Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

The willow is too close to the house.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

In after Baud. Damn.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

You are here: Home / Artists In Our Midst / Artists in Our Midst – Dave Buchen

Artists in Our Midst – Dave Buchen

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Let’s give a warm welcome to Dave Buchen!

Hello all and thanks for this opportunity to share my work. I started making books on my printing press back in 2000, hand-printing, coloring, and binding 100 books at a time. As the books I wanted to make got more complex, I moved to self-publishing in various forms.

My newest book is Why is an Apple an Apple? A Garden of Etymology. It tells the story of how our words for fruits and vegetables have evolved over the years with 50+ papercut illustrations. The story of words like rice, rhubarb, and rutabaga led me down many rabbit holes of where fruits were first grown and how they traveled the world. For example, rhubarb can be translated as “Russian Barbarian” or “Wet Barbarian.” I make children’s books, but as a father and former teacher who has read countless children’s books, I try to write them in a way that any age can read them and be neither bored or overwhelmed.

This book is a sequel to Why is a Tiger a Tiger? A Bestiary of Etymology which I published years ago. My fascination with etymology was really sparked back in Chicago when I found a great dictionary with etymologies in the garbage. It’s its own way of studying culture and language that reveals connections and meanings that one wouldn’t have otherwise deduced. I then published a Spanish version which included new animals and some other animals taken out. An interesting etymology in one language does not guarantee an equally fascinating story in the other!

In many ways, my books have evolved as my children have grown up. I made Bilingual ABC Bilingüe back when they were small, and I was faced with a dilemma. I moved to Puerto Rico in 1999, and my children were both born here and are bilingual. Finding a decent bilingual ABC was way harder than it should have been. Too many books had pages like “A is for Apple [ M es para Manzana]”! So I made my own in which the letters actually match the words in English and Spanish (Acrobat/Acróbata, Bubbles/Burbujas etc.). This was originally hand-printed, but after they sold out I resurrected it as a print-on-demand book.

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I still make books by hand as well as an annual calendar. I have a Vandercook #1 press in my laundry shed. Hush Little Baby is a version that I used to sing to my kids in semi-improvised variations to get them to sleep. For a model of parent and child, I was able to turn to my nephew and his new daughter. I have also used the press to make an annual calendar since 1999. It began as the Bestiary Calendar and has evolved over the years to have such themes as the French Revolutionary Calendar, dancing, masks in the first year of covid, and people embracing in covid’s aftermath. This year’s theme was going to be birds you can see from my garden, but I broadened it to Puerto Rico in general to get some more striking birds other than the ones that visit me.

For the calendar, my daughter, now an adult, contributed three of the prints including the hummingbird.

The print-on-demand books are available at Amazon, which has a de facto monopoly on the kind of self-publishing I do, sigh.

Info about my hand-printed books and calendars can be found on my website.

Reader Interactions

43Comments

  3. 3.

    Another Scott

    Thanks for sharing your work with us.  Beautiful stuff.  I imagine the carving and printing can be quite cathartic at times.

    Your bilingual ABCs approach makes so much sense!!  :-)

    Your fuzzy helper looks quite intense.

    Thanks again.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  6. 6.

    TBone

    How to say make a booking in German!

    Your animals (and everything else) have mucho wonderful personality.  Awesome.

  7. 7.

    Dave Buchen

    @TBone: I wish I knew! Most of my family came from Germany but by my generation it had all but disappeared except for schnibbles which were the bits of bite sized bits of a turkey getting carved.

  8. 8.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Those young-kids books:

    “A is for apple, B is for bear, C is for Crocodile (oh, so fair)”

    Always made me want to write one where the first letter of each of the words was either silent, or of atypical pronunciation.  English is chaotic, so possible!

    Ghoti => fish

  9. 9.

    Dave Buchen

    @Another Scott: Indeed! The anual calendar printing lasts for 13 days. Music, old radio mysteries etc while I turn a crank and print for a few hours is often good therapy!

  11. 11.

    KatKapCC

    Okay, I love etymology and I may have to get these. It’s a far more fascinating topic than I think most people realize. Or maybe I’m just a big nerd :D

  13. 13.

    LoveNOLA

    Dave is a great artist and a great person too. He has other many other talents I remember from his time in Chicago. Bravo to you Dave.

  16. 16.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @KatKapCC:

    I can’t resist. From the Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech…

    A for ‘Orses
    B for Mutton
    C for Yourself
    D for Mation
    E for Brick
    F for Vescence
    G for Police
    H for Consent
    I for Lutin
    J for Orange
    K for Teria
    L for Leather
    M for Sis
    N for Mation
    O for A Muse of Fire
    P for Ate
    Q for A Song
    S for Something Else
    T for Two
    U for Mism
    V for La France
    W for Mism
    X for Breakfast
    Y for Lover
    Z (zee) for yourself

    [If anyone can explain “E for Brick” please do.]

  20. 20.

    TBone

    @Dave Buchen: great word!!!  I am going to say schnibbles a lot.  Especially if feeling creative.

    It’s a beautiful thing that you last name derives from buch (book)!  Buchen means to make a booking, i.e., a reservation.

  23. 23.

    TBone

    I heard a silent first letter song for adults but cannot now find it.  I did, however, come across Disco Grover dressed like John Travolta doing the muppets boogie alphabet.

  24. 24.

    Dave Buchen

    @schrodingers_cat: I started with Lino-cuts. A cheap easy way to make prints. I bought an old Vandercook Press #1 at an amazing warehouse in Chicago. First floor car parts, second floor old appliances, third floor printing equipment. All dusty and dark! But I’ve moved it with me again and again.

    I don’t know why I started making paper-cuts. But it’s a fun puzzle because it is one piece of paper cut with an exacto. So it’s all connected, and it has become my non-fiction illustrative style. But pretty much the same idea as carving linoleum, getting rid of what isn’t needed.

    I’ve also done some painting and charcoal work for a performance series called Baudelaire in a Box. We commissioned nearly a 100 musical versions of poems from la fleur du mal and behind the musicians I would turn a crank and my paintings would glide by, ahem, mostly, often glide.
    youtu.be/6l3gEbvI5hM?si=IlUYtOvEfoKWa6la

  29. 29.

    Barbara

    So if it’s print on demand, what kind of paper do you use? I have some young and not so young potential recipients but I wondered what the final product would be like. Thanks.

  30. 30.

    something fabulous

    Dave! You won’t know me but I remember you from Chicago! Mutual Redmoon friends got me your calendar for several years for holiday gifts back in the day. How cool to see you here! Hi! Great work!

  32. 32.

    Dave Buchen

    @something fabulous: Hello! The first calendar I ever printed was with Redmoon! I fanagled them into giving me some money to buy the press, and then 12 members of redmoon carved the images, and I learned how to print!

  35. 35.

    StringOnAStick

    As a lifetime lover of books, the thought of someone hand printing their own is thrilling to me!  I’m so impressed with your work!

  39. 39.

    Dave Buchen

    @Subcommandante Yakbreath: oh, can’t remember his name. It was an old warehouse in Pilsen, half empty in 1997. My memory is of and older been at the junk resale business for awhile kind of guy, but that may be embellished memory

  41. 41.

    Barbara

    @Barbara: I did order two.  Everything I have ordered for Christmas thus far is going to come late, except for the Christmas presents that I forgot to give people last year.  My gift giving skills have definitely declined with age.

  43. 43.

    Miss Bianca

    Dave! Dave Buchen! I didn’t know you were hanging around this joint! How wonderful to see your art work again, I’ve missed it since our Chicago days.

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