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May 2010 Archives

May 10, 2010

Welcome Back!

Hey look, a new design for Print Fetish! Design by us, with implementation by our brilliant pal, Wayne Bremser. We decided to create a new look to inspire us to get back to our regular posting duties and make Print Fetish your number one destination for independent and artful print media news and reviews.

We're currently building our Print Fetish Resource Guide, a comprehensive listing of printing, publishing and distribution resources all over the world. So we're asking you, dear readers, to let us know about your favorite (smart, helpful, affordable) printers, classes, festivals and places to buy the coolest stuff. Let us know!

Not For Children or Idiots

Something is seriously wrong with the arts when older people are more outrageous, more fierce and more confrontational than the kidz. When Ms. Keough and I did the objectification issue of our college mag 10 years ago, there was such an outcry of offended students over an erect penis that we had to defend ourselves before a packed art and ethics class. One student stood up and professed that if his 10 year old brother was on campus and picked up a copy, it would be as though we had raped him. No teachers seemed to have a problem. In fact, my 80 something painting teacher walked up to me in the street and complimented my art direction.

I guess this rant is a symptom of my getting older, because I grew up in the age of zines and the sounds of "fuck shit up." In fact, I rebelled against that a bit, because I was always interested in taking from anything and everything. But it seems to me that the pendulum has swung too far, and that too many twenty somethings seem totally satisfied in doing things the way they were taught to. And what's worse - they completely believe in it.

It seems to me that artists are being too polite in their desperation for approval. When they are being "outrageous" i.e Lady Gaga, its innocuous and contrived. I'll take a bitchy Ms. Jones any day.

So please, lets have some more obnoxious bullshit, lets get our hands dirty and please lets not give a fuck.

In that vein, get inspired by Horseshit: the Offensive Review, a late 60's magazine out of California that covered politics, religion, the military and sex.

Q: I have always been willing to aid those around me with helpful suggestions, therefore your purely destructive attitude disgusts me. Just once why don't you offer some constructive criticism designed to make people happier?

A: Okay. If you will stop making suggestions, everyone will be happier.

May 12, 2010

Motto Berlin Storefront in Vancouver

Vancouver non-profit art space and artist book publisher Artspeak opens Motto Storefront, a series of talks, workshops, and a zine library featuring the works of (PF favorite) Nieves. Motto Storefront starts this Saturday May 15th with a talk by photographer and Motto Distribution founder Alexis Zavialoff. The event runs through July 22nd. More info here.

May 13, 2010

Get Out!: Photo, Lez and Chinese Stuff

The New York Photo Festival opened yesterday and runs through the weekend.

6pm tonight at The Mission Cultural Center in S.F, Hamburger Eyes opens "Casual Abyss," a photographic exhibition of modern artifacts that provide clues into the chasm hovering in another dimension beneath our own. This exhibition will attempt to explore the void and make sense of what lies in the hearts of men.

The Graphic Design Biennial Germany-China opens today in Offenbach, Germany.

Tomorrow night check out the Girls Like Us launch party for volume 2 issue 1 of the mag at Heathers Bar, 506 East 13 Street btwn Ave A & B, 7pm-10pm.

May 14, 2010

Random Linx

Metal magazine Decibel interviews Tom Neely from Igloo Tornado who's amazing comic Henry & Glenn Forever stars Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins as a couple who live next door to satanists Hall & Oates.

UK design studio Studio8 founder Matt Wiley's collection of old boxing posters on Eye Blog.

Louis Vuitton's Young Arts Program pairs up with Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, Hayward Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts and South London Gallery to bring new creative arts program to the kids.

Fellow magazine blog Magculture has released a print version of itself.

I've spent the past little while looking around in the Charts & Graphs section of Lapham's Quarterly. It's fun. Start with 6 degrees of Lord Byron.

Magazine Rack of the Week: Float Rack

This sculptural rack turns your 12 recent magazines into an art piece. Definitely great for a gallery like space, or loft, next to a sofa or chair that is set away from the wall.

Only $57 bucks at the UMA store

May 18, 2010

Etiquette

Etiquette ("For that special rude person you know.")
by Lacey Prpic-Hedtke
76 pages, 8.5x5"
Hand bound white copy paper with purple cardstock cover
$1.50

Lacey, the mastermind behind the hilarious Likes/Dislikes zine, was tired of watching everyone treat each other like crap and took it upon herself to write us a guide to living, a book of manners for the common punk. She covers everything from sex to long bus rides to acceptable behavior on airplanes. I have a general fondness for books of etiquette so I liked this right off the bat. Lacey's book is especially fun/helpful because it covers incidents Emily Post would never dream of, like the polite locations for heroin shooting, the politics of the potluck party or what to do once you've accidentally puked on someone. Buy this useful handbook directly from Lacey's etsy site or from Microcosm and refer to it often.

