Lehrer, co-proprietor of EarSay, has taken a long road of typographer as author and authorial enabler. Moreover, his work is often made for the stage, so the static page is not simply an object but a performative experience.

Lehrer and his wife/EarSay partner, Judith Sloan, are doing a performance/reading from selected books and theater works of theirs at 2:30 p.m. on December 8 at Art New York (520 8th Ave.) in Manhattan. Sloan will be joined by Palestinian American actor and comedian Grace Canahuati. Books will also be available for sale, including This Page is an Occupied Territory. For more info and tickets, click here. And regardless of whether or not you attend, read the Q&A below.

Warren, you’ve been on a publishing fast-track these past years since COVID. What has triggered this continuous vigor in making text and ideas come alive through typography?
About six years ago it dawned on me that I didn’t have to only work on seven- or eight-year long projects that I write (or co-write) and design myself. I started collaborating with poets whose work I adore and who trust my sensibility, visualizing their texts into books and animations. I also stumbled into the realization that not every book had to be 300 or 400 pages (duh!), and I could work on shorter projects while continuing to work on longform ones. Yes, COVID probably had something to do with finding more hours in the day. I lost some dear friends and relatives to COVID, which was heartbreaking. But frankly, like many writers and artists, the pandemic was a hugely productive time to submerge into studioland. Also, in 2020 I liberated myself (I don’t use the “R” word) from being a full-time professor. I still teach one class (at the SVA Designer as Entrepreneur MFA program that you started, Steve), but that’s a whole different amount of time and psyche commitment.

So, yeah, I’ve come out with four publications within a little more than a year. Three of them are timely works. One related to coming out of a worldwide pandemic, and two of them speak to the war/slaughters going on in the Middle East. Publishing can be awfully slow, and I very much like this process of creating works born out of a particular cultural or personal moment in time and getting them out there soon after they’re finished.

Lastly, I’d say, these newest publications are more spare, in almost every respect, than many older works of mine. I’ve been a maximalist for a long time, creating dense works—an illuminated novel with 101 books within it, a four-book portrait series of over 1,000 pages, a documentary project chronicling 79 new immigrants and refugees from all over the world that juxtaposes multiple perspectives often on a single page. And typographically, I have a reputation for using dozens of typefaces in a project, as I’ve attempted to portray character and voice through typographic casting, composition and expression. Two of the four new publications are based on short stories of mine where the writing is more pruned, and two are poetry, which almost by definition is a matter of distilling language. I only use one weight of one typeface for the text in this new piece, which is very new for me. And with all the recent poetry collaborations, the typographic compositions are less about voice and more about diagramming ideas, finding hidden meanings and visual metaphors that emerge from the texts and the very human experiences they represent.

Your most recent publishing “event” (I use this word because it is print, poetry, performance, typography and more) is This Page is an Occupied Territory, written by Adeena Karasick and “visualized” by you. Before we discuss what it means to be a “visualizer,” tell me what about the intention of this tabloid newspaper/magazine-style publication?
Adeena sent me several new poems with the idea of us doing another book together. (We came out with Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings in 2023.) I was already juggling a bunch of projects, but I had a gut reaction to the poem This Page is an Occupied Territory, and felt an urgency to work on it. The title alone calls for a graphic treatment, so I started visualizing the text, which didn’t want to be contained within a standard book dimension. It grew in size, like the expanding war, and the daily bombardment of devastating news felt so outsized and all-encompassing, I had the idea of doing it as a tabloid-sized, newspaper-like publication. Adeena liked the parallel to the news, too, and because handling newspapers can be overwhelming—managing your body in this oversized thing, figuring out how to fold it and store it. I had seen online promotions for newspaperclub.com, based in the U.K., and started working with them. The proofs took a while, but once we were ready to roll, the run was printed in Glasgow, Scotland, on a Monday, and amazingly, we had all 700 copies in Brooklyn, New York, the next day, well in time for a live event at Pratt Institute the following week. I love that turnaround time and being able to sell it for 10 bucks a copy. And the printed piece functions well as a large-format, unbound score for the performance. At that first live event I page-turned a copy that faced the audience while Adeena performed the very sonic poem in her inimitable, turbo-charged way. 

To get even deeper than intent, since this is partly supported by the Jewish Heritage Museum, what is the message here regarding the occupied territories and the war? Are you setting forth an argument for or against occupation, or is there another arc that you and Karasick are making into art?
Before I ever saw the poem, Adeena presented a live performance of This Page is an Occupied Territory in February 2024 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, as part of a “Poetry Reading in Response to Antisemitism.” Adeena and I are both Jewish. I think it’s fair to say Adeena embraces her Jewishness more than I do, in her life and her art, and feels a stronger connection to Israel. For as long as I can remember, I have been expressing my connection to Israel by protesting its overkill military operations and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. I’ve done this as a Jewish American who believes in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland and a democratic state for all its inhabitants, alongside a Palestinian state.

I was horrified by the Oct 7th Hamas attacks/massacre of a music festival and several kibbutzim, which left 1,200 dead, hundreds taken hostage, many wounded, and all of Israel in a state of shock. One of my heroes, Vivian Silver, was killed that day at her home in Kibbutz Be’er. Ironically, Vivian was one of the founders of Women Wage Peace, perhaps the largest grassroots peace organization in Israel, founded by Palestinian and Israeli women dedicated to finding peaceful solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She was 74 years old.

Israel has a right to defend itself but, in my opinion, Netanyahu and his war cabinet’s response has been completely disproportionate, unrelenting and brutal. The war they’re waging is clearly not just a matter of going after Hamas. It’s a policy of destroying the entire infrastructure of Gaza and killing tens of thousands of civilians, mothers, children, doctors, teachers, journalists. It sure looks like ethnic cleansing to me, whatever term you want to use for mass slaughter and making it impossible for an entire group of people to live in their homeland.

In June of this year, I came out with Jericho’s Daughter, my anti-war, feminist retelling of the biblical tale of Rahab, which I discussed with you and Debbie Millman on the May 16th PRINT Book Club. Even though I was already in prepress for that book before the Oct. 7th attacks and the retaliatory war, the text of that book spoke to the moment and helped generate impassioned conversations. My version of Rahab features her in a dialogue with two Israelite soldiers, in which, among other things, she says, “…Another incomprehensible war will be waged in the name of Justice. And thousands of other children will be sacrificed in the name of Life. Who is going to stop this wheel of death? I’m asking you, who?”

Sadly, the wheel keeps turning.

