No Mark Will Shine
By Mark Borthwick
Published by the journal and
bagged with their issue #21.
64 pages, full color, soft cover.
$15

the journal, a Brooklyn-based quarterly art magazine, includes some kind of art object with each issue. Their most recent is bagged with a beautiful book and poster by artist/Brooklyn resident/hippy Mark Borthwick. Our friend LVS was so taken with the book that she asked to write a guest post. Below are her thoughts on Mark Borthwick's No Mark Will Shine. Before we get there, I'd like to mention that this issue of the journal also has a selection of zines in the back. They're not so much reviewed as displayed, but if you're looking for some new little mags to buy check there. Also, on behalf of Print Fetish, I'd like to wish you all a happy new year! Back to the review:

Lately I return home from vacations with a couple rocks. Yesterday I came back from a vacation in Colorado with two white quartz stones shot through with red seams. These stones are more exciting to me than the pepper grinder or fancy sweatshirt I received as christmas presents.There are certain things that are simply beautiful—gold, sunsets, flowers, and stones to name a few. Looking at Mark Borthwick's book No Mark Will Shine, I am sure he is a kindred spirit. Inside are photocopies of his collections of feathers and dried flowers as well as photographs and words. Among the photographs are images of a little child with messy long hair building a teepee out of sticks, a exalting woman with flowers on her head, and a group of people (including Borthwick) wearing wreathes and capes. The scenarios are child's play or drug induced psychedelic joy. Pastoral scenes of friendly donkeys and running horses are interspersed with intimate portraits of a young naked woman. Each figure is repeated many times and in different forms. We see the donkey in color, as a stencil, as a close up with a hand, then as a word and an ink drawing. Typed and handwritten words, photos, paint, scans, photocopies and music (the book comes with an audio cd) seem interchangeable. The images fade in and out of reality taking on the semblance of memory or a drug haze. They become symbols of joyfulness like constant reminders that beauty is always present and natural. Throughout the book images and words are crossed out or obscured by paint, other words images or what looks like burn marks. This obstruction can take the form of decoration, obscuring, or highlighting. By collecting beautiful objects and memories and re-envisioning negativity, Borthwick constructs his own joyful world.

Where to buy: the journal website, or various cool newsstands.

Marian Kester's essay on the punk poster and it's success in the bay area in particular talks about a history of poster making in San Francisco from '60s concert posters to political flyers as well as the relationship between punk and technology. This DEVO quote sums up the latter quite well: "The more technology you have, the more primitive you can be. With synthesizers you can express guttural sounds, bird noises, brain waves, blood flow." The last line of her essay is particularly amusing to me, an SF native: "So—elsewhere, money talks, nobody walks—and the weather stinks." I love it. Leave it to a bay area person to insult the weather in the rest of the country. Hee. But she does have a point, especially back in 1981 when she wrote it: Most cities are car cities and there just isn't enough foot traffic to justify flyering. Plus it's just too damn cold in the winter to walk around wheat-pasting.

Here, in installment two of my post on Street Art: The Punk Poster in San Francisco 1977-1981, I will show you 9 more posters and give you any information I can find on their makers. See installment one for more history and posters!

This article, "The Science of Covers," on the WWD site is meant to give one helpful hints about making a great cover, but all it actually does is give one insight into why so many magazines suck so hard. It's really very disturbing.

Flickr Finds: We love buttons! Check out the Flickr Buttons & Badges pool.

ASME's top covers of 2007. I don't think these people read too many magazines, and they certainly don't have much sense for design.

When I was a kid, my friends and I spent a lot of time making these paper fortune tellers. I even have a few good ones from back then in a drawer somewhere. When I'm sitting around, whether at home on the couch or in a meeting or class, I'm always fighting the urge to fidget. I need to be doing something at all times. Sometimes I still make these fortune tellers, or paper footballs, or the thing where you fold a dollar bill into a ring. While browsing around the Instructables website I found instructions for this cool tiny diamond-paged book. It looks complicated and has a ton of folds but the instructions are clear. The fun part is deciding how and what to draw on the little diamond-shaped pages. This book would be a great vehicle for a secret message. If you're still a student, surprise your neighbor by passing them this complicated note.

Flickr Finds: Charm and Poise's Teen-Age Living magazine collection

OMG! So, tons of slightly damaged and display books are on sale (50-75% off) for 3 days only at the TASCHEN Store in New York. It's January 18 - 20 so you have some time to horde away a bit of your paycheck. Friday, Saturday 11:00 am to 8:00 pm; Sunday 12:00 to 7:00 pm. TASCHEN Store 107 Greene Street, NY 10012 212-226 2212

Hey, look... a newish magazine blog, The Magaziner, run by Derek Powazek, founder of JPG Magazine.

