His internationally best-selling Griffin & Sabine saga is treasured for its blend of lyrical storyline and compelling, imaginative art. Now Nick Bantock gives a short course in visual creativity in Urgent 2nd Class. A tour through the techniques and materials which constitute his signature style, Bantock shares with readers numerous ways ways of using old paper ephemera — maps, letters, postcards, ledgers, scraps, photos, and many more items — to create their own idiosyncratic art. Written for people of all artistic skill levels, the materials mentioned are all easily found and inexpensive, and the processes are simple enough to do at home (and with access to the most advanced machinery used in the book, a photocopier). An inspirational guide to the simple artistic techniques which can alchemically transform ephemera into remarkable works, Urgent 2nd Class is the handbook for a new generation of visual poets.

"Collage of paper ephemera — photographs, postcards, ads, newspapers, stamps, money, packaging materials, invoices, books and sheet music — is an artistic technique at least as old as modernism, with Picasso and Braque incorporating various scraps of Parisian paper into their early cubist works. Bantock, whose six Griffin & Sabine books imagine an epistolary love and include the 'actual' letters and cards it is conducted through, offers a plethora of techniques for bringing past and present together by collecting aging paper, and transforming its original communicative use or transactional value through one's own choices in juxtaposition, placement and additive drawing. He offers beautiful, full-color examples of his own work in short chapters devoted to the various pulp forms above, with five or six paragraphs explaining what he likes or how he uses each (on family photos: 'I'm not overly interested in battling internally with where sentimentality ends and nostalgia begins — so I steer clear all together'), followed by examples of works he's done with short captions. The printing and layout are as lush as Griffin & Sabine fans would expect, and Bantock offers a judicious mix of his own practice and advice for one's own. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. (Sept. 1)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Nick Bantock is the author of numerous illustrated novels, including Griffin & Sabine, Sabine's Notebook, The Golden Mean, The Gryphon, and Alexandria, which together spent 100 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Born in England, he now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.