So, This Page is an Occupied Territory is my second publication in six months that addresses this f’n war, albeit in rather different ways. I won’t speak for Adeena, but I can tell you I was drawn to her poem because it seems to come from a place that acknowledges the different worldviews that collide in that small piece of land. The text of the poem itself is geographically indeterminate and open to being applied to any number of situations. On the back page description of the project, Adeena analogizes the occupation and control of a region by force to the process of translation, which can sometimes be “a form of occupation, whereby one language layered onto the body of another, is an act of war.”

She continues, “For the word ‘war,’ as both an English noun and a verb meaning ‘conflict’ and a German adjective [wàhr] meaning what’s ‘true, real, genuine’ literally places ‘war’ at war with itself. To wit, ‘wà[h]r’ not only ‘occupies’ the homography between the ear and the eye; the babelism at play between speech and writing—but born in ‘differance,’ madness and effacement, the notion of ‘occupation’ points to how what’s ‘true’ is always in conflict.”

Hence, we end up with a deadly conflict born of misinterpretations/colliding realities, and of course power imbalances, and so much history one poem or answer to a question can’t answer. I appreciate Adeena’s scholarly, poly-lingual investigation of a subject, and her exploratory and exploded use of language. As much as This Page reveals empathy for the complex realities and narratives of both sides, in the end, this poem is not neutral. It comes down against occupation and the horrors of a grossly lopsided war.

Back to visualizing. Is visualizing different, the same, or similar to illustration? Or is there some other experiential intent?
I have great reverence for “design,” and design processes, but when it comes to the design of language, especially books, I think the word “design” equates more with book covers. When it comes to the insides of books, let’s say text-laden books, design usually denotes a kind of packaging of the text, so that it’s functional of course, easy to read, clean, transparent, even stylish (well-designed), current, professional-looking. Maybe in zines, the design of the innards can be funky, edgy, elegant, name an adjective or way to dress a text up or down. But for me, since I come to design as a writer, it’s always been about the fusion of meaning and form. So, when I work with a poet who asked me to interpret their work, I prefer to use the word visualize.

I equate it to a filmmaker or theater artist or composer of opera adapting a preexisting text into a film or work of theater or music theater. It’s a meeting of minds and souls and sensibilities and the transformation of one kind of thing (a text) into another medium. And for me, I’m not going to go near a project unless I love the writing. That’s the source, the wellspring of whatever I’m going do with the visualization.

When it comes to creating imagery, instead of illustrating a text, I prefer to think of what I do as “illuminate” (shed light on, or contradict, add to) a piece of writing with visuals. I used the term “illuminated novel” to describe A Life In Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley (2013), which contains 101 books within it. My author-protagonist’s books (book covers, catalog descriptions and excerpts that read like short stories) illuminate his life, and vice versa. I consider the images a part of the text. I also use the term “compose” to describe my writing and design process, as they often occur at the same time, and “composition” is the structural foundation of both writing and visual art, music too. With This Page is an Occupied Territory, I created a typographic landscape. The text and the image are one. There’s no separation as far as I’m concerned.

These terms may sound picky, but I can’t help but think about these descriptors before using readily available ones. In my first book, versations (1980), I wrote “realized by” before my name. I’m sure that was influenced by my early interest in contemporary music and “experimental” film and theater, where people used the word “realized” in a way that speaks to a kind of mysterious process that transcends the maker or makers, and speaks to interaction with materials, processes, intuition and god knows what else.

How do you go about visualizing? Is it intuitive, intellectual, aesthetic, symbolic—what is the process?
In the case of visualizing someone else’s poetry, I begin by reading and rereading the text. With Adeena Karasick’s poetry, that requires having encyclopedias and bilingual dictionaries at hand since she’s often sourcing many languages and plays with root words and etymologies, and is steeped in linguistics, philosophy, cultural criticism and history. As sonic and playful as her poems may seem at first, there’s a fair amount of study involved in reading her. Once I have a grasp of what the text is, for me, I do like to start the composition process with as blank a mind as possible. Put the first sentence or phrases on a page and see what starts to happen. The rhythms and pacing of the words are the most obvious starting point. But then, visual metaphors within the text start to suggest themselves. That involves making many iterations, and also mind mapping, which invariably leads to image research. In the case of This Page is an Occupied Territory, aerial photographs of occupied territories and war zones were helpful. Also, importantly, I try to feel what it might be like trapped inside an occupied territory, which in this case turns into an urban war zone.

This text, now publication, is also inherently meta or self-referential, as it speaks to occupied territories, not only throughout history (including open air ghettos in Poland and other Nazi-occupied countries), and of course in Gaza and the West Bank today, and other places around the globe, but also the occupied terrain of language itself, the very words on the page, which are occupied, by the writer, by me, by the reader, by typography, ink, paper, edges, intermingled vocabularies, the turning, stopping and starting of pages.

There is a build-up in the layouts and a rhythm that comes from the words and typographic composition. Can you describe what you’re trying to accomplish?
As much as I cherish that creative process of beginning with a blank slate and watching a work evolve through trial and error, sometimes you get a vision early on and you go with that. That’s what happened with This Page is an Occupied Territory. After reading the poem for the first time, I almost immediately had a vision for what it might look like, and that it would involve letterpress printing (a la Gutenberg) elements that could be used as blockades, barricades and border crossings. I made some sketches, working with the beginning of the poem, then I reached out to Roni Gross, a wonderful book artist and letterpress printer, and she ended up making prints for me of all sorts of wood-type characters, punctuation, dingbats, metal rules, borders and ornaments, Alpha Blox and wood “furniture” printed “type-high” on Vandercook letterpress proofing presses at the Center for Book Arts in New York City and the Center for Editions at SUNY Purchase.

I then made (digital) scans of the prints and visualized the poem in Adobe InDesign. The entire text—set in Knockout 71 Full Middleweight (a blocky, condensed weight of a large, muscular sans serif type family designed by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones)—lives within and around these inky, textured, bordered environments. The poem begins somewhat open-aired, with some room to move and wander around in, but as the poem progresses, the text and occupied spaces within this tabloid-size, 28-page publication become more and more boxed in, askew, and rubbled to pieces.

I think I know the answer to this, but I’d like to hear it from you: Does the publication serve as a “hymnal” or libretto for the poem by Karasick, or should/can it be read without the performative element?
Yes, yes, and yes. You know my work began as performance scores and graphically notated plays. Over time, as I became more serious as a writer and developed more awareness of the different attributes of different mediums, I stopped putting stage directions and music notation in my books. But performance has continued to be an important part of my oeuvre. It’s one of the things that draws me to Adeena’s work. She’s a dynamic, force-of-nature performer, and it’s a kick watching her perform off of my rendering of her words, yes, as a kind of shaped-note hymnal for her incantations. But also, the publication serves as a score for the reader, either to be read silently to themselves, or out loud, or, as I mentioned before, reading along as they’re watching Adeena perform it live, with me or on her own.

