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ISSN 0160-0699

Volume 29, No. 2, Jun 2006

Artist Books - Review

Most of the books reviewed here are available at Printed Matter, at 195 10th Ave. (between 21st and 22nd St.), New York, NY 10011. www.printedmatter.org

LITTLE BOOKS

Office Taste by Vesny Pavlovic and Casey Smith (Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro, Skart, 2005, $5.00 paper) is the result of several years of research and documentation conducted by the two artists of the One Chase Manhattan Plaza building in lower Manhattan, its architecture and art collection. Images taken during this research were shown in an exhibit in January 2006 at Fusebox Gallery (www.fuseboxdc.com) There are beautiful color photographs of the corporate interiors, meeting rooms, elevator banks, corner offices and cubicles which accompany text relevant to David Rockefeller’s program of art acquisition for the building, including an interview with the former curator of the Chase collection. Another text included is titled “Bartleby’s Musings” after Herman Melville’s novella Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853). These college students imagined Bartleby inhabiting the well-appointed and emotionally detached modern office spaces of the project’s photographs by Pavlovic. The statements throughout by Rockefeller and other art maven show an attitude about corporate art and its placement.

Tarea: el norte by Cristobal Lehyt (Santiago, Chile, Galeria Metropolitana, 2003, $5.00) is an accumulation of found photographs from TV, found drawings, news photographs, drawings and diagrams, doodles and ephemera which reflect the Chilean society and its politics. The diagrams seem to be vaporous, invisible linear depictions of Chilean life as if they were drawn on vellum. A haunting wordless booklet about Chile.

Paul Chan/Martha Rosler: Between Artists (New York, A.R.T., 2006, $13.95 softbound) documents the inter-generational thoughts of two politically active artists whose paths have crisscrossed major currents in the art world and the political sphere. Chan, an animator who does drawings, and Rosler, the renowned political activist who uses found photographs, collage and ephemera, converse beyond the interesection of art making and socio-political involvement to share thoughts on boredom, films, bodily suffering, Bertold Brecht, Chris Marker, and the Passion of The Christ (film).

A.R.T. Press’ Between Artists series pairs established artists with developing artists whose work shares similar formal and conceptual concerns. The resulting conversations comprise books that offer straightforward, intimate investigations of artwork and related sources of interest. Founded by the deceased Wiilliam Bartman, the series is a tribute to his love of conversation. Liam Gillick/Lawrence Weiner: Between Artists (New York, A.R.T., 2006, $10.95 softbound) is a conversation between the two textual installation artists that focuses on continuing critical hot button issues. Unhindered in addressing thorny topics, Gillick and Weiner talk about the social function of art, artworld egos, viewer responsibilities, and art education.

Bob Dylan Ain’t Got no Home in this World Anymore by Jaret Penner (Zurich, Nieves, 2006, $7.50 paper) is an offshoot of Nieves’ zine featuring the drawings of Wiinnipeg native, Jaret Penner, a member of the artist collective Humanfive. Inside, a number of frazzled appearing individuals navigate a world with spontaneous fires, gnomes, and a banana phone. All of this is done in quickly animated drawing techniques.

A Brighter Future than the Ones We Had Before by Basim Magdy (Cairo, PhotoCairo3, 2005, $10.00 softbound) is a handsewn journey through a futuristic world, half drawn, half-photographed, with men in spacesuits, others in gorilla masks, almost with an E.T. syndrome mixed in with real conflict, not peace. This is an initiative of the Townhouse Gallery of contemporary art and the Contemporary Image Collective.

Dream On by Marianne Rinderknecht and Basim Hagdy (St. Gallen, Neve Kunst Halle St. Gallen, 2004, $20.00 softbound) takes the form of a children’s sticker activity book using pixilated aliens and spaceships for placement in improvised narratives of intergalactic battles. There are splashes of color interspersed with bubbles floating through landscapes populated by cartoon aliens, who appear plucked from a candy-colored version of the arcade game Space Invaders or recent animated films by Aoshima in Japan.. This book was published to coincide with the exhibition Dream on-Marianne Rinderknecht and Basim Magdy at the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Cairo and the Neue Kunst Halle St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Johan by Ari Marcopolous was published on the occasion of “An Ongoing Low-Grade Mystery” curated by Bob Nickas at the Paula Cooper Gallery in May 2006. Printed on hot-pink paper, the portrait of the young man, Johan with a photo of a gun in front of him pervades the other pages of other friends, some incapacitated. The mystery continues.

