Framed by Thumbs

I have an article in the latest issue of Openings: Studies in Book Art, which is now open access and available to read here. Titled 'Framed by Thumbs: Reading Raymond Pettibon', the article looks at drawings from the artist's early zines and places them in their original sequential context. Aspects of the book form continue to haunt Pettibon's work, even as they appear in a variety of settings.

Openings is the journal of the College Book Art Association, and this issue is edited by Inge Bruggeman and features articles by Caren Florance, Emily Larned, and Sharon Helgason Gallagher.

How Many Muses?

Here's the title slide for an artist talk I'm giving this weekend at the biennial College Book Art Association conference in Nashville. It looks at the production methods of medieval European manuscripts and twentieth-century mainstream American comics, and talks about how they inspired my artist's book, Catholics.

Think Kinko's

I participated in a panel last month that explored the intersection between zines and artist's books. The panel was titled Out of the Copy Machine, Into the Streets, and was included as part of the programming at the 2014 College Book Art Association Conference in Salt Lake City. I talked about the general bookishness of the work of Raymond Pettibon, and in particular, the sequencing of the drawings in his early zines. My co-presenters included Alexandra Janezic on the thematic overlap between riot grrrl zines and mass distributed women's comics, and Kalmia Strong on alternative printing techniques used in contemporary zines. The three of us collaborated on a zine where we each generated creative interpretations of our research, then mailed the zine (titled Think Kinko's) to the panel's attendees. My contribution—Pettibon-inspired, calligraphic illustrations—are below.

The Iowa Working Group Archives

I've been working on archives for the Iowa Working Group. The IWG has now hosted a year's worth of book-art-focused presentations followed by casual discussion, and I wanted to make sure they were documented. Check out the latest entry for October: Candice Wuehle and Patrick Reed's The Sacrebleu Defense, which was a performative excerpt variation from their in-progress chapbook. The next IWG meeting will take place Friday, Nov 15, and will feature sneak previews from Iowa students who plan on presenting at the upcoming College Book Art Association conference. To find out more details, sign up for the IWG listserv by emailing iowaworkinggroup at gmail dot com.