We printed a QR code in the back of the Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings book, so after reading the book to themselves, the reader can read along to a recording of Adeena accompanied by Grammy Award–winning musician Frank London. I’ve also made books that came with audio CDs or were augmented by animations, and I recently came out with my first fully electronic book (Riveted in the Word), which has kinetic typography and an audio soundtrack. But the scale, immediacy and performative energy of This Page is an Occupied Territory I don’t think warranted any augmentation.

Finally, for anyone who knows Werkman’s The Next Call, there seems to be an homage here. Is this a conscious “remembrance”?
Yes, the ghost of Werkman (1882–1945) was hovering around this project from that initial vision I had of printing wood “furniture” normally used (but not seen) to lock up type and other printed elements to the bed of a press. Looking at reprints of The Next Call was definitely part of my visual research, appreciating the raw energy and improvisatory joie de vivre in his typographic, often hand-brayered compositions, many of which were composed during very trying times. I actually replicated a fragment of a 1934 “Komposition” of his made of interlocking parallel lines and rectangles that I use as a motif that appears here and there throughout This Page is an Occupied Territory. It’s really the only time I can remember ever using a visual quote like that from someone else’s work. Perhaps you picked up on it. You know, in those last years of his life, not only was he an outspoken partisan, but he also worked on “illustrating” a series of Hassidic stories from Baal Shem Tov, a bold act of resistance itself. Talk about chutzpah!

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Tattoos are popular aesthetic pleasures for many fashion-conscious wearers. But injecting indelible dyes below the top layers of one’s skin is not always meaningless decoration, and can carry with it a statement of some consequence. Tattoos can be brands that link like-minded people or covert groups together clearly or implicitly. Prison tattoos, of which there are many, suggest many commonly held experiences of beliefs.

There are also those who flirt with medievalist symbolism and garner aesthetic pride displaying it as body art with purpose. Hegseth has been very forthcoming about his allegiances, displaying four tattoos referencing his Christian faith. In fact, these tattoos have no direct connections to white supremacist ideologies, though at least one has been linked to Christian nationalism.

When it comes to Hegseth’s Jerusalem cross, with smaller Greek crosses in each of its four quadrants, the symbol represents the Kingdom of Jerusalem and was emblazoned on tunics and tabards of Christian Crusaders during the religious wars to conquer the Holy Land between the 11th and 13th centuries (1095–1291). Hegseth cites its prominence on his chest, in addition to other charged symbolic representations, as a sign of his Christian beliefs. Critics may not, however, be faulted for mistaking the Jerusalem cross with fascist variations in far-right and white supremacist ideology (the Nazi hakenkreuz, the German word for its hooked cross, has long been mistaken for the similar composition of the swastika, a Sanskrit word for auspiciousness). But Hegseth’s skin-deep body markings also have patriotic symbolism. They include: “We the People” from the U.S. Constitution; “1775” in Roman numerals (MDCCLXXV); a stylized American flag with a stripe replaced by an AR-15 rifle; a ring of stars around his elbow referencing the revolutionary American flag; “Join, or Die,” from Benjamin Franklin’s famous 1754 cartoon (recently a Tea Party icon); and the emblem of the 187th Infantry Regiment, in which Hegseth served.

Whether Hegseth is an appropriate candidate for Secretary of Defense is a crucial question that has already raised hackles. Probably you can tell the man by his tattoos (not to mention his rhetoric), but these tattoos will ultimately not prove anything more than he is proud of his service, country and faith—and, just one more thing: When his skin begins to age, wrinkle and sag, it would be advisable to wear a long-sleeve shirt.

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This post is in support of a new book by typographer and long-serving Type Archive volunteer Richard Ardagh, who has assumed responsibility for celebrating these extraordinary materials. The book is scheduled to be published in winter 2025 by Volume.

I recently reached out to Ardagh to learn more about it—and the fate of the archive. I got exactly what I wanted.

How did you become involved with the Type Archive?
After working on A23D, my project to create the first 3D-printed letterpress font, I was fascinated to understand the processes of traditional typefounding. I started volunteering at the Type Archive as an apprentice learning how to make Monotype matrices to fulfill orders. I ended up specializing in punch-cutting, having delved through most parts of the extensive collections.

What is the process of collecting and cataloging the overwhelming weighty objects of the archive?
At first I began bringing my camera to document artifacts that I found interesting and to help founder Susan Shaw with promotion. After she died in 2020 I tried to take more photos, as the future of the archive began to be questioned. The book is made up of these images, as well as some that I commissioned especially and others inherited from before I was involved. It’s arranged in sections by material: iron, steel, copper, brass, bronze, wood, paper. The history of typefounding spans 500 years and is quite complex, so this ordering is an attempt to make the content accessible at first glance and also to highlight how many different materials a letterform passed through before appearing on the printed page

Why did it close in 2023, and where have the holdings gone?
The Type Archive had to relinquish its premises in 2023. The Science Museum has moved the Monotype Collection to the National Collections Centre near Swindon, and the Stephenson Blake Collection is also being housed there, on behalf of the V&A. The DeLittle Collection is returning to York, the company’s city of origin. Its records are currently undergoing conservation and its objects are on display and in storage with York Centre for Print, which is associated with University of York.

How much material can you cram into the book? And more important, is your intent simply to preserve a memory—or something more ambitious?
The book contains photography and descriptions of around 150 artifacts. The intention is to share the highlights that I was able to document and increase understanding of their importance.

The post The Daily Heller: Saving Printing History’s Precious Metals (and Wood) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Lyuba Tomova was born in 1975 in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she lives and works as a partner at the studio Poster House. A graduate of the National Academy of Art with a master’s degree in poster design, she won the 2022 Grand Prize of Sofia and the Golden Poster Award from the X International Triennial of Stage Poster—Sofia.

Tomova works primarily in the realm of noncommercial poster design. “I believe this is the most dynamic and rapidly developing form of art,” she told me in a recent email exchange, “not just a means of mass communication and information distribution.” Tomova’s posters address social themes, often with drama as a foundation. “Theater is a socially engaged artform that poses critical questions to society,” she noted. Her posters in this realm relate not only to the themes of love and hate, “but also raise questions about tolerance and where our limits of patience lie (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee), and about corruption (The Government Inspector by Nikolay Gogol). Sometimes, I adopt a direct approach to share my opinions and to influence public attitudes and behavior.”