This is a Paper Trinket for You to Wear by David Shrigley (Toronto, Bywater Bros. Editions, 2006, $15.00 softbound) done in the same naive graphic style of writing with one’s left hand or in a coloring book in which the artist draws a sentence or thought with black marking pen that pops into his mind–using the vernacular, he warns, cajoles, prods and then pauses, making you think about what he has just told you or asked you or order you to do.

Chart Sensation by Michael Lewy is a series of Powerpoint-projected charts which are tongue-in-cheek smart-alecky, wise, humorous and oftentimes melancholic meditations observed in the abstract graphic lingo of science and commerce. Flowcharts of shapes and dotted lines map out nebulous relationships between philosophical navigation of desire versus expectations and pre-destination versus freewill. From malaise to failure with freewill in-between, the book reaches an apex when comparing two pyramids examining the structures of failure and success, framing the progression toward money or poverty as the only choice between being an idealistic individual or just another cog in the wheel. There is one typo in the book (“drugery” should be “drudgery” )but Lewy does it all very well. Because it speaks in a graphic language known to many who use current technology, its color and graphic qualities speak universally. Sometimes a picture speaks louder than lots of sentences. (Atlanta, J & L Books, 2003, $16.00 softbound)

PHOTOGRAPHY

Pink Rose Suite by Ninagawa Mika (Tokyo, Editions Treville, 2004, 4th printing, $33.00 softbound) is another in a series of super color saturated double-page spreads under a holographic cover covering the world in its everyday places, people and actions as well as directing our views toward flowers, nuns, cars, swimmers, MacDonalds and so much more. Includes hot pink and chartreuse bookmarks. It allows the reader/viewer to create one’s own narrative and one’s own journey in luscious color.

Liquid Dreams by Ninagavwa Mika (Tokyo, Editions Treville, 2003, $43.00 softbound) is another in a series of super color saturated double-page spreads under a holographic cover with koi flitting around a circular pool. The photos of the koi inside get larger and larger in luscious color.

Strangers/vol. 1 by Futoshi Miyagi (Brooklyn, 2005, $12.00 softbound) presents the artist in photographic tableaux with met he met through the Internet, meetings in bars, and referrals. The artist creates intimate scenes between himself and his subjects in these strangers’ apartments as an opportunity to investigate his self-proclaimed identity crisis regarding the “incessant interrogations on my sexuality and my seemingly hopeless shyness.” A kind-of-visual coming of identity journal. www.fmiyagi.com

Strangers/vol. 2 by Futoshi Miyagi (Brooklyn, 2006, $15.00 softbound) is another in this work-in-progress with more photographs and including the postcard accompanying the book asking if you would be willing to take him to your apartment and photograph him in strangers’ apartments.

Shoot no. 4 by Paul Sepuya is a special edition of Sepuya’s occasional magazine featuring black and white photographs of a young man named Dean. It comes with a signed and numbered color print in an edition of 150. (Brooklyn, 2005, $15.00 softbound) Killing Time in Paradise by Harvey Benge (Cologne, Schaden.com, 2005, $31.00 softbound signed and numbered) opens with images of an elk wandering past an outdoor café table and an airline boarding pass, color photos detail the highways and byways of an urban nomad through such markers as airplanes in the sky, finished meals, billboard advertisements, waiting rooms, spectators at sporting events, etc. Take in a range of exposure times, the photos are printed in heavy saturation on glossy paper giving a cinematic feeling to the visual narrative. Travel seems to be the theme of this individual, but open-ended travelogue.

Jubilee by Ted Fair (Atlanta, J & L Books, 2002, $20.00 hardback) is a glorious book of landscapes, interiors, people, domestic settings, cornstalks, people and horses romping through the pages–real and unreal–with two pages of quotes from the Civil War to the World Series

Alpine Star by Ron Jude (Ithaca, NY, A-Jump Books, 2006, $20.00 softbound) is a series of images from The Star News, a local newspaper in McCall, Idaho to sequence without text. The images are reprinted using stochastic screening, a frequency modulation technique similar to conventional halftone printing that uses mathematical values to generate random density patterns. The printing method heightens awareness of the original source of the images, yet the visual language of notable people and events takes on a cryptic semiotic system when plucked from their newsworthy contexts. Blond twin toddlers in neck braces, a black bear’s domestic appearance, flooded riverbanks as well as a group of children in rain ponchos–all seem poignant photos at the time, capturing a microworld dynamic for a moment of news, but universal in experiences.

