Never Press is an independent publishing house that is based in Pasadena, California. They boast art books that feed the curiosity of the artists involved with the projects. From the works I saw, that is most definitely the case.

While the titles and styles of the individual books in Never Press vary, their stories weave around an abstracted reality. Tangibly, there is an impeccable craftsmanship of their books.

Never Press has rethought the idea of a book with some special touches. Fold-out covers, DVD accompaniments, and the format of a story is challenged and produced.

I really enjoyed the illustrations and animations with Saejean Oh and Anna Topuriya. Gingerly drawn, Life Tips From a Man Who is Very Afraid of Life tells a story of fears and situations that can debilitate someone’s existence. From this book, the man who is very afraid of life is scared of many things, smiling crowds included.

It’s a nice contrast… the idea of being afraid paired with these beautiful and rather unassuming drawings.

Core Samples by Nick Arciaga is a really nice book to look at. The pages are lush, full of color and texture with a handpulled silkscreen cover. As a viewer, you experience the adventurers’ view of space, operations, and tools of the trade. It is a lot of fun.

I thought Home by James Chong was a unique way to experience a story and also lent itself to experiencing it over and over again. The 12 pages are not bound, but prints! You can leaf through or hang them on your wall. If you choose the latter option, you could reread and re-experience every time you pass by.

A Singer Songwriter by Gabe Gonzales contains a myriad of portraits with a silver holographic-esque cover that folds out!

Post Compost, with contributions from artists James Chong, Nick Arciaga, Gabe Gonzales, Mark Ingram, and Jesse Fillingham plays on the idea of the title. Despite different visual languages, overall the book speaks to a future world and how it has shifted and deals with things left behind. Some of it is pretty grotesque, in which I would not expect anything less.

Thanks to Never Press for sending me so much great stuff to look and read!

So ya’ll know I am in grad school? It’s finals time, and I’ve had to cut back posts to one a day to deal with the large ends that need to be tied.

Moving on, though! This past semester in MICA’s Illustration Practice program, the Advanced Publishing Workshop with Jaime Zollars came together to create Balmoral Books, a small press that embraces the eccentric and unconventional book.

Everyone involved in the class was responsible for conceiving of a book and producing 25 copies. Whew! To showcase these books, our class is having a debut party at Atomic Books, apart of Hampden’s First Fridays. If you are around, come by and see the books and chat with us! I produced Collage in a Box. Then, go eat at Golden West or Grano!

Atomic Books
3620 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21211

Graduate Students in MICA’s Advanced Publishing course have come together under the name Balmoral Books to produce a collection of unique, unconventional publications. Using the concept of ‘re-imagining books’ as a springboard, each artist produced an edition of 25 hand-constructed books.

From animations to accordion books, the surprising variety of approaches highlights the creative diversity of the group. As mainstream publishing shifts away from experimental projects, Balmoral Books embraces the impractical and indulges the eccentric, believing that the most interesting ideas are always a little off-center.

Free, Refreshments Served

Artists:

Nargol Arefi
Sara Barnes
Cheng Cao
DingDing Hu
Cen Jun
Luiz Ludwig
Lisa Perrin
Branden Rush
Aehee Shin
Jess Somers
Su Tong
Yuanjin Wei
Jennifer Yoo

While one could get weirded out by the headless people, her paintings are super charming and far enough out of the realm of realism to be normal in her painted world.

I really want to hold this book in my hands and spend some time with it, inches away from my face.

All images via her Flickr. Check out her blog as well.

The kind folks over at OCW Magazine sent me their latest issue, Counterparts. OCW Magazine is a biannually-produced publication whose focus is the cultivation of art and culture.

This issue marks the transtion into a biannual interdiscipliary art project. On page nine of the visuals booklet (the white, heavier bound book), the curatorial vision for OCW Magazine is outlined. The theme counterparts is described:

The “counterparts” theme was inspired by our choice to abandon a one-format-fits-all approach and publish the visual artwork and the literary work in separate booklets. This allowed us more influence on the ways in which readers would experience each discipline, as written and visual work privilege different types of interaction — reading versus looking.

In each book, the idea of the complement is explored in different ways. With prose (in the smaller bound book), there is a key (guide) at the front of the book to help the viewer match which writing is related to another. In the artwork’s case, it is the pairing of the images in individual spreads, and how you transition through the book.

In terms of visuals, OCW features artists that I love — Andrea Wan, Jessica Bell, and Tom Moglu all make work I find inspiring and always welcome to see. It also showcased other artists I was not familiar with, such as Patrick Cruz and Niky Roehreke, that I will be doing a bit more research on.

Andrea Wan and Malin Bergstrom




Tom Moglu and Brendan George Ko

The choice of the colored paper was an interesting one, and made a nice surprise upon opening the book. It put the images on a level playing field, and manipulated them in a sense — the way in which images were printed stripped them of their obvious media choices — some works what I thought might be paintings were actually c-prints upon closer examination!

