Now in its second year, Publication Fair boasts posters printed by OMFGCO and Container Corps.
The 2010 Publication Fair was held this weekend at the Cleaners at the Ace Hotel in Portland. We were on hand to scope it out and to staff the Pinball Publishing /Scout Books table. I scored some amazing printed works and, in the midst of doing so, spoke with the exhibitors about about their work. This three-part video series highlights those conversations.
Watch the first installment below.
The debut title from this Portland collaborative is called With This Line.
Little Read Writers is a Portland writing collaborative that incorporates experimentation and play into their shared practice. They “cleverly arrange” words–on screen, on paper and in conversation—for their pleasure and ours.
In the short time since their inception, Little Read Writers have produced an impressive series of booklets of collaborative work, all self-published, hand-bound, and printed in black and white.
They share their work through lectures, workshops and panel discussions for the Portland community. Each publication grows out of each member of the collaborative responding to a prompt—in the case of With This Line, the writers respond to a directive from Mark Searcy. For Legends of the Swifts, the men of Little Read Writers spent some time responding to the phenomenon of the annual flock of Vaux’s Swifts that descend on Northwest Portland’s Chapman school each summer.
Find their titles at independent retailers like Reading Frenzy and Clawhammer and Clothespin, and in their online shop.
Artist publications with rich and varying content fill the shelves at this East Portland shop.
Stand Up Comedy is a shop on East Burnside in Portland, with a catalog of merchandise that includes clothing, printed matter and art objects. Located in the 811 E. Burnside cluster of creative retailers (home to gems like Nationale, Golden Rule, and Sword +Fern), Stand Up Comedy runs an operation that straddles the conventional distinctions of art gallery, clothing store, and book shop. It’s more of a center for culture, standing atop a firm foundation of curation, experimental art contexts and content.
Beautiful garments and objects aside, their carefully curated selection of printed matter is what caught our eye. Stand Up Comedy states that their interest lies in “content as a form of inquiry, rather than as a specific aesthetic,” and the array of publications available in their shop is beautiful, diverse, inky evidence of that statement.
Diana from Stand Up Comedy was kind enough to let us know about new selections available in their shop. These can be found at their brick-and-mortar shop, online, and at the Publication Fair coming up later this month. Read on!
A mostly-annual collaboration of artists on paper.
Nudity in Groups is a collaborative publication that is released on a somewhat regular basis. Described as both “mostly quarterly” and “semi-annual,” the publication contains art work curated or created by its contributors. Now in its second issue, Nudity in Groups is orchestrated by Portland artists Alex Felton and Kevin Abell, published by Fast Weapons, and features contributions from a rotating group of artists.
Its atypical format at once limits and accentuates the content: one side features artist contributions and the other is an oversized poster image. The content speaks to no overarching theme other than the restrictions of dimension. Screen-printed in a numbered edition of 250, the first issue of Nudity in Groups was released in conjunction with a sculptural installation called Bleach Party at Vestibule.
An independently published newsprint project.
At one point last spring, I found myself sitting outside on a bright gray day, on a damp bench with a free newsprint publication in my hands. I realized I was having an essentially Portland experience: I was enjoying an accessible, independently published piece of collaborative artwork, an artifact of my city’s highly inclusive and DIY creative scene. (Plus, a downpour was imminent.) Mia Nolting and Rachel Pedderson are responsible for this artifact, a publication called &Review that brings together multimedia work from an ever-expanding group of international artists. They kindly took the time to answer some of my questions about the motivations and processes involved in creating their publication. Read on.
Gestalten delivers a short interview with the prolific maker, director, curator.
Gestalten’s most recent podcast video is an interview with artist and curator Aaron Rose. Aaron is most widely known for his co-curation of the groundbreaking Beautiful Losers exhibition. He was the owner of the Alleged Gallery in NYC, is a director at the Director’s Bureau (along with Soffia Coppola, and Mike Mills), and is founder of Wieden+Kennedy’s entertainment arm WKE. In other words, homie’s an O.G.
In this short interview, Aaron shares his perspectives on audiences’ delay in keeping up with makers’ transitions, a fascinatingly correct idea that the 21st century has yet to establish an identity of its own. He posits that we’re still only remixing the 20th century, and innovators eventually becoming the cliché:
All the innovators become the cliché. That’s cultural progress. You can’t stop that from happening that’s just life. And that’s the good thing about life too, the avant garde today is the establishment of tomorrow, there’s no way around it.
