Puddle Press was created by Lindsay Zier-Vogel in the spring of 2000 and involves the creation of limited edition hand-bound fine art book with a variety of hand made papers and other materials. Puddle Press is an independent press that focuses on the intimate and invested relationship between reader and book and author/creator -- the opening of cover, the discovery of words, and images.

Using new and experimental binding techniques and employing interactive, minimalist design. Puddle Press has created over a thousand paper creations. These include traditional hardcover books, soft cover books bound with hemp, books in sewn mull cloth envelopes, books with photos, typewritten books, hand written books, books out of Erlenmeyer flasks, books on playing cards, books with wax sealed envelopes holding the poems, books out of burlap, books bound with wood sticks and copper, accordion style books. 

Puddle Press books and art creations have been featured at festivals and galleries through Ontario -- at the Wayzgoose Festival in Grimsby, RED Marketplace, the former virus art gallery' objectorium, the OCAD Books Arts fair and the Toronto Small Press Book Fair. Her poem-based creations have been featured at TYPE books, Skirt, Distill Gallery and Kid Icarus in Toronto and the Workshop Boutique in Ottawa. Zier-Vogel's first solo show, Sitting Room Stories, was held at Type books Gallery in from November 2006 to January 2007. For September 2007 and Nuit Blanche, she was the featured installation artist at the She Said Boom! Window space in downtown Toronto. Her books are carried at The Regional Assembly of Text's lowercase gallery in Vancouver, BC and her text-based textile art collaboration with Dr. Suzanne Watters, "Centering Ourselves as Patients" is currently touring hospitals and conferences in Canada and was featured in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Lindsay Zier-Vogel, founding editor of puddle press, is a writer, choreographer, bookmaker and arts educator. She studied contemporary dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, received her B.A. as an English Specialist at the University of Toronto and has completed an M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto under the advisorship of award winning novelist, Anne Michaels. Her work has been published in various literary collections including Descant, Echolocation, dANDelion, PILOT Pocketbook One, Grain, Misunderstandings Magazine, Fieldstone Review, filling Station, dig 9, unherd magazine, paper plates, room of one's own, marginalia, the Dance Current Magazine, semicolon, The Breath, Soap Box Girls, The Hart House Review and Acta Victoriana. Lindsay has also been a featured poet at various festivals throughout Ontario including the Art Bar Series (2003) Eden Mills Writers Festival (2001) and the Hillside Festival (2001). She is currently completing her second novel.

Since 2001, Lindsay has also produced a series of multi-disciplinary shows that bring together various art forms in an informal evening of art -- a small book fair, music, dance, readings and general wonderfulness. The idea behind these multi-disciplinary affairs is cross-pollination -- the larger variety of art, the more potential for inspiration and broadening art audiences.

Dance and writing: Lindsay has also extended her writing and the medium of poetry to encompass the ephemeral world of dance. By responding through words and focusing them into poetry, Lindsay feels that the ephemeral art of dance is afforded a longer “lifetime” as well as a larger audience. The experience of dance supersedes the judgment attached to artistic work and through her poetry, Lindsay offers her readers a creative experience of movement, opening up the reader's own interpretation to further the creative response, instead of attaching judgment.

This documentation of dance through poetry has lead to her own choreographic processes including: Whistling Matilda (2005), september sentence (fFIDA 2003), yarn (Eden Mills Miscellany 2002), cedar stories (fFIDA, 2001), more than just… (2001). Lindsay has also written during the works-in-progress of Toronto choreographers: Karen Kaeja, Yvonne Ng, Jessica Runge, Heidi Strauss and Susan Kendal. The words and poems that result from Lindsay's relationship to movement and dance often become the foundations of artistic, hand-bound books. She has also collaborated with Susan Kendal on The Amelia Project, a solo based on Lindsay's novel-in-verse based on the life of Amelia Earhart. (If you are interested in this collaborative process, please contact Lindsay at lindszv [at] yahoo [dot] ca). Lindsay has also created a series of "Inspired Responses" for Series 8:08, text and image based publications based on the Series 8:08 monthly choreographic dance series. She has also been involved in the dance community as the Sales and Promotions co-ordinator, Departments Editor and occasional reviewer for the Dance Current Magazine. She currently works as the dance writer/web journalist for So You Think You Can Dance Canada.

Arts education: Lindsay teaches word and movement integration workshops, Alternating Between, in public schools as well as to professional artists, encouraging students to open up to creating without judgment. In 2003/04, and 2007/08, she was funded by the Ontario Arts Council's Artists In Education Program. In 2008, she was the artist in residence at Mt. Pleasant Public School in Vancouver, BC, funded through the ArtStarts program and The Please Mum Foundation . (If you are interested in receiving more information about Alternating Between, please contact Lindsay at lindszv [at] yahoo [dot] ca).

*Photo by Ian Bullock