I asked her if she has a favorite poster among those shown here. “In the vast variety of techniques and means of expression, it is very difficult for anyone to pick a single poster.” So, pivoting, I asked her to list her inspirations: “I admire individual poster artists and various poster art schools. Also, I consider posters the strongest visual art and communication medium—an image seen and briefly viewed, yet it leaves us pondering long after.”

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There are many familiar books on view, and rare discoveries as well. The overarching goal was to show through design and illustration how the industry has evolved from past and present.

Below, Fuchs tells us more about how the exhibition came about.

How long has the Die Neue Sammlung been collecting children’s books, and what was the motivation?
The motivation for this part of the collection lies in the founding idea of the museum. Die Neue Sammlung was founded as a museum dedicated to collecting industrial design with two main focuses: Firstly, contemporary design was to be collected and, secondly, internationally. The aim of this collection policy was, on the one hand, to be able to show designers of the time a collection of outstanding examples and, on the other hand, to give the public the opportunity to select good design for their own needs. It was an explicit aim to show affordable good design in particular. The 1927 exhibition, which showed picture books and toys from many different countries, combined both objectives of the newly founded museum.

How many books are in the show?
The exhibition shows around 180 books, a selection from the museum’s collection of around 750 children’s books.

The oldest children’s book in the collection is a volume of the Münchener Bilderbücher (Munich Picturebooks) from around 1870, one of a 23-volume series of picture books illustrated with hand-colored wood engravings, and thus one of the few books that were not produced by machine. The focus of the exhibition begins at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, i.e., at the time when the children’s book developed from an educational book into a medium dedicated to leisure.

What criteria did you use for inclusion in the exhibit?
For us as a design museum, the design of the picture books is at the center of our interest. How a book was illustrated, set and realized determined the selection, not the story it tells. Outstanding early examples of picture book design are, for example, the children’s books by Lothar Meggendorfer from the end of the 19th century. Although they are books on the outside, they contain entire worlds of play between the covers. With their ingenious folding and pulling mechanisms, they can be transformed into three-dimensional worlds that can be used as play backdrops. One example is the doll’s house from around 1889, which hides five different living rooms between the two book covers that can be placed next to each other.

The exhibit is organized in various ways: chronologically, thematically and technically. What was the thinking behind this process?
The exhibition aims to achieve two goals: On the one hand, it wants to show the museum’s own collection of picture books, which has not been exhibited since 1960. The chronological part of the exhibition, which shows the development of international children’s books from around 1900 to the present day, is primarily intended for this purpose. On the other hand, the show focuses specifically on the design of children’s books. To achieve this, the second part of the exhibition sorts the books according to four different design criteria that are characteristic features of them.

The first is color. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of children’s books have been designed in color. The selection and limitation of colors is therefore in almost all cases not an economic but a design decision. The juxtaposition of black-and-white books and books that use only a few or special colors asks about the reasons and spaces of experience that result from the deliberate omission of colors or their special selection.

The second design category is perspective. Due to their height alone, children have a different view of the world to many adults. Changes of perspective are therefore celebrated in many picture books, whether the life of particularly small or particularly large creatures is the subject or we are shown the world in close up or from a bird’s-eye view.

The third category is dedicated to signs and shapes. The focus here is on characters and numbers, but also on shapes that can be used to tell a whole story. ABC books demonstrate the play with letter shapes and phonetic and semantic associations. Warja Lavater-Honegger tells the entire Little Red Riding Hood story using circles alone, while Sven Völker creates ever new animal worlds from the keys of a piano. Entire worlds can be created with a very limited range of visual vocabulary.

The fourth category brings together all kinds of picture books that open up into the third dimension, i.e., pop-up books, fold-out books and books whose pages have holes and allow you to see through them. Here, for example, Seymour Chwast’s Limerickricks can be seen, in which the art can be observed of how one form can be completely transformed into another through expansion, which is nevertheless convincing in terms of color and contour.

What did you learn from curating the material? And what do you hope visitors (old and young) will take away?
I hope that visitors will enjoy discovering the creative diversity of picture books and discover them as a medium of excellent design. Throughout the ages and across different countries, picture books have been a field of artistic innovation and creative experimentation. The vitality of this genre stems from its existence as a special branch of the book, in which imagination and the joy of experimentation are more important than in other areas of book production. It is no coincidence that famous graphic designers have repeatedly turned to children’s books in order to be able to work completely freely without a client. At the same time, there were already children’s book designers in the middle of the 20th century who have dedicated themselves entirely to this genre, and there are others now. They usually create both text and images themselves and have a great influence in their era. One realization that I was particularly delighted about when preparing the exhibition was the fact that in recent years there have been new startups of small publishing houses all over the world that have dedicated themselves entirely to the special picture book. They enable a current diversity and quality in picture books, in the diversity of the current digital range of media, to provide a bridge for a new golden age of children’s books.

If I may add some information on the exhibition design: The exhibition architecture is designed to allow people of all ages and abilities to be able to see the books. Exhibition architect Carina Deuschl designed houses for the books so that they can be presented vertically instead of horizontally. They replicate the joy of opening a book and finding new worlds between its covers. While the books in the museum collection have to be presented behind glass, 50 duplicates of the books exhibited were acquired secondhand. They allow visitors to explore the books haptically and in their entirety.

Christoph Niemann created the drawings in the exhibition space [specifically] for the show. He takes up the title of the exhibition (itself an allusion to Maurice Sendak’s famous children’s book) and presents fantastic creatures whose form is characterized by a playful juxtaposition of lines and color fields.

The catalog is a further treat:

All photos courtesy Die Neue Sammlung—The Design Museum.

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Today a new Disney+ documentary debuts that captures that explosive, epic fusion of music and joy: Beatles ’64, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by David Tedeschi. The trailer (below) sends pulsating shots of fountain-of-youth-like energy coursing through my body and soul, triggering forgotten, imagined and indelible recollections, like standing outside the Plaza (and the Warwick in 1965) engulfed by shrieking, sobbing “bridge and tunnel” fans trying to get the attention of George, John, Paul and Ringo.

The modest main and end title sequences and graphics throughout Beatles ’64 were created by Randy Balsmeyer’s Big Film Design. As founder and creative director, he has produced unforgettable 20th- and 21st-century film titles for Spike Lee, the Coen brothers and other directors. Since February he’s been working in Brooklyn as VFX Supervisor on Lee’s latest feature, Highest 2 Lowest, with Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright (a reimagining of the ’63 Kurosawa classic High and Low). For the past four years, Balsmeyer has called Thailand home, and plans to return there in February.

Wishing I were in his Beatles shoes, I plied him on what it was like to work on this document of such a pivotal era in pop history … and what he’s doing now.