The Ice Plant is a new publishing house which deals with photography:

Scorpio by Mike Slack (Los Angeles, Ice Plant,2006, $30.00 hardbound, dist. by d.a.p.) is a series of 41 color polaroids covering skyscapes, stray dogs, architecture, a wastebasket with “Scorpio” imprinted upon it to give title to the book, murals, wall stencils and much more, giving a visual narrative to an urban scene. Just when you thought no film would ever be used again, the genius Dr. Edward Land’s invention, the SX-70, is used with poetic results. The sequencing is intentional, although it seems to be intuitive. Slack has talent!

Ok Ok Ok by Mike Slack (Los Angeles, Ice Plant, 2006, $30.00 hardbound, dist. by d.a.p.) is a reprint of a book which quickly sold out in 2002, published by J&L Books. It is a series of beautifully composed, quietly moving color photographs of nameless places and close-up abstractions, all seemingly unique but tied together in some strangely beautiful manner to make a whole. Mike Slack is a poet with the camera, sequencing these Polaroids like a dream finding similarities but perhaps in a different world. A must!

Raising Frogs for $ $ $ by Jason Fulford (Los Angeles, The Ice Plant, 2006, $35.00 clothbound, dist. by d.a.p.) is selected from the artist’s archives, taken between 1997 and 2005 in various countries., and divided into eight chapters with simple statements that assist the reader in understanding the selection of images. They can be read as a game, a series of essays, an abstract visual narrative or all of the above. According to the artist, “the intention of this edit and layout is to create as many relatoinships as possible between the pictures as well as the chapters.” He allows for chance to create the unpredictable after planning out the layout meticulously. Editing the images almost intuitively so that the final arrangement becomes a glue to bring them together from mountain vistas to house corner compositions. Using th square format as a framing device to transform linear and surface appearances, the rhythm of the book shows patterning and depth as shaped by light, turning flowering branches into wallpaper patterns while building tiles take on a sculptural elegance. We open on a steel plate pocked with round holes on the street leading to the last image of a burned out bullet-ridden car with a spectrum of hazy afternoon landscapes and coolly detached interiors sandwiched between them. There is a quiet poetic rhythm throughout the selection, that allows you to see thumbnail prints of all the images with captioned locations and years they were photographed. Fulford co-founded J& L Books, and has created dust jackets for many a famous authors.

On the Game: Bisnisjongens by Rob Philip (Amsterdam, 2006, $20.00 softbound) is a beautiful photographic investigation of male prostitues in the Netherlands, the artist having wanted to find out what existed between the media stereotypes of either drug-addled street hustlers and immaculate pretty boys resting in Baroque bedrooms. Thanks to an Anna Cornelis Foundation grant, the photographs are splendidly printed in-between sealed pages of floral wallpaper, a little hint of being a voyeur in discovering the facts. The pages are perforated along the edges, allowing the reader/viewer to tear them to access the private images in a process that heightens the feeling of peeking in on the private lives of many men in the Netherlands. www.robphilip.com

Wilderness by Misha de Ridder (Amsterdam, Artimo, 2003, $42.00 softback) contains two wall-size reproductions: front and back both 64.5 x 82.1 inches, including magnificent seasonal photographs of Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Lushly photographed flora isolated in nature alternate with enlarged details from the wilderness compositions that emphasize the four-color separation methods used in commercial printing. The detail pages encourage quiet views of undeveloped nature where tree bark ridges and layered flowing branches become organic patterns. The book’s pages are perforated for easy removal as the included images can be assembled to create two wall-sized installations.

Paper Placemats, edited by Jason Fulford, Leanne Shapton and Matt Singer (Atlanta, J & L Books, 2004, $25.00)were originally conceived and distributed as a public art project. Representing 40 different works by artists, photographers and writers that can be ripped out and enjoyed for their own beauty or under a tasty meal, they can be viewed or read with the novel approach of artist-conceived placemats with such names as Jason Fulford, Alex Romero, Gilbert Sorrentino, Paul West and Lloyd Ziff, among many more.

