Art book popup, Short Run, and the zines we're working on
Some maps and comics too. And links, and bike thoughts.
We’ll be hanging out at a table with our zines at Short Run! There’s nothing like a deadline to inspire finishing up some projects. We’ll have a bunch of new things, like:
* a Seattle Adventure Map — a big 11x17” tri-fold map with lots of our favorite places for city days, like bakeries, bookstores, parks, places to bike and swim, interesting shops and cultural locations and gardens.
* MIRA MI PIZZA MONUMENTA! How To Pizza Night — for the past 15-ish years, our friends have been getting together for pizza nights where we make lots of pizzas together and hang out. Adam and I have helped make hundreds (thousands?) of pizzas, and helped teach dozens of friends how to shape dough, make sauce, top pizzas: how to pizza night. We’ve kept saying “we should write all this down” so now it’s finally happening. This weekend we took a bunch of pictures to do the illustration sketches, the writing is already done—we’re in the home stretch! Pizza Pizza!
* Elizabeth and I are working on a follow up to Climate Emergency Reading Recs zine, currently code named Climate II — think aerial imagery of glaciers and mountains collaged with old images of plants and aquatic creatures and some text. excited to see where we take it! she’s heading off to Antarctica for a season of field research starting at the end of the month so I might get to mail her the first print copy at McMurdo…
* Raccoon Fantasy, a special all-raccoon-comics issue of Mundane Fantasy (because everyone has a raccoon story). I dusted off my comics drawing skills to illustrate the time Adam went night biking in the San Bruno Hills in our SF era and met some raccoons on the road. It’s got art from a dozen artists and is printing freaking great, I love it (and raccoons) so much.
* we’re almost done making the second printing of 1,000 copies of Climate Emergency Reading Recs! Having the booklet maker (we have a stitch-n-fold b2000*) and a studio space has really changed the size of runs it’s feasible to take on. [*here’s the list of the rest of the printshop equipment we have! we get a lot of questions from small press people about that so we just wrote it all down]
* Adam is working on a new reading recs zine or pamphlet (very excited about this)
* depending on time, we’ll make some new prints or maybe a takeaway about Spectrolite or a fridge calendar poster or something
Short Run is November 5th from 11am-6pm at Fisher Pavilion at the Seattle Center, and it’s free to attend.
There’s also an after party at the Vera Project that night, 8-11pm, $5!
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If you’re a risograph printer coming to Seattle for Short Run: some of the local riso crew (there’s a lot of us!) is organizing a Friday Nov 4th afternoon/early evening event where we all share short talks, show and tell, and chat. This will go 2-6pm ish at Common Area Maintenance in Belltown, near the Westlake Center light rail and walking distance from the Short Run venue. I’d also love to host visiting riso printers for studio tours at ANEMONE on Sunday 10-noon-ish after Short Run. Just reply to this email if you’re interested in either!
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The riso is happy. :)
Tabling + Zine and Art Book Panel Oct 23
Also, even sooner: McLean invited us to come out to bring our zines to an Art Book Pop-Up at AMcE on Sunday Oct 23rd. Zine and art book tabling is noon to 2pm! It’s free, it’ll be fun—come out!
Then, from 2:30-4pm, there’s State-of-the-ArtBook, an informal conversation with some of Seattle’s independent printers, publishers and makers of art books, mono graphs, pamphlets, zines and comix. We’ll be chatting with Kelly Froh of Short Run, artist Brandon Vosika, and moderators Jayme Yen and Tom of Seattle Art Book Fair. And a reception after!
The event is at 612 19th Avenue E Seattle, WA 98112 which is on the strip of shops on 19th on the east side of Capitol Hill. (Down the street from Macrina Bakery & Cafe, and a nice walk from the light rail.)
Lately
Since we last wrote at the end of July, I DID finally sew the black linen pants (turned out great, only took two hours). I got some wood strips intended for chair repair to try for light sculptures (seems like not the right material), and took a shortcut and scissored the legs off of jeans to make two pairs of jorts instead of actually sewing shorts. JORTS! I made essentially no progress on ordering rubber stamps or projects with the raspberry pi pico, but DID do lots of organizing and planning.
We tabled at Olympia Zine Fest and Photographic Center Northwest Photo Book and Zine Fair, co-hosted the third Bookluck, and overall got to meet a bunch of rad people. This summer’s mountain theme was rock climbing (vs. scrambling or mountaineering) and we did a lot of trad climbing in Darrington and Squamish. After Squamish we got to visit Erica at Moniker Press in Vancouver on our way home!
I wrote a journal style essay about the summer climbing and community garden and the climate crisis for the next issue of the Floral Observer, which you can preorder from Taxonomy Press now. (Preorders ship Oct 10th!) I also wrote an essay about having oral allergy syndrome for Rain’s zine I’m Allergic!
Last Friday I went to the Henry for the opening of the newest show, and really had a lot of feelings being in the space with this was a densely wooded hill. Here are some photos of the installation. I’m going to go visit it again.
Links
First up, I wanted to link you to The Talking Mirror from Chatterbox Press. It’s $28+shipping for 6 months of advice column mail in the post. I highly recommend getting a subscription! Amy and I are both huge fans, so we invited Katie to do another takeover of the All Well instagram — stay tuned for that soon too.
And here are links to few things that I collected for your perusal, since I emailed last:
On personal style… makes me think about how sewing clothes took me even further into wearing what I want. I feel like once you learn how to sew clothes, your relationship to buying things (and your body) is never the same again… or at least that was a very motivating thought in book writing for me.
An artist interview with Wretched Flowers about collaborating with a romantic partner, foraging plants, art as a business. “why not collaborate with nature instead of trying to push it away from us?”
Madeline Dore on ending things: “Something doesn’t have to last forever for it to be successful. Some things end because they’re finished. Some things end because we’re finished with them. Some things end because they just didn’t work out. It’s not a failure to declare an ending, rather it can be an opportunity.”
Designer and artist Krystal C. Mack on food and social practice and sensory spaces.
Cars in Bike Lanes Seattle is now accepting photos by mention or DM, truly the twitter account I’ve been waiting for. Ten years ago I wanted to build an app called VIGILANTE BIKE COP where you’d photograph the cars in the bike lanes. (We were living in SF at the time, and most bike lanes were largely blocked by car parking/idle/pickup, so there was plenty of material and rage.) Then then we moved back to Seattle where the Cars-in-Bike-Lanes problem was less ridiculous in scope (partly because we have even fewer useful bike lanes, wah wah). Anyways, I shall be submitting my photos, bike friends: please join me.
Speaking of bikes, Everyday Rides is a listing of Seattle bike rides.
Please reply and send me your favorite fall recipes or pizza topping combos—or just say hi and tell us about the projects you’re working on—if you’d like!
-Amelia (& Adam)
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