The poster and title are so perfect for Beatles ’64.
Actually, the poster design is from Apple/Disney marketing. The actual film title is below. I pitched many wild and flamboyant ideas for the main title, several quite similar to the poster, but ultimately David and Marty opted for something simple and “period appropriate.”

How closely did you work with Tedeschi and Scorcese?
I worked pretty closely with David and the brilliant editor, Mariah Rehmet. I did not work directly with Marty on this one. Interestingly, even though I was in New York for most of post-production, we all worked remotely on this project. I finally met the post crew in person Sunday night at the premiere. Disney hosted an amazing screening and reception at their brand-new NY HQ downtown in Hudson Square. We were the first film to screen in their theater, and the first event to be held in the new space! Just as an indicator of how much Disney is behind the film, Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, came to personally introduce the film. A Q&A after the screening with Marty and Dave was moderated by Ethan Hawke.

Have you done other concert film tiles before?
I previously worked with David and Marty on Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), the film about Bob Dylan’s 1976 concert tour. For that film Marty was director and David was the editor. 

Is there a secret sauce—a recipe—for making films like this one so tantalizing?
The only “secret sauce” is having a group of creative people guided by a central vision (Marty) who combine their talents in a way that is truly greater than the sum of the parts. It was a fascinating process to watch the film evolve over a fairly short period of time. Because it really is a snapshot in time: Just this two weeks in February ’64, the trick was to expand on the newly discovered Maysles footage, without straying too far from the essence of the Beatles’ first visit to America. This was an awesome group that really clicked!

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So, what am I thankful for in 2024? At least for now, I cautiously thank the tech companies for giving us soft- and hardware that can (and will) transport us to ever-increasing virtual utopias (and dystopias, too). We are going to need a few virtual worlds to inhabit if we’re going to stay artificially sane in this one.

Sanity, like normality, is relative, so I am thankful that we have desktop and head-top AR and AI devices we can use to make our reality a little bit easier to take.

My only message for today: Revel in the fact that the president pardoned a few turkeys (without thinking about the one the DOJ set free), watch the parade, take in some football and enjoy an augmented Ocular holiday. Somehow, we’ll all be happier in the end.

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Are you a book lover short on shelf space? isolarii makes tiny books with big words—and they’re perfect for a holiday stocking.

isolarii take its name from the extinct genre of Venetian Renaissance “island books.” Month to month, they map the extremes of human knowledge and creative endeavor, assembling perennial legends and emerging icons—scientists and novelists, philosophers and activists, architects and technologists, from the counterculture to the avant-garde—pioneering new ways of understanding ourselves and the Earth.

isolarii is a subscription service, and subscribers receive their first book immediately after joining.

The most recent is a Philip K. Dick story that can be read in one sitting. Who needs ebooks when you have one as small and collectable as this?

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Conceived and designed by Bob Ciano, MacWeeney’s longtime friend and art director, At Wit’s End: Cartoonists of The New Yorker is an elegantly designed showcase. An implied question, rhetorically raised by Emma Allen in the foreword—”What makes someone a New Yorker cartoonist, when as this book demonstrates, they work so differently, think so differently, see the world so differently, and draw so differently?”—is not definitively answered, but comes down to one commonality: making people laugh.

I asked MacWeeney and Maslin to talk more about the process and decisions in creating their book, a unique document that pays homage to some of the older (and a few deceased) masters, transitional pioneers and the latest wave of artists. And for those who wonder whether or not the cartoonists resemble their art, you can judge for yourself.

I am presuming that At Wit’s End was triggered by Alen’s photographs that include some principal cartoonists who have passed away, and with them a certain sense of humor. How, indeed, was this project conceived?
MacWeeney: Bob Ciano, my longtime friend and art director of Esquire magazine in 1978, loved The New Yorker, cartoons and wondered what the invisible faces looked like behind them. His curiosity got the better of him and he assigned me to photograph five cartoonists for the magazine to make a good story for Esquire and answer his curiosity. Each cartoonist was a surprise, different, somewhat eccentric and a lot of pleasure to photograph. (Gahan Wilson, Jack Zeigler, George Price, Ed Fisher and Sam Gross.) [They were] enthusiastic about the photographs, but we never saw their publication in Esquire as Bob left working for the magazine soon afterwards. 

What else inspired you to photograph New Yorker cartoonists (and how long did it take to amass this portfolio of images)?
MacWeeney: In 2014, The New Yorker assigned me to photograph eight cartoonists for the cartoon issue of the magazine. The cartoonists were partly my choice and those of the magazine’s, and that was the impetus for me to really get going again.

But, the idea of a book of cartoonists really began then in Bob’s and my mind, too. Bob was the instigator from the start. He pushed the idea and me forward for many years to come. I approached The New Yorker several times over the next years to propose publishing monthly a cartoonist portrait in the magazine; this was before it had published photography at all, and to reveal its hidden assets and identity of the mysterious cartoonists …

With a few notable exceptions, many of the cartoonists in this book are post–Lee Lorenz (cartoon editor from 1973–1993). What determined who you covered?
Maslin: Alen already had photographed 20 or so cartoonists by the time I was brought into the project in 2018. The magic number was 50 for the book (we ended up having 52). I’m not sure if we knew we were looking for a representation of eras ([executive editors] Ross, Shawn, Gottlieb, Brown and Remnick), but we managed to include cartoonists who came into the magazine from 1929 up to the present. We had numerous discussions about who should be considered, but in the end it was Alen’s call. He was the one going out into the field. There were several cartoonists we wanted to include but, alas, geography got in the way.

I had expected a few more of the older generation (you include the late George Price, for instance). Was this even possible?
Maslin: The larger number of photos were taken in the past six years. By that time, the older generation had thinned out considerably. By the time the book was underway, we counted ourselves very fortunate to get Dana Fradon, who was the last cartoonist brought in during the Harold Ross era. 

The gag cartoon, which is the focus of the book, once played a key role in many periodicals. Did your motivation come, in part, from the possible extinction of this once-ubiquitous artform?
Maslin: That wasn’t on my mind. As someone who loves the magazine’s history, I saw this as an opportunity to put in book form an extended yearbook of sorts. I only wish there had been books like this decades ago.

Who decided on the cartoonists that are featured?
MacWeeney: I selected photographing the cartoonists I most enjoyed, with suggestions from Bob and Michael, but some cartoonists lived too far away and my travel was restricted by expense. Sadly, there was a number of very eminent cartoonists not in the book. In recent years it seems from The New Yorker secret source has emerged a flurry of fresh-minted cartoonists’ drawings appearing weekly.

