' homepage on www.shedpress.org. 

(Photos by Mat Burri)