PUBLISHER TURNS PHOTOGRAPHER

Armin W.P. Hundertmark, noted for decades as Fluxus and German avant-garde publisher of artist books, has become a photographer on the island of Las Palmas, as well as a publisher. The first book is La Gente de Gran Canaria, an album of people on the Canary Islands, from a shoemaker to a fish lady, to musicians and barbers, to Elvis impersonators to chess players. The photos are beautiful, representing the common touch. (Las Palmas, Editorial Atlantico, 2005/2006, 16 Euros). Address is: Plaza Ing. Manuel Becerra 1, 12A, E-35008 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.

Tiendas is an album of color photos about shops in the Canaries. From grain shops to food shops, ladies wear to pastries, paper shops, pastry, bakery, to pet shops and butchers. 16 Euros from Editorial Atlantico.

Pescadores y Puertos by Hundertmark is a series of photos of fisherman at different ports in the Canaries, including Melenara, San Cristobal and Mogan, among others. All of these are in an edition of 400. 16 Euros.

GENERAL

Saint Ghetto of the Loans: Grimoire by Gabriel Pomerand, translated by Michael Kapser and Bhamati Viswanathan (Brooklyn, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006 (Lost Literature Series #1), $14.00 softbound is a reprint of the legendary but little seen masterpiece of French book art from 1950, by the Lettrist Gabriel Pomerand. The prose poem text appears in segments on the left-hand pages (bilingually, in this edition) and its French words and syllables are represented visually by dazzling rebuses on the pages facing, emphasizing language as writing. This is the mother of graphic novels (much before they were tagged and emphasized) a novel-in-pictographs-and-verse, much like the techniques of the Situationists. Known largely in recent years by reproductions of a handful of intriguing pages, this reprise includes a fine translation and an insightful afterword by Michael Kasper putting the text and author in their cultural and historical context. Pomerand introduces the book and “dreams of a book of mysteries equal to the arrogance and serenity in faces carved on pharaohs’ mummies. This verbo-visual poetry takes the reader on adventures through postwar Paris’ seedy and troubled streets, introducing the reader to the characters that inhabit them and the political, social, and cultural worlds that bind them.

The visual narrative is derived form a variety of signs and symbols that resemble a modern-day hieroglyphic, including Hebrew letters, diagrams, maps, symbols and views of the city in spelling and drawing fashions of the day. These visual icons correspond to and play on the narrative’s French text and its accompanied English translation. This book’s mythic status is largely due to Greil Marcus’ influential history of punk, Lipstick Traces. Including 47 picture-poems accompanied by a bilingual text on the facing pages, this publication inaugurates Ugly Duckling Presse’s “Lost Literature Series” which seeks to publish forgotten works of 20th Century experimental poetry and prose. This is a must!

I’m Starting to Feel Okay by Stefan Marx (Zurich, Nieves, 2006, $20.00 softbound) is a joyful book of drawings in color giving the finger to death and destruction with cryptic line drawings and watercolor icons of emotion. 29,000 Brains by Andrew Jeffrey Wright (Zurich, Nieves, 2006, $7.00 softbound) is a black and white zine full of drawings of aliens, a public message bearing Furby, this zine-like booklet contains drawings that are child-like at times with peaceful protests and potty humor in a street-savvy style. A wonderful series of drawings of hands done in various media (as indicated) shows finesse.

The American War by Harrell Fletcher and J& L Books (Atlanta, J & L Books, 2006, $15.00 hardback) is the result of Fletcher having been invited for an international artists’ retreat in Vietnam in June, 2005. When he was there, he visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, which is a memorial for what is referred to in Vietnam as The American War. He was so affected by what he saw that he returned many times and eventually photographed all of the images and text descriptions from the main museum (well over 200 photos). Using his digital camera and taking shots hand held at off angles to avoid reflections. The images seem casual, as a result, but are still accurate representations of the material exhibited in the museum, with a similarly horrifying quality. He then printed the photographs and exhibited them at various venues through the U.S. as a sort of representation of the material he encountered in Vietnam. This book represents about half of all the pictures in the museum’s main exhibition hall. We think it is timely that Fletcher divulges this “American War” when there is another “American War” in Iraq. The photos are not pleasant to see nor do the captions help us to accept what we are looking at. This is probably a manifesto for peace.

The Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art Book by Jason Polan (Franklin, MI, 2005, $20.00 softbound) is a large bookwork containing a drawing of every piece of art on display at MOMA from January 19 through 30 January 2005 section by section as he records the art in graphic doodles, accompanied by distilled notations of arts and work titles. Most of the drawings are thumbnail, although some perspective is respected, so that equal weight is given a Charles Eames chair and a Swatch watch. One realizes how large a collection MOMA has and how much time it would take to see everything well, let alone absorb everything.

1896-2012 by Francine Zubell (Marseille, Editions la Fabrique Sensible, 2006, ed.300, $43.00 softbound) recollects the meeting of the Olympic Summer Games since 1896. On the front and back covers is an image of the parade of the opening of the games of 1936, appearing to be a mechanical aspect of the gesture. The book opens and closes with 16 imaged pages. Then the image is enlarged in the positive at the beginning and negatively at the end of the book. The internal pages, all of vellum, have the date and a city’s name and the number of the Olympiad: red indicates that the sequence was broken because of the unexpected–a bomb, the war, etc.

In each of the 300 books, an editor’s penciled comment prposing names of athletes, a fact, t he number of men and In each of the 300 books, an editor’s penciled comment prposing names of athletes, a fact, t he number of men and women having participated in the games…Each bit of information permits the reader to rediscover a fact, a story, mediated information: a memory that everyone can take to his or her own. An extremely beautiful creation.

Zig Zag Spirit by Anna Fro Vodder (Copenhagen, SpacePoetry, 2005, $10.00 paper) is a collection of drawings done with wash, magazine images, and color book excerpts with reoccurring motifs of food, houses and children., and done with fresh simplicity.

Version Coloring Book: Livre de Coloriagi (Cluj Napoca, Romania, 2005, dist by onestarpress, Paris, $18.00 paper) is fun for kids between 5 and 101 including puzzles, coloring techniques, quizzes, coloring in imaginary world maps, and a variety of subjects to color as well. The language is English, although this is an outgrowth of a collaborative of Rumanian artists who founded Version in 2001. The collaborators have written essays with wonderful notes, and a section of The Void by George Perec. A delightful coloring book, unique in its own way. And the back cover has a surprise as well!

Doctor Dogwit’s Second Book of Transitive Aspects by Gary Richman (Exeter, RI, 2006, n.p.) is another in a series of limited edition (100 copies only) offset books (this is the 20th) serving as autobiographical publications where collage and image and text are assembled to continue Richman’s lifetime publishing program and exploration into self. Using found images for collage, the coalescing of connections brings new insights into human psychology and relationships.

LIMITED EDITIONS

Open Heart Surgery by Michael Peven (Fayetteville, AR, Primitive Press, 2006, $250.00, ed. 49 dist. by vampandtramp.com) is the saga of the artist’s heart surgery in 2002. It is a kind of “primer” on the subject, but done in an aesthetic, finely tuned, and beautifully structured way. As you open the book, it becomes a metaphor of that brutal opening up of the chest, showing the progress of the chest from healthy and hairy progressively to more injured with the obvious scar against little hair and being held together with steri-strips and staples against a naked chest. Using X-rays and the angiogram, the journey goes into the heart itself and beyond. This is not an easy book, either from the point of the subject matter or the masterful construction which demands that you interact with the pages.

The book is bound on the left and right sides and pages generally open in the middle through a series of more and more complex methods. You feel that Peven is testing you, making it difficult, and even experiencing this kind of slow-motion film that allows you to see what CSI shows you in 5 seconds. But he has thought this out and made the book challenging for him as well as for the reader/viewer. For instance, there is a “fringe” made to the approximate scale and shape of th steristrips or undoing a metal twist tie on the image of the sternum (after seeing the patient’s in the X-ray on the previous page). The imagery is genuine, an anatomy lesson that I am sure the artist never wanted, but at least he can share it with us. The book is a tribute to survival, to making something beautiful out of something rather traumatic and devastating, but the artist in Peven overcomes the patient in Peven and we touch and feel the skin, the wounds, the sutures and know with great simulation what he went through.

Completely handmade, paperback with stiff board, the first edition is 49 copies with two more editions to following, for a total of 101 books. 14 pages, 7¼ x 8½”, inkjet prints on enhanced matte paper with waxed linen thread, craft wire, staples and PVA. Available from M. Peven, 116 FNAR, Art Dept., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701-1201 or from Vamp and Tramp.