There was a mutual agreement to make the book reflect the surprising differences in our subjects and be unpredictable. I used the same camera for the 46 years it took me to photograph 52 portraits.

Was there logic behind which pair of cartoons were selected to represent each artist?
MacWeeney: I approached Michael as a cartoonist and historian of The New Yorker cartoonists about 2016; he helped enormously, introducing me and contacting our subjects for the book.

Michael and I selected the cartoons together [by] Zooming several times, and naturally it was a very enjoyable activity and fun to share doing.

I originally conceived the book to have only a single black-and-white portrait of each subject, with a sample cartoon and bio on other pages, really to keep some mystery about the cartoonist revealed only by a single image.

Bob thought otherwise about it and in consideration of the book’s layout to integrate the profiles Michael would write and include a sample of one or two cartoons for each subject.

Was there anyone who decided not to be your book?
MacWeeney: One cartoonist chose not to be in the book, disappointingly, and [was] very much missed: Sam Gross, my best cartoonist portrait.

Who decided on the title, which is a tip of the hat to the book Wit’s End: Days and Nights at the Algonquin Round Table?
MacWeeney: We were talking about what could be a good title when Bob came to the rescue with “At Wit’s End.”

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The word “generous” should be highlighted. When often he was asked byfriends to help fund a publication venture, he would gladly do it, and usually throw in my services as part of the investment. This, indeed, is how I came to become the art director and designer of the feminist periodical Broadside. It was edited by his ex, Mary Phillips, a former flight attendant who was a writer, photographer and editor with experience in sexist inequity.

The paper avidly supported the Equal Rights Amendment and advocated for women’s rights—across the board. It was a important short-live attempt at serious feminist reportage. It was also a chance to refocus my graphic design education, such as it was, to do something less salacious than Goldstein’s Screw, and practice my recently found love of Herb Lubalin’s type stylings.

Goldstein did not meddle with any of the editorial content. He barely looked at my layouts until after they were published, so I had relatively free reign. What he did do was set a limit to how many issues he could finance without making back his expenses—after three issues it folded.

It may seem odd for a pornographer to publish a serious feminist pub but Goldstein was complicated in his politics and beliefs.

I just found these in my storage bins (being donated to the SVA Archive) and am compelled to share them here, awkwardly designed logo and all.

The post The Daily Heller: Art Directing ‘Broadside’ appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“The new typography is fundamental. It rejects a predetermined formal structure, but builds up forms according to the function; it constructs a page with white and black in a way that expresses tensions in the text: explicit or plastic form. In advertising, with its intrusive active text, it employs all form-values that embody the compressive and tensile stresses of communication. Not only with black and white, but also with color … the new typography incor­porates active red as a functional element: as a signal, an eye-catcher.”

Among his many memorable artifacts—including “The Book of PTT” for Dutch postal, telegraph and telephone service, and cover designs for the series Monografieën over filmkunst—were catalogs for Nederlandse Kabelfabriek Delft (NKF), which turned conventionally formatted graphic design for industry on its ear. Inspired by Constructivism and De Stijl, and using stark product photography, photomontage, skewed typography, geometrical shape and repeated word patterns integrated into layers of overlapping primary colors, Zwart produced designs that underscored the argument that the new typography was not some faddish, impractical avant garde experiment but a disciplined, functional document that was accessible for technical (otherwise bland) business requirements.

Zwart’s continued work from the 1920s and early ’30s for NKF doubtless influenced the similarly innovative catalog designs that Ladislav Sutnar produced for Sweets Catalog Service in the 1950s, and Paul Rand‘s 1942 Autocar Corporation “Mechanized Mules of Victory.”

As part of its robust publishing program, Letterform Archive has rereleased Zwart’s classic—and rare among antiquarians—1927–1928 NFK catalog (Piet Zwart’s Avant-Garde Catalog For Standard Cables). Faithfully printed, it appears as though designed today, yet retains the original luster of those early years of The New Typography. The two-volume boxed set includes the facsimile edition and a supplement featuring three historic and historical essays by the late Philip B. Meggs, Paul Stinton, and Zwart’s own “From Old to New Typography,” as well as translations from the Dutch catalog texts.

This edition and guide is essential to studying the continuum of Euro-modern typography. But as important is that rather than mere reproduction, the facsimile provides the user with a hands-on, tactile virtual original. For me, it has another benefit …

I once owned a tattered but nonetheless rare copy of the catalog. In moving from one place to another it somehow disappeared. Maybe it is hiding in a box somewhere in storage. I could not afford the high prices of what was offered on the antiquarian book marketplace, but for now and forever, this new facsimile edition is as close to the old as possible … and I don’t have to worry about its whereabouts.

The post The Daily Heller: Piet Zwart’s Best Client appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

This year ThoughtMatter designed a provocative mural adapted from Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World, which made clear the tangible impact that public art can have on motivating real-world political action. It encouraged New Yorkers to vote “yes” on Proposition 1, which states, “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof”—an amendment that successfully passed.

I asked ThoughtMatter Managing Partner Jessie McGuire, who has been vigorously engaged in social and political action, about the project and whether ThoughtMatter’s art interventions have truly made a quantifiable difference in 2024.

Can you provide a summary of your most impactful projects to date?
ThoughtMatter is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, marking a decade spanning three national elections, nearly four presidential administrations, and two New York City mayors. For our team, art and politics are inseparable when it comes to branding. It’s where stories are shaped, movements are sparked, and change begins to feel possible.

Over the past decade, everyone who has walked through the doors of ThoughtMatter has contributed to harnessing the power of design to ignite critical conversations and inspire action through public art projects. In 2016, we created over 15,000 posters for the Women’s March, capturing a nationwide spirit of resistance and rallying voices across the U.S. and beyond. The following year, our For the People and We the People poster exhibit reimagined the U.S. Constitution as an artistic dialogue on civic engagement and democracy. Yes, the Constitution was made better with millennial pink paper and risograph printing!

In 2018, following the Parkland high school shooting, we mobilized design to support young activists, providing free posters and hosting a cross-generational workshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for March For Our Lives. Then in 2019, Shit House transformed our studio into a cheeky yet critical examination of borders, privilege and what people are willing to accept as “normal.” Most recently, at the 2023 NYCxDESIGN festival, our WHO IS NYC FOR? exhibit turned a sharp lens on who really benefits from New York City’s systems. Installations like WHY CAN’T WE SIT? and WHOSE MONEY TALKS? weren’t just art—they were calls to question.

These projects, some of which are now preserved by institutions like Poster House and the New York Historical, embody our belief that design isn’t just decoration, it’s a tool for questioning power, inspiring people and pushing the world toward something better.

