loud paper

it's official, zines in LA

Poster design, Tim Durfee

Yep, that's right. A Few Zines is heading to Los Angeles. The little exhibition that could will do a star turn on Hollywood Blvd thanks to the help John Southern, Tim Durfee, and Mohamed Sharif. The LA Forum hosts the insta-show for three days.

The festivities kick off Friday, August 14 with a panel discussion and opening party. Our lineup of panelists is huge. I'm joined by Juliette Bellocq, Todd Gannon, Wes Jones, Ted Kane,
Paul Petrunia, Margi Reeve. John Southern is moderating.

I'll be hanging around the gallery Saturday and Sunday, so come on by, bring along a coffee or a beer, read a couple zines, and have a chat.

Opening Events:
Friday, August 14, 2009
Panel Discussion: 7:30 – 8:30 pm
Exhibition Party: 8:30 pm ‘til late

Gallery Hours:    
Friday, August 14, 7:30 pm 'til late
Saturday, August 15, 12:00 – 7:00 pm
Sunday, August 16, 12:00 – 5:00 pm

Location:
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design Gallery
6520 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA

The opening-night panel, Marginalia, includes:   
Juliette Bellocq, Osborn Architects
Todd Gannon, SCI-Arc
Wes Jones, Jones, Partners: Architecture
Ted Kane, Polar Inertia
Paul Petrunia, Archinect
Margi Reeve, Otis College of Art and Design
Mimi Zeiger, loud paper

Moderated by John Southern, Sumoscraper and Urban Operations Studio

Marginalia: Edge Conditions in Publishing and Practice looks at the role publishing—blogs, journals, zines, and magazines—plays in shaping contemporary speculative practices. The title, Marginalia, is drawn from the term for a scribbles or editorial comment made in the margin and, in this context, refers to notes on the edges of the discipline. The show explores future publishing models and how self-publishing, blogging, and social media give designers the tools to shape alternative practices.

Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design Gallery:

Founded in January of 1987, the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design plays a vital role in Los Angeles by initiating and supporting events, publications, and symposia in this city and beyond.

Since 2008 the Forum has shared a gallery space with Woodbury University, whose generosity has made seasonal exhibitions possible.

quick draw

This past weekend I attended the NYC Zine Fest 2009 held at the Brooklyn Lyceum. I hadn't been to a zine gathering like this in years. It was fantastic to see self-publishing still going strong and I was struck by the intimacy and personal connection that each booth held. It was hard for me to make quick progress through the Fest because at every table I got into conversation with a zine or print maker about their work or where and how they print. (I loved the prints from Just Seeds.) 

Next to the the Printed Matter table hosted was a collection of art zines commissioned by The Holster, an art collective publishing group based in Brooklyn, NY and made up of Gary Fogelson, Phil Lubliner and Soner Ön. They had set up a print-on-demand service for the zines (see above diagram), which straddled the gap between intimacy and automation. Each artist submitted a PDF that was then selected by a visitor and printed in real time.

forever young (er than jesus)

Espresso malt balls from Economy Candy = fountain of youth. They are the fuel that powered me down the street to the New Museum and up four floors in the apple-flavored Jolly Rancher green elevators. The sugar rush lead to the zine exhibit on view as part of The Generational: Younger Than Jesus. Several dozen recent publications were laid out on a low table ready for reading. Paging through them affirmed that self publishing is going strong. Even as some of the works bridge between print and online, they still need to assert their objectness.

And I was thrilled to find a number of that were publications featured in A Few Zines included, thanks to Brian Sholis, who helped organize that part of the show.

Junk Jet.

Citizens of No Place.

Thumb.

Pin Up.

still billboarding

Rebeca Mendez, There Is No There, 2009. Triptych. Each Panel: 20h x 13.3w. Archival Inkjet print, plexiglass and matte white silkscreen ink.

Billboards, the classic meditation of text in space. Pop art darling, Decon construct, and NIMBY troublemaker. The digital age vies for click-thrus and little miss billboard just asks for your ad here. Pretty please. COA's Eric Kahn sends over news of a new show at Koplin Del Rio, plaintively named, Memory of the L.A. Billboard: Telepolis in the Archetype.


Wes Jones, Billboard Series 2, graphite on paper, 12" x 24" (love the ghosting Chrysler)

The group show presents works by artists and architects showing works based on the "Los Angeles billboard imagery landscape." The media is certainly mixed: Folks like Kahn, Sandow Birk, Neil Denari, Wes Jones (soon to be an A Few Zines panelist), Rebeca Mendez, and Marcelo Spina, all take a parting shot at the advertising icon.

And while I'm telling an LA story, I totally forgot to blog about Tiny Houses in the LA Times. You can catch the slideshow here.

the future is ours

Thank you to Bryan Jackson for a photograph that clearly captures loud paper's forward thinking approach to technology. 