Hannah Putz


Jessica Bell


Patrick Cruz


Niky Roehreke

OCW is produced out of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. I would recommend picking up a copy through their online store! They also run Project Space, which is a book shop, publisher, programming space, and studio. It’s another thing I will have to check out if I am ever in Vancouver.

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How do you describe the earliest visual memories you have? I’ve been recently thinking about some of these memories, like the illustrations from books that I read and reread as a kid. Or how I used to sit in the car and stare at the scenery going by or watch the rain drops slip down the glass and make blobs. I even recall staring at the wood grain in the kitchen and bathroom cabinets and making out little characters or faces. I’m going to bring up some of the books that influenced me as kid. It’s the strangest thing how the images from these books are still embedded in my brain!

Now if only I had kept the books…

If You Made a Million by David M Schwartz, illustrated by Steven Kellogg

Lon Po Po by Ed Young

Tikki Tikki Tembo retold by Arlene Mosel, illustrated by Blair Lent

The Magic School Bus: Inside the Human Body by Joanna Cole, illustrated by Bruce Degen

The Magic School Bus: On the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole, illustrated by Bruce Degen

The lovely folks at Museums Press contacted me recently to introduce themselves, and I am so glad they did. Museums Press is a Manchester-based independent publishing house that prints zines, books, and also offers individual prints from artists on an international level.

Matthew and Jessica of Museums Press are excited about what they put forth, and it shows in the quality of what they published. They seem to be equally jazzed about everything that comes out, and what a great attitude to have, no? A lot of the artists whose work they publish has been featured on Brown Paper Bag before, too!

Upcoming releases include Kelly Lynn Jones’s book (of Little Paper Planes fame) and a book by the awesome Keith Jones. (Both available for preorder at this time).

All images via the Museums Press website.

Ryan de la Hoz




Matthew Feyld






Matthew Walkerdine and Jessica Higgins

Lizzy completed the illustrations for Toska after two weeks in January spent with inhuman activity. The concept for the book is based on a quote by Vladimir Nabokov:

No single word in English renders all the shades of ‘Toska’. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vauge restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for something, of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest levels it grades into ennui, boredom.”

–Vladimir Nabokov

Lizzy started her book off with this quote, and upon reading it really set the tone for the entire thing. Looking at the images she had drawn, one does really get the feeling of toska. I spent some serious time with this during a gray morning, and the feelings conveyed in Lizzy’s illustrations were something that I could relate to. Isolation, meandering, contemplation — all what I gathered from this beautiful book.

There was some serious care taken into the construction of this book. Heavy weighted paper and high printing quality make this something precious. Below are some of my favorite spreads out of ‘Toska’:

I found Lizzy’s work so relatable that my original intention with this entry was to take sort of my own form of toska, but to juxtapose her drawings with my urban neighborhood, matching photos with images in the book. Unfortunately it just couldn’t come together, but one image (of my supplies) is a take on a spread:

You can buy the book in Lizzy’s Etsy store. I would highly recommend you do this!

Thanks, Lizzy!

If you have a pub­li­ca­tion, book, etc., that you’d like me to review, email me! I’d love to talk.

All images via Fine Line.

Nancy Aguilar.


Javier Pinon.

Image courtesy of The Paper Crane.

Dee Clements, artist and director of The Paper Crane, contacted me recently to let me know of their new venture. The Paper Crane is branching out from not only a works-on-paper studio, but to artist books and small press. They are currently accepting submissions for their collection. Find out a bit more below (via Dee):

The Paper Crane has begun a small press and artist books pop-up library at the stu­dio. We are now except­ing sub­mis­sions and col­lec­tions. If you would like to donate your artist book, zine, cat­a­log, jour­nal, art paper, mag­a­zine or small press pub­lished work please send an email to info@thepapercrane.com be sure to include our your name, con­tact infor­ma­tion, the title of you work, its sub­ject along with a brief descrip­tion of the work and the names of any co-authors, edi­tors and publishers.

If you would like to sub­mit a col­lec­tion of books or printed mate­ri­als please also email info@thepapercrane with a mes­sage that includes a descrip­tion of your col­lec­tion with titles/authors and sub­ject as well as your con­tact information.

The col­lec­tion will be an exten­sion of our stu­dio bindery and exhi­bi­tion space in the form of a pop up library that has a col­lec­tion of rare and small press printed works and one of a kind artist books. Peo­ple will be able to come to The Paper Crane library to study, research and visit our col­lec­tion. Through this endeavor we hope to con­tinue to edu­cate and pro­mote artists, writ­ers, artist books and small press pub­lish­ing. Our first artist Books exhibition opens March 12, 2011 at the space and will fea­ture books made by 26 artists from around the world. The pop up library will be open for your read­ing and see­ing pleasure

So, if you have a zine/book/journal etc., that you think would be a good fit for The Paper Crane, I’d encourage you to look into this!

I like Masha’s style of drawing with her thin, yet confident line. What intrigues me most about this book, however, are the colorless pages. I love that she’s left parts of those images intentionally blank, as to give room for the person coloring to draw as well — to personalize a bit.

All images via her website.