ThoughtMatter’s public art is more than just something to look at; it’s a nudge, a spark and, sometimes, a much-needed wake-up call.

Do you believe that such things as the mural adapted from The Origin of the World actually influence people to vote?
Without a doubt! The mural was intentionally provocative in every way. We designed it to grab attention and demand reflection. It wasn’t just a shocking visual for the sake of shock, it was a statement. It asked a powerful question: What’s more dangerous, a painted wall or the erosion of reproductive rights? Turns out, a painted wall with too much vulva is actually more dangerous.

Our original design drew heavily from Gustave Courbet’s artwork, but as we climbed the chain of approvals from landlords to media buying agencies and their general counsel, more and more of the image got censored. Turns out, a bold VOTE message is less risky than a woman’s body; kind of the ultimate metaphor for this election, don’t you think?

This mural wasn’t just a piece of art, it was a call to action. A way to make people stop in their tracks and think about what’s at stake. At ThoughtMatter, we believe the role of art and design is not just to beautify or sell, but to challenge, provoke and connect. Choosing The Origin of the World, a work steeped in controversy, was an intentional move to confront New Yorkers with the urgency of protecting bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Won’t lie, I also loved that we got to sneak a little art history into the conversation.

This led us to partner with Colossal Media, whose team brought our vision to life through six days of hand-painted work. Recreating a piece by Courbet, the “father of European realism,” with a company known for hand-painting contemporary ads, often for liquor and fashion, felt like the perfect continuation of our concept: that a commitment to craft, executed on a massive scale, can make messages impossible to ignore.

The feedback we got confirmed this. People stopped, talked, and even registered to vote right there on the street. The mural became a physical tool—it turned the abstract idea of “reproductive rights” into something immediate and visceral, reminding people that voting isn’t just a civic duty, it’s self-advocacy.

What’s more, it kept the urgency of Proposition 1 on the New York ballot top of mind, helping connect the dots between personal freedoms and the power of their vote. Art like this is more than a moment, it’s a message: a symbol of resistance. A reminder that believing in something is powerful, but acting on it is transformative.

I hope our work serves as a reminder of what’s possible for designers. Sure, the work we do might get painted over, censored, or ignored, but the change it sparks lasts longer than any election cycle.

How extensive have your campaigns been? And what are the limitations?
Our campaigns have ranged from something as simple as a poster series to something as ambitious as redesigning the U.S. Constitution, distributed to thousands of students in NYC. There’s a certain freedom in that range, and while it might seem like we’re trying to cover all the bases, the limitations we face, whether it’s time, budget or the fear of pushing too far, are often what shape the most interesting work. We’ve learned to use those constraints as fuel to engage more people and make our ideas more impactful and far-reaching. Our posters have even made their way around the globe and into permanent collections of international institutions.

But here’s the thing, could the drive to make things feel or seem big actually make us smaller? In art and design, impactful work seems to only break through when it’s optimized for digital clicks or grand gestures that get attention. It’s as if the only way to succeed now is to be loud, viral and constantly scaling. For me the problem is, in that pursuit, intimacy and true reflection get lost. Platforms that were meant to connect us now reward the superficial, the big, the flashy.

Value in today’s landscape is measured by fleeting impressions, and small community-building initiatives are often dismissed because they don’t create that shiny digital footprint. But what if the culture we’re chasing has strayed too far from our instincts for intimacy, subtlety and generative good?

At ThoughtMatter, we focus on the message, not the method. We don’t tick the boxes of traditional tactics or follow perfectly optimized marketing plans designed for clicks. What drives us is answering two key questions: who are we talking to, and how do we want them to think, feel or believe? This mindset has led us down some unexpected paths, whether it’s creating a public art installation, organizing a rally or producing a podcast.

Some campaigns, like Covidity (creativity in the time of COVID), were fleeting, digital graffiti on four walls in four locations, on one night during lockdown. Others, like For the People, focus on democracy and (hopefully) continue to evolve over time. Our work shifts with the needs of the moment. The work we create is part of a bigger ongoing story, and the limits of that story are still unfolding.

If you can’t tell, we don’t like limitations. As a studio, we’re ready to roll up our sleeves, embrace the limits, and keep producing the unexpected in hopes it moves people.

Now that the majority of Americans have voted to reelect Donald Trump—a tyranny of the majority, so to speak—what is on your schedule for future art actions?
I’d never heard of “tyranny of the majority” before, but now that I have, I can proudly say: ThoughtMatter isn’t retreating, we’re recalibrating!

That’s an interesting spin …
This fractured moment demands more than reaction; it calls for vision. At ThoughtMatter, we’re channeling our belief in the radical power of design into actions that quietly disrupt, provoke and unite. Sure, we’ve seen how frustration has dulled the energy of movements like the Women’s March, but we know that change doesn’t always roar—sometimes it whispers. It starts in overlooked spaces like a local library, a front porch, even a coffeeshop conversation. Our next chapter isn’t just about protests in the streets, it’s about planting seeds that eventually crack through the pavement.

We’ll continue partnerships with art museums, cultural institutions, community building organizations and nonprofits, creating access to art in engaging ways. And we’ve got our eyes on new collaborations that will empower us to expand our reach.

We’re designing projects that invite people to pause, reflect and feel. Spaces where the noise fades, and what remains is raw. We’ll continue to challenge the status quo in ways that defy easy categorization, with projects that refuse to play by the rules of performative activism. No, we’re still not following traditional tactics or clear marketing plans, but our next actions will be rooted in defiance and hope. They’ll whisper truths, amplify unheard voices, and slowly but surely, shift the tide. Because if the majority insists on power, we’ll insist on something stronger: possibility.

Do you see art protests bearing fruit in any shape or form?
I sure hope so. I went to art school at Pratt at the turn of the century thinking I could convince people that art and design aren’t just about making things look pretty, but about purpose.

Art protests? I do believe they pay off, just not in the predictable “bear fruit” nonsense people want to hear. It’s never as clean-cut as that. It’s not going to fit in a neat little spreadsheet, and that’s exactly what makes it beautiful. It’s messy, it’s disruptive, and it’s nearly impossible to measure. But it does something deeper. Art, unlike design, doesn’t yell for attention, it sneaks up behind you, whispers in your ear and makes you think and feel. In a world obsessed with noise and spectacle, art is the slow burn—the intimate conversation you didn’t realize you needed. It challenges your assumptions, throws uncomfortable questions in your face, and then kicks you in the gut with real human connection. Then design comes in to make you feel better, and maybe it helps you buy stuff.