Here is a unique magazine rack of the bentwood variety that would look excellent next to an upholstered chair or couch by Finnish designer Pancho Nikander. The Kanto Magazine Rack doubles as a firewood holder, but I think it would get scratched up too easily. I think it would double better as a file holder, because the handle makes it so easy to carry around.

Available in oak or birch veneers or red, white and black lacquer at twentytwentyone, UK only for between £73.00 and £81.00

Showpaper
1 sheet, 17" x 22", newsprint, full color
Published bi-weekly
Free

Showpaper is a big fold out list of all ages shows in the New York tri-state area. I don't go to see many bands these days but back when I did, my friends and I relied on the old bay area version, simply titled The List. The List is still around and updated and you can see the archives on its site. However, there isn't much to see. The List was really just a type written list photocopied on white paper. Showpaper combines this useful information on one side with a beautiful piece of artwork on the other. I love lists, free things, newsprint, and large things folded into smaller things so Showpaper makes me happy. They put out an issue every two weeks. They distribute on Tuesdays and you can find Showpaper at coffee shops, galleries, and record stores around New York. Their myspace says they're branching out more upstate and in New Jersey and Connecticut. As I haven't been to any of those places in ages, I couldn't tell you for sure. The current issue (#17) has artwork by Allyson Mellberg and was curated by Cinders Gallery in Williamsburg. Cinders will be choosing artists for the next couple Showpapers as well.

After the jump are posters by Brian Chippendale and The Sumi Ink Club. See the photo section of Showpaper's myspace page for more archives.

Simultaneous launches for DOT DOT DOT #15 and F.R. DAVID #2 in London and New York with lectures transmitted to both locations from the other. The two magazines will be sold together for $25 in NY and £12.50. God, the value of the dollar sucks.

New York, 7pm
Dexter Sinister
38 Ludlow Street (Basement South)
New York, New York 10002

London, 7pm
CUBITT
Gallery and Studios
8 Angel Mews
London N1 9HH

With this issue The Believer has made it to #50. Yay! For this momentous occasion, longtime Believer cover drawer and great comic book artist Charles Burns has drawn his own self portrait on the cover. He's also interviewed inside. The Believer never disappoints—this is a good issue, you guys. Look inside for: Print Fetish favorite Martha Plimpton as the guest advice columnist, German art historian/insane person Aby Warburg, a very long lament for a lost notebook by Eileen Myles, Marilyn Monroe's walk, Niagara Falls, Lydia Davis talking about Samuel Beckett among other things, folk singer Linda Thompson, baffling ancient mathematics and The Archimedes Palimpsest, and more.

Kick-ass Finnish magazine Kasino A4's Autumn/Winter 2007-8 issue tackles the complex theme of Human Nature. Kasino is getting thicker and adding colors. I like it. It's still looking good. There's a lot going on in this issue. Greenpeace missions, the former editor of Russian Playboy, compulsive lying, climate changes, fake nature, Kim Jones, vomit stories, interpretations of a landscape photograph, photographs of the neighbors' trash, snapshots of emerging artists, and fantastic letter illustrations by Japanese/American art team Overture.

Adbusters kicks off 2008 with a look at this year's big issues: journalism's shift from watchdog to lapdog of power, big business getting on board with the environmental movement, Canada's move from world peacekeeper to partner in the war on terrorism, Wall Street and the mortgage disaster, and more. Get this issue and start your 2008 well informed.

Wooooo Magazine #5
4.25" x 7", 143 pages, perfect bound
Black and white inside, 2 color cover
$10

I have just entered a phase of obsessive interview-reading. I'm planning some upcoming interview for Print Fetish and figured I'd get into the spirit of things. Most magazines have terrible interviews. They're boring. Everyone asks the same questions and talks to the same people. I start reading then just sort of glaze over. I miss good interview mags like Index. But lucky for us, their whole archive is online. Also lucky for us, Jason Crombie put out another issue of Wooooo, his hilariously awesome little interview mag. I picked up previous issues for free around town but hadn't seen it in a while until I found the current issue for sale at St. Marks Books. Issue #5 has interviews with artist Aurel Schmidt, Butt editor Jop Van Bennekom, artist and Olsen twin dater (hee) Nate Lowman, Parker Posey, David Byrne, skater Ray Barbee, gallerist Michelle Maccarone, and a bunch more. To get a sampling of the hilarity, read the David Byrne interview conducted while running alongside Byrne who was riding his bike down Houston St. Byrne liked it so much, he put it up on his own site.