May 19, 2010

Dan Clowes, The New Yorker

The New Yorker still rules for covers. Ideas are king. Illustrations, especially by someone as clever as Daniel Clowes, can convey ideas photographs can't even come close to. I'd like to see other magazines doing more illustrations. On another note - this cover is so uplifting!

May 21, 2010

Magazine Rack of the Week: Slat Rack

The powder coated steel Slat Rack is perfect for a landing strip - it's a coat rack AND a magazine rack. You can cram mail on it, and there's a groove to hold keys. It has a bit of a cartoon quality that could add whimsy to a modern decor. Available in orange, brown, green and white.

The Slat Rack is a $145 at 2modern.

GET OUT!: Comics and Stuff

All weekend: Komiks.DK, the Copenhagen International Comics Festival. Watch the trailer!

Tonight: A book release party at Desert Island in Brooklyn for Art in Time by Dan Nadel, editor and art director of Picturebox. 7-9pm. There will be beer.

Saturday: A launch party for Avalanche, the complete reprint released by Primary Information. Liza Béar, one of the magazine's original founders, will be there. 5-7 PM.

Sunday: PS1's Greater New York show is opening Sunday from 12-6. You should go and dress cute. We'll see you there.

May 26, 2010

Linkinetic

Flickr Finds: Technochiock's 90's Detroit Rave Flyer collection

Check out Dalmmatin, a fabulous blog on zines

SAD BLOG has posted spreads from a 1974 issue of Interview Magazine

Great article on Japanese zines

May 27, 2010

Get Out!: Festivals and books

All Weekend: MondoHomo Dirty South: a festival of indie and DIY bands, DJs, drag and burlesque performance, craft and art shows, spoken word, dance parties, and community building that celebrates the Queer contribution to music, arts, culture, and justice. Various events all weekend, including an art show tonight. See website for details.

Tonight: Goodreads hosts a night of literature and barhopping. Start out at the Housing Works Bookstore where Colson Whitehead (Sag Harbor), Emily St. John Mandel (The Singer's Gun) and Amy King (I'm the Man Who Loves You) read their work. Then become part of a bookish mob as the group moves to Botanica bar, Tom and Jerry's, KGB and beyond. 7pm. Free.

Friday: kids of all ages, a celebration of children's books and the artists behind them, opens Friday with a reading of An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton and a bunch of fun sounding activities like drawing on free pairs of kid-sized Vans shoes. At THIS Los Angeles. 7-10pm. Free.

Saturday: The London Zine Symposium 2010! A big space for kids into zines, comix, art and radical culture to come together and share stuff and ideas and things. At the Rag Factory. 12-6pm. Free.

(Above image of badges made for the London Zine Symposium by Mark Pawson.)

May 28, 2010

Lists

lists_1.jpgLists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art
by Liza Kirwin
7 x 10", Paperback , 208 pages
$24.95

There is something cool/illuminating about seeing the process behind an artist's work--the diagrams, early sketches and notes. And for me, perhaps even more so, there's a thrill in seeing the way an artist or writer whom I admire deals with the more mundane, day-to-day details of her life: the grocery lists, address books, doodles, to-dos and schedules. Liza Kirwin, manuscripts curator at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, has collected notes and lists from some major artists (Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Vito Acconci) and historical moments (Paula Cooper's pre-gallery opening to-do list, an early version of Ludwig Sander's list of members of The Club-an art discussion group who's members included Ad Reinhart and Willem de Kooning) into this very nice looking book. Franz Kline's humble taste in food and enormous appetite for booze give me tender feelings toward him. Adolf Konrad's great attention to sartorial detail makes me jealous/psyched. In a list of expenses torn out of a notebook and given to Sam Wagstaff, Gordon Newton includes $5 for "Bad Habits." If only mine cost so little. I pour over this book with both a voyeur's sneaky excitement and an eye for art historical details.

The collection is also a show entitled To-Dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art and it runs through Sept. 27 at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture's Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in Washington DC.

Lists is available directly from Princeton Architectural Press, Amazon and your cool neighborhood bookstore.


Spreads from the book.

Continue reading "Lists" »

Magazine Rack of the Week: Le Bouc

Le Bouc (The Goat!), designed by Belgian Mathieu Gabiot, is a really exciting piece of furniture - kind of awkward and elegant all at once. It's current without being trendy and I can see it fitting into any sort of decor - even mixed in with lots of vintage stuff that's not modern or contemporary. Actually - I want it.

Le Bouc is available on Gabiot's site for €195, shipping from Begium