Sort, stack.
I was at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) yesterday and found myself in the recently opened exhibition Sorted Books by Nina Katchadourian.
Sorted Books primarily features photographs of stacks of books, their titles meant to be read sequentially, top to bottom. The results are pithy dadaist poems such as:
Primitive Art /
Just Imagine /
Picasso /
Raised By Wolves
and another:
Relax /
When I Relax I Feel Guilty /
When I Say No, I Feel Guilty /
God Always Says Yes! /
Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No
I like the idea of books being corralled into groups for which they were never intended because that’s where they wind up naturally anyway right?, on our bookshelves in random groupings. Now I can’t help but read the titles on my bookshelf sequentially. If I come across any particularly interesting ones I’ll post it in the comments below. What about yours? Any Nina Katchadourianesque sequential titles on your bookshelf?
Collateral Matters opens this week.
Brace yourself for blatant self-promotion:
This week marks the opening of Collateral Matters: Selections form the Museum of Contemporary Craft Archives with Kate Bingaman-Burt and Clifton Burt.
Using printed materials and ephemera from the Museum archive, the exhibition reveals stories about the history of printing and design in Portland, and communicates how such printed materials construct institutional identity.
Focusing primarily on the 1940s through the 1970s, the collateral materials on view provide a simple study of both intentionally and unintentionally designed pieces in the pre-desktop publishing era. The critical role of printshops is revealed through designed print pieces, such as invitations, posters and letterhead, and then contrasted alongside office paperwork – handwritten artist statements, pastel-toned invoices and receipts speckled with red “sale” dots, for example. In an installation designed to show the visual impact of printed materials, the guest curators engage typography from the mundane to the meticulously designed, showing how graphic language functions in a range of types of printed collateral.
Item: Chipboard showcard
Printer: Pinball Publishing
Artist: Bwana Spoons
Paper: Chipboard 20pt. Kraft
Ink: Pantone soy-based magenta
The Grass Hut is a Portland institution. A creative institution. A day-glo, zany, goof-ball, yarn-filled institution made from driftwood and the hard work of good, creative people. Their latest postcard is a chipboard explosion of magenta to celebrate three months of upcoming shows and a do-it-yourself tipi papercraft activity. This printed piece is a postcard as well as a call to creative action; by giving it two uses, the folks at the Grass Hut charge forward into the future of print with a super pragmatic, super fun piece of printed goodness.
Moustache! Loud Crow! Full Sleeve Tattoos!
Printer: Pinball Publishing
Item: Bingo Cards
Paper: Environment 125# White Cover
Inks: Pantone soy-based inks
Design: Bishop Lennon and Amy Ruppel
These Portland Bingo Cards come to us from the super-talented Bishop Lennon and Amy Ruppel. Every city should have Bingo cards; however, I think most Portlanders would agree that none would be as awesome as these. I can just imagine loading up a car full of people to go driving around, shouting out all the Portland-y things you find while everyone hangs their flailing limbs out of the rolled-down windows. Thanks to Amy Ruppel for providing the great photos you see here. The cards turned out fantastic!
Give Your Big Ideas A Little Room To Grow
Scout Books: pocket-friendly notebooks for your biggest ideas!
Phil Elverum: Print Pioneer of the Pacific Northwe...:
Phil Elverum is best known for his work as the bands Mount Eerie and The Microphones, as well as... 
Hatch Show Print:
Hatch Show Print is one of the oldest print shops in America. For a hundred years Hatch was a si... 
Carson Ellis, Illustrator Extraordinaire:
It is important to have heroes. It is also helpful when they are real people. I have my share of... 
Eco-friendly CD Packaging:
Printer: Pinball Publishing
Item: Pinball Pak (CD Packaging)
Paper: 20 pt. Chipboard
Inks: Pa... 
Field Notes and Fifty States:
Item: Field Notes Colors "County Fair" 50 Editions
Paper: 100# linen cover stock (Blue, Red, Ye... 
Coffee Common, Scout Books, TED 2011:
"The people serving you coffee today come from a movement, not a company."
So reads the first... Pinball Publishing is a creative publishing company located in Portland, Oregon. We are fueled by a love for print, collaboration, and the manufacture of meaningful things. Pinball powers a growing web of interconnected projects, including Scout Books, Bangback, and Print Pinball.
Bangback is a place for print. Here we share our own print projects as well as expanded coverage of print culture at large.
Print is dead. Long live print!