And for those who are wondering, my Timex says @loudpaper.Yep, thems are tweets.

brute force

Central parking garage, former Terminal One, Pearson International

It's not Canadian Mounties with nightsticks, it's Concrete Toronto that's hitting pinkcomma hard on May 15. That's when fave Boston gallery mounts (groan) an exhibition of the Toronto's hunky Brutalism based on the book edited by Michael McClelland and Graeme Stewart. They write:

The city has concrete buildings of all stripes – international landmarks, metropolitan infrastructure and even the single family home. Hundreds of these structures were built, including Viljo Revell’s groundbreaking New City Hall, John Andrew’s seminal Scarborough College and the record-smashing CN Tower. Toronto is a city cast in concrete

Celebrate all things concrete, which will melt into air after a couple Newcastles. Opening reception, Friday, 15 May 2009, 6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. The show runs through June 12.

publishing perspectives

Las Vegas Helicopter footage c.1968

If you have an affinity for drink and snacks and happen to be in the Buffalo area (which stretches from Greenland to Princeton, NJ) do drop by the Hayes Hall Lobby gallery at 11am (early, since the bars are open until 4am) at the University at Buffalo, where Michael Kubo will be heading up a panel on architecture and publishing.

Here's the info:

The exhibition features the work developed this semester under the Banham Fellowship through a seminar (Publishing as Practice) on publishing as a critical form of architectural practice, and a studio (Strategic Organizations) to design a contemporary headquarters for the RAND Corporation, the world's first think tank.

A panel of invited faculty will discuss publishing and the book as a form of architectural practice; the discussion will also serve as a public review of the final book projects published by students in the seminar. Drinks and snacks will be served.

tiny in brooklyn

Please join me for a book signing for Tiny Houses this Tuesday, tomorrow, April 21 at Book Court, 7pm.
After two lively events in the Bay Area, I am happy to celebrate Tiny in Brooklyn.

BOOKCOURT
163 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(718) 875.3677
www.BookCourt.org

tiny tonight and tomorrow

Exciting news. I'm here in the Bay Area for two book signings, one on each side of the bay, for Tiny Houses. Join me for one or both!

Tonight! Tuesday, April 7 at Builder's Booksource in Berkeley and tomorrow, Wednesday, April 8 at Rare Device in San Francisco. Tuesday's signing will also feature a lecture/conversation about the little abodes.

Here are the details:

Builder's Booksource
Tuesday, April 7
7:30pm - 9:00pm
1817 Fourth Street (Near Hearst)
Berkeley, CA

Rare Device
Wednesday, April 8
6:00pm - 8:00pm
1845 Market Street
San Francisco, CA

More info on Apartment Therapy.

Also, I got chatted up at Dwell.com last week.

Look forward to seeing you.

urban fabric

Funded by Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, Kathryn Pannepacker’s Wall of Rugs No. 1 represents textile traditions from 42 countries and cultures. Her assistants on the project were Angela Crafton, Theodore Harris and Michael Schwartz. (Photo by Anna Wolf.)

I visited Philadelphia for the first time back in February. On assignment for American Craft magazine, I met with textile artist Kathryn Pannepacker. The day we drove around North Philly was frigid, but Kathryn is one of the warmest people I've had the pleasure of meeting. When we stopped to look at her mural pieces, she'd say hello to people who passed us on the street. Pannepacker's Wall of Rugs are woven into the community, illustrations of history, culture, and technique.

Here's a bit:

A loaded paintbrush in hand, the artist Kathryn Pannepacker crouches down and applies a black stroke to a steel panel. It’s a late afternoon in January, and it’s starting to snow. The welcoming glow of the Sunoco mini-mart and the car wash’s green neon signs cut through the gathering dusk. She finishes the touch-up on her Wall of Rugs #2 mural (Jordon now reads Jordan), rights her tall frame and surveys Philadelphia’s Broad and Lehigh Streets. Kitty-corner is the empty Botany 500 building, the apparel company’s brick edifice, a commemorative remnant of a once-booming garment district. Throughout the early part of the 20th century, Philadelphia was famous for its textiles—silk hosiery, men’s suits and wool carpets.

Pannepacker knows this intersection well. Over summer and fall she worked daily on the 115-foot-long mural—each of the 18 diamond plate steel panels, which separate the roadway from the train tracks, represents a textile from a different country. Her Wall of Rugs #1, located on two corners at the intersection of Girard and Belmont Avenues, was completed in 2005. Five hundred feet long, the seven-foot-high hand-painted mural ambitiously features over 40 countries. Both artworks were commissioned and funded by the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, an organization dedicated to making art accessible to a general public and the force behind the 2,800 murals that can be found dotting the city’s landscape.

North Philly is a gritty neighborhood, and a cold winter day amplifies a certain desolation. But beyond the debris and weathered buildings there’s life and a diverse culture. Pannepacker’s mural is not an urban ills cleanup campaign. Local stories are woven into the Wall of Rugs project. A Sunoco employee brought Pannepacker a photograph of an embroidered fabric from his native Bangladesh. Adam Alli, a West African artist who works long hours at the car wash, keeps an eye on the mural, and suggested Niger’s black-and-tan printed patterns. Designs from Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Mongolia show up in Wall of Rugs #2, each linked to a person who stopped to talk to Pannepacker about her work. Used as floor or wall coverings, rugs have historically marked out space, both domestic and spiritual—nomadic tents lined with kilim carpets or cathedrals hung with tapestries. In Pannepacker’s hands, a global collection of rugs makes a windswept thoroughfare feel more like home.

Keep reading.