Buy Wooooo #5 and back issues and t-shirts from their site. Or look for the mag at cool shops around New York.

SF art blog Fecal Face scanned some pages of Hamburger Eyes: Inside Burgerworld, the new Hamburger Eyes book that's coming out on Powerhouse Books. For the uninitiated, Hamburger Eyes, on our list of "Magazines We Love," is a black and white photography zine from San Francisco. Each issue is packed (no white spaces here) full of street photography from names you know and names you don't. I'm totally excited about this book and can't wait to get my own copy. So until the PF review goes up, enjoy a sneak peek from Fecal Face.

The Ninth Floor, photographer Jessica Dimmock's first book, is out now from Italian publisher Contrasto Books. Dimmock spent three years documenting the lives of a group of young drug addicts squatting a midtown apartment and the result is a beautiful volume of intense, disturbing and sometimes gorgeous images with lots of gatefolds. My favorite parts involve the organization of items/garbage around the apartment and the way little bits of daylight sneak through the heavy curtains and shakily illuminate her subjects. Media Storm has a multimedia feature on the project and there are many more images to see on Dimmock's own site.

Photography in Print is a blog dedicated to photo books. Much to my dismay, they haven't updated since November. There's still quite a few reviews to go through and after looking at the site, my list of must have books has grown longer. Dear Photography in Print, post more! Your friends, PF.

Interview was fun up until the mid-nineties, but basically after Warhol it was all downhill. So, I'm not sure how to feel about news that editor Ingrid Sischy and publisher Brant Resign have resigned. So what now? Irrelevant onto being truly crappy?

Flickr Finds: Vintage matchbooks here, here, here and here.

Check out the newish blog Small Press League, which covers small press, zines and comics.

Check out a marvelous historical resource, the Zinewiki.

A page from one of our favorite magazines, by one of our favorite New York personalities. Click to see larger.

Music Portraits
By Rachael Cassells
Published by The Spring Press
36 pages, full color, soft cover.
Edition of 1000.
$15

Rachael Cassells uses whatever is around to illuminate her subjects—in the case of this book, people who make music. They are lit by street lights, car headlights, window light, lamps, and lonely hallway bulbs—glowing in the soft colors these ambient light sources make. The result is dark and pretty and grainy. I like seeing these people in quiet moments alone, away from stages and fans and other bandmates. Looking at some of them, I'm reminded of certain phrases from their songs. It seems like Cassells had the same idea because she includes a song quote for each portrait.

Cassells' Music Portraits is the second offering from The Spring Press, a new small publisher from Australia and friend of "magazine we love" doingbird. Cassells is a contributing editor there and I've seen her shots of many of these musicians in doingbird's pages, including Bat for Lashes, our pal Jana Hunter, and the wonderful Bill Callahan ((smog)).

This slim volume is very nice. I'm excited to see more from The Spring Press as well as Rachael Cassells. You can buy their stuff directly from their site.

Thursday, January 31: Happy Ending, the once fun now strange and boring night club on Broome St., has been hosting several reading series in the early evenings for some time now. Tonight they've got a special event brought to us by literary forces from the windy city, including Make Magazine, featherproof books, and Danny's Reading Series. Writers/readers include Joel Craig, Matthew Zapruder, and Zach Plague. Happy Ending. 302 Broome St. 7:30. Free.

Saturday, February 2: Artist Barbara Bloom is showing more of her collections of made, found and organized objects at Printed Matter. Her work is also on view at ICP right now. You could have a Barbara Bloom day and hit them both! Printed Matter's opening is also celebrating her new book, The Collections of Barbara Bloom just out from Steidl/International Center for Photography. Highlights of this show include one of my favorites, Playboy Vol XLI No. 1 (1994), a braille edition of Playboy—to which Bloom added a fold-out photographic insert of Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses as well as a rare edition of Weimar a box of chocolates mimicking a book, which the artist designed for the city of Weimar in 1996. Printed Matter. 195 10th Avenue, 5-7pm. Free.

Sunday, February 3: Totally awesome playwright Richard Foreman will be at Housing Works bookstore and café to talk to playwright/Law & Order guy Eric Bogosian about his new book Bad Boy Nietzsche! And Other Plays as well as to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Also on right now is Foreman's play Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland at the St. Marks Church. Go see it, and feel free to bring me with you. Housing Works. 126 Crosby St. 7pm. Free.