Category: Design

  • Shovelin' USA: The Estrus Records Book Tour Stops at Quimby's, Oct 21st

    Korero Press is happy to announce that a hefty slab of punk rock history is coffee-table-ready: Shovelin’ The Sh!t Since ’87 is a 250+ page book of influential artwork, photographs, interviews and text detailing the history of the legendary garage rock label, Estrus Records. For nearly two decades, Dave Crider’s Bellingham, Washington-based operation churned out hundreds of releases from mainstays in garage, trash, surf, and punk — among them, The Mummies, Man or Astroman?, The Makers, Teengenerate, and Crider’s own Mono Men. And because the imagery associated with Estrus’ releases matched the ferocity of the music, this beast is filled with vivid concert posters, iconic album covers and bizzare oddities created by a handful of elite graphic artists — including visionary Art Chantry, who was behind much of the label’s artwork.

    Author Chris Alpert Coyle and designer Scott Sugiuchi are taking copies of the new book with them on the Shovelin’ USA Tour. Join them here at Quimby’s Bookstore in Wicker Park on Saturday, October 21st beginning at 1pm. The Q&A session with Chet “The Cheetah” Weise (Quadrajets, Immortal Lee Co. Killers), Alex Wald & Marty Perez will be an opportunity for folks to ask questions about the iconic label’s history — and Coyle and Sugiuchi can give insight on what the multiyear project was like.

    The book does not go on sale to the general public until late November, so Quimby’s will be one of the few places people can buy it ahead of time at the event on October 21st!

    FREE EVENT!

    Bios!

    Chris Alpert Coyle is a nomadic music journalist (and serious journalist) whose material has been featured on CBS News, WGN, CBS Radio and The Inlander. As a musician, he has toured much of the United States with two different punk rock combos. As an outside linebacker for the ’79 Pittsburgh Steelers, wait…Different guy, actually. Never mind. Yeah, this guy (above) just writes stuff.

    Scott Sugiuchi has been designing for more than 30 years. Highlights include work for Artisan Films (The Blair Witch Project), the American Film Institute and countless bands, record labels and venues. He is the founder of Hidden Volume Records, a boutique record label with more than 50 releases and is currently the Art Director for Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

    Chet Weise’s poetry and fiction have appeared or been anthologized in publications such as Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days, Birmingham Poetry Review, Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford, Copper Nickel, Peach Mag, and the Rough Trade 40th Anniversary Journal. A musician, too, Weise toured and recorded with groups The Quadrajets and ?the Immortal Lee County Killers?. He was banned from Canada during 2008. Weise currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the editor at Third Man Books and plays guitar in Kings of the Fucking Sea.

    Alex Wald: Painter; illustrator for Estrus Records, Wired, Playboy, Hustler, many more; comic artist and colorist, art director, First Comics; kaiju scholar and collector, Astromonster Co., Ltd. designer and proprietor; blues harp player, ex-Dirty Wurds, Sunnyland Slim, Johnny Young and others; still making coffee.

    Marty Perez is a Chicago-based photographer who has been documenting the parallels between the worlds of underground rock as well as some of the biggest stars of pop music, from 1976 to the present.

    Very important links!

    Facebook Event Post

    instagram.com/estrus_records_book

    facebook.com/estrusrecordsbook

    koreropress.com/estrus-shovelin-the-shit-since-87

    kickstarter.com/projects/estrus/estrus-shovelin-the-shit-since-87

  • Busy Beaver Founder Christen Carter & Co-Author Ted Hake Celebrate BUTTON POWER: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons ONLINE 10/2

    “Social media is today’s most popular platform for self- expression, but the button preceded it as a way to tell others what was on your mind and as a tool to help spread an idea. No other form of wearable expression has yet to replace the humble button – and unlike social media, a button is something you can literally stand behind.” – excerpted from BUTTON POWER: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons by Christen Carter and Ted Hake

    Punch line. Political Statement. Conversation piece. Souvenir. From the campaign trail to the rock tour, BUTTON POWER (Princeton Architectural Press) collects a people’s history of American culture told through the pin-back button. Lively commentary from two of America’s foremost button experts shows how the small but powerful button reveals the events and movements that outraged, amused, and inspired us over time, from the solo flight of Charles Lindbergh to the Black Power movement. In this chaotic time of protests and presidential elections, this book offers a glimpse into the cultural movements that make up our rich history. Artists, athletes, actors, politicians, punk and pop musicians, and mascots of the past 125 years make cameos, including Rube Goldberg, Muhammad Ali, the Ramones, Shirley Chisholm, and Bette Midler. The first book of its kind, BUTTON POWER is a rich visual feast. Each colorful spread chronicles defining moments in history through colorful photographs and artifacts. This collection will be an essential pick for fans of pop culture, visual culture, and design.

    Don’t miss this virtual event celebrating BUTTON POWER: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons by authors Christen Carter and Ted Hake!

    ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
    Christen Carter is the founder of Chicago-based Busy Beaver Button Company and has produced more than 50 million buttons for bands, artists, political campaigns, non-profits and more. In 2010, she started the Button Museum, dedicated to telling American history through pin-back buttons.

    Ted Hake is the founder of Hake’s Auctions, America’s first auction house to specialize in popular culture artifacts. He has written seventeen collectors’ guides that span presidential campaign items, vintage Disneyana, and comic character toys. Ted has received the American Political Items Collectors Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Advisory Board.

    Fri, October 2nd, 7:30PM CST.

    This virtual event will be on the Quimby’s Bookstore’s You Tube Channel: youtube.com/QuimbysBookstore

    Stay tuned to quimbys.com/store for book ordering & swag to accompany your book (!!!) while supplies last.

    NO RSVP necessary.

    Here’s the Facebook Event invite for this event.

    In advance, Christen Carter gave a us a preview of what’s going to happen at the event!:

     

  • Video Game Art Gallery Celebrates the Release of Issue 2 of the VGA Reader at Quimby's, March 9th

    Come join the staff of the Video Game Art Gallery, the editorial board, and their colleagues in celebrating the release of issue 2 of the Video Game Art Reader, a scholarly peer-reviewed art history publication. The VGAR is an attempt to not only deepen the discourse around video games, but to also make it more accessible to the public and inclusive of marginalized voices. The theme for this issue was “survival strategy,” an investigation not just into the defined genre of “survival games,” but the methods by which all games can become tools for conditioning, coping, and creating within the digital world. Issue 2 includes works by Martin Zeilinger writing on the limits of digital performance art, Andrew Bailey examining how exploration of digital spaces can transform understanding of physical ones, Michael Anthony DeAnda investigating the consequences of digital surveillance, Luisa Salvador Dias discussing how video games depict war, Michael Paramo arguing for better representation of queer characters, and Treva Michelle Legassie probing the implications of rendering oneself in a video game. This issue also includes a practitioner statement by Elizabeth LaPensée on her water-protecting side-scroller, Thunderbird Strike, and an interview with the evocative game designer and scholar Anna Anthropy.

    The event will begin at 7pm. Light snacks and refreshments will be served. Copies of the latest VGAR will be available for sale, as will the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 exhibition catalogue, also produced by the VGA Gallery. The event is free and open to the public.

    For more info: 

    vgagallery.com

    mreed(at)vgagallery(dot)com

    facebook event invite here

    Sat, March 9th, 7pm – Free Event

  • Esther K Smith & Dikko Faust show and tell Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type Borders &c & Purgatory Pie Press 4/19

     

    Rustic Bride Mun! The Most Beautiful Book in the World! Esther K Smith & Dikko Faust of Purgatory Pie Press will show and tell William H. Page’s classic book Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, &c.: The 1874 Masterpiece of Colorful Typography.

    Esther K Smith first saw The Most Beautiful Book in the World at Chicago’s Newberry Library. As she turned the pages, she knew she needed to work with a big publisher to reprint the book so that she could own a copy. Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type Borders &c (Rizzoli) is a reprint of WH Page’s 1874 catalog of typography and ink from the exuberant early decades of manufactured color–available to the public for the first time. Page produced the largest and most detailed wood type which he distributed his type all over the world– throughout the US, Europe, and Asia–even Burma. One librarian said that though clothing faded and architecture was repainted, the brilliant inks inside the book retained the vivid intensity of the Victorian era. The text is found poetry which one viewer likened to Gertrude Stein. Smith and Faust will show pages from the book and talk about producing the reprint, working with six original copies in three rare book libraries. And they will discuss their own experience at Purgatory Pie Press, one of the longest running artist presses, printing and designing with wood type. Chromatic Wood Type is an opera of a  book–and the opera it inspired (Soundscapes of Color) premiers April 22 at 6018 North. The composer, Michal Dzitko, will be present and they will show a short clip of the opera-in-progress.

    “Take a wild ride through the polychrome world of nineteenth-century poster type. These letters are slathered with more ink and ornament than a tattooed sailor.” –Ellen Lupton, Senior Curator, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

    “WOW. What a treasure to be saved and savored. And what an insane genius craftsman William H. Page was. this book is as fun to read as it is to look at, with its accidental (or perhaps totally intentional) bits of poetry, decades ahead of its time.” —Chip Kidd,  

    Esther K Smith is the author of the best-selling How to Make Books and Making Books with Kids, which Bank St. Education included in their Best Children’s Books of the Year. Smith collaborates with Dikko Faust making limited editions and artist books at Purgatory Pie Press. Their work is in many collections including the Newberry Library, The Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and London’s V&A.

    For more info:

    Images from the book!
    Specimens-cover
    detail 
    wood type
    page
    another page

    esther(at)purgatorypiepress(dot)com

    purgatorypiepress.com

    Facebook Event Invite for this event.

    Thurs April 19, 7pm – Free Event