PolygamyLand by Tom Trusky describes itself as a “Panorama Book.” The 16.5 foot-long ink-jet printed accordion fold work consists of color panoramic photographs and diary captions by the author, Tom Trusky, relating to his disturbing journey to polygamous communities in Utah and Arizona. Photographs and captions appear on one side of the unfolded text block. The reverse side contains informative extracts about Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) printed atop screened layers of various-sized Deseret Alphabet letterforms. The copyright title listed for the work is in the Deseret Alphabet, an alphabet created by and for early members of the Latter-Day Saints church and not in use since circa 1870 . Should readers be unfamiliar with Deseret, the author has reproduced on the back cover endpaper a translation chart. The book is 5 7/8 x 12 ½”; publication date: 1 September 2006. Ed.: 5 copies. $125 from Painted Smiles Press, P.O. Box 6414, Boise, ID 83707.

PERIODICALS

Soft Targets, vol. 1, no. 1 is a handheld journal of poetry, artwork, criticism, short fiction, found images, sound, and other ephemera. Its testimonials come from Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Walter Benjamin, and Friedrich Engels. Soft targe is a military term referring to an unarmored or otherwise unprotected object to be destroyed. Organized by virtue of its “offices”, the group comes from Canada and can be seen at www.softtargetsjournal.com There are many poems and excerpts from Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. but always in the original language side-by-side with its translation. Included are such inserts as a Friendly Fire Log, or License to Live Valid for One Year. Authors range from Kafka, Dennis Cooper, Benjamin Weissman and many, many more from all ethnic groups. $10.00 softbound

TurboMag by Adrien Horni, no. 20 (August 2005) is entitled the Life of Grégory Piaget. Each double page is a collage of newspaper headlines and other copies of periodicals surrounded by scrappy creatures cutting hair, doing drugs, playing guitar, watching TV, landing in jail, and somehow surviving in these mysterious (largely because of the language barrier) pages. $3.00

Die Böhm is a photography-project by Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber, and this number is the Osaka Issue. Published in Dusseldorf, the information about the project is at http://www.frau-boehm.de The two artists were in residence in Osaka, inviting photographers, artists, friends to take part in this photographic blog. Hisako Nakagawa was the first artist they exhibited in the guestroom of the Bohm Trade Center, and she was guest artist in Dusseldorf in 2005. The myriad of photographers were invited to post a picture to the blog, a photo connected to the previous picture by way of an opposite, a challenge, a formal context or a similar topic. This makes a collection of many candid shots of Osaka.

Lovely Daze, 2 is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. This second issue, “Take a Stroll”, inspired by pre-Socratic philosophers, takes a fleet away from daily routines through earth, water, and air. In this beautifully designed periodical, the texts and images are so beautifully meshed that the journal serves as a springboard for mental journeys through a varied and technically different series of images and words. The journal, handsewn, also contains a little artist booklet by Cristina Rodriguez sewn into the binding–and so many other ventures in tripping away from those daily chores! Biographies of each contributor at the end. (New York, C. Tsai, 2006, $18.00) and well worth it!

D magazine 01, ed. by Yane Calovski, (Skopje, Macedonia, 2006, $18.00 paper) is an annual magazine about drawing, but this issue has evolved through producing and engaging in exhibitions with like-minded institutions, so the magazine serves as a kind of curatorial and publishing platform for collaborative investigations, defining and constructing the main texts of this issue in the process. From comics to full-page drawings, the variety and pervasive presence of drawing in the canon is made manifest. There is an homage to a little magazine, a coloring book that is hilarious, and a real experience of learning new things about drawing thanks to this journal. It is a gem.

Mixed Greens (issue no. 5) includes an interview with Katie O’Neill, a contemporary art collector in New York City. There is also a profile of Adia Millett, who constructs and then photographs miniature domestic spaces. Other artists in the stable are presented in double pages: Stas Orlovski, Leah Tinari, Joan Linder, Mark Mulroney, Howard Fonda, Rob Nadeau, Rob Conger, and others. Included is an interview with Jessica Hough, Curatorial Director at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT. Mixed Greens is a group of artists who decided to open up a gallery and print a journal in New York City. Info@mixedgreens.com Or visit at 531 West 26th St., 1st flr., New York, NY 10001.