Art also has this magical way of bringing stories to light that are too often ignored or buried. A single image, performance or design can slice through the noise in ways a tweet or meme simply can’t. It connects us to other people’s lived realities on a level that sticks—deeply personal, raw and transformative. Those moments of connection spark empathy, and empathy is how real, lasting change starts.

At ThoughtMatter, we see art protests as a vital tool for shifting culture. While they are probably not going to make immediate political or bottom-line change, they help people feel seen, heard and understood. Art’s quiet power to challenge, to connect and to inspire leaves an impression that lingers. And for us, that is the kind of power that has the potential to reshape how we think, how we act, and what we believe the future can be.

Has this election encouraged or discouraged further action this year? Or should we wait and see?
This election has reinforced the urgency of pushing for change. Every day without action is a missed opportunity to shape the future. The power of collective action, especially when amplified by art, has never been more evident. At ThoughtMatter, we’re ready to respond by creating work that inspires, challenges and shifts the conversation. Waiting to act risks losing momentum, but the real challenge is balancing urgency with strategy.

That said, it’s a tough question to answer definitively. Urgent action will undoubtedly be necessary, but we also need clarity on what we’re up against. The next four years will demand a new level of focus and tactical thinking for protests and advocacy to be effective. Anger and disappointment can fuel movements, but without a clear strategy, protests risk creating the wrong narrative or losing their impact.

For all my talk about protests being vital for culture, I’ll say it: protests for protest’s sake won’t cut it. What’s required is thoughtful, purposeful action that carries a powerful, unambiguous message. As a design studio, our role is to ensure the work we create doesn’t just react, it resonates. It should move people to engage, reflect and act meaningfully.

Do you see art as a viable option for advocacy?
Absolutely. Art is not only a viable option for advocacy, it’s often one of the most effective tools we have. We believe all art is political, and designers, as artists, have a responsibility to use their skills and mediums to amplify important messages. Advocacy through art isn’t just about making statements; it’s about creating work that moves people, ignites action and becomes part of a larger dialogue for change.

Art has a unique ability to transcend boundaries and reach people on an emotional level, speaking directly to the heart in ways that words alone often can’t. At ThoughtMatter, we’re energized by this potential and proud to be a team of creatives ready to drive forward the power of design to meet the challenges of the world ahead.

Through partnerships with organizations like ARTE, Girl Forward, MAMA Foundation, and Studio Institute and REIA, we’ve seen how art can amplify critical issues like incarceration, refugees, music and art education, and healthcare. Whether it’s creating zines, designing spaces, or crafting campaigns, art often provides a platform for voices that might otherwise go unheard. Sometimes, art is the only viable option for advocacy. It spurs conversations, and those conversations nurture understanding. Understanding, in turn, inspires action. We believe art has the power to shape the future, and we’re committed to using it to create meaningful, lasting change.

I’m curious: Did you read The New Yorker story “The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War?” What are your thoughts/reactions?
I hated it. The article highlights how extreme ideologies are being framed as “the new normal” in media narratives, and that’s both depressing and dangerous. The people they highlight have chosen isolation and fear, preparing for violence while those they claim to fear are simply advocating for peaceful protests and expanded rights. The difference is stark. This situation underscores how the media amplifies fear-based thinking instead of fostering community-minded dialogue. It’s crucial to call out misinformation and lies for what they are, and shift the focus toward fostering conversations that build connection, not division.

As artists and designers, we have a unique responsibility in moments like this. Art has always been both a tool of propaganda and a weapon against it—against censorship, hero worship and nationalism. Today, it’s more critical than ever to be responsive and thoughtful. Art education, particularly for children, is more than the finger-painting classes of our childhoods. It’s a key practice in preparing future generations to engage with the world through critical thinking and empathy.

At ThoughtMatter, we make space for diverse perspectives and emotions in our work. It’s how we ensure the solutions we craft foster understanding, not division. Art confronts the narratives of fear and extremism by encouraging dialogue, challenging assumptions and imagining alternatives rooted in community and compassion.

The article might paint a bleak picture, but it’s a call to action. We have to double down on using creativity as a force for connection, resisting fear-driven narratives and reframing the conversation to build a society that values collaboration over division.

The post The Daily Heller: Democracy, Where Art Thou? appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

We’ve more than outgrown that consequential historical blip. We’ve been through the best and worst of what the era offered. We’ve evolved some essential customs, like the legalization of marijuana and the public acceptance of various orientations and identities, but we’ve devolved in other realms (illustrated by the recent election, for instance).

As I reflected on the past while watching these documentaries, I vividly recalled that what made the greatest impact on me back then was … hair. It was a statement of resistance, a symbol of belonging and a gesture of solidarity with many people who were assumed to belong in the same tribal universe. Long hair was my uniform of alienation.

It felt so good.

It also took guts to grow it out when I did, in 1965, and to let it flourish to its ultimate length (see below). My goal was to emulate and integrate into an alternative culture, for which hair was currency—and I succeeded.

Long hair has no coded meanings anymore. But I’m nostalgic for the past, when the longer the mane, the cooler the man.

The post The Daily Heller: Reflecting on My Hairlooms appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Ware is one of the most beloved comics artists of our time, and his recently published ACME Novelty Datebook Volume 3, spanning the years 2002–2023, is a must-have for fans like me who are mesmerized by how he does what he does. Drawn from the sketchbooks of the creator of Jimmy Corrigan, Building Stories and Rusty Brown, ACME offers a rare chance to get to know the artist behind such an incredible body of work.

Ware is one of the most important cartoonists of the past 75 years, a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the first cartoonist to win the Guardian First Book Award and the first American to win Europe’s highest prize for cartooning (the Grand Prix D’Angouleme).

Like R. Crumb’s famously intimate sketchbook series, ACME was not intended to be seen by his fans, but pulling back the curtain is a gift to all who worship at the altar of Ware. I recently had the good fortune to explore some of his thoughts about life, art and the new book.

Over three decades ago I was on the awards committee of The Swann Foundation of Caricature and Cartoon, and Art Spiegelman brought in a newspaper you had published with your early work. The board members were blown away—you were hands-down the winner. How do you feel when you look back at those early attempts at finding your visual language?
Well, you are very kind; thanks for the generous words. Honestly, I can’t look at any of my early stuff—or really too much of my recent stuff, either—without feeling frustrated by my drawing ability. With my early strips all I see are little bits and pieces I was thieving from other artists (nearly all of whom were published in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s RAW magazine, including Art himself) in my attempt to mash together some sort of something that I could somehow consider “mine.” In my twenties I went back and forth between improvising directly in ink or crafting images that were as iconographic and geometric as possible, then eventually combining the two in an attempt to capture contradictory feelings and sensations—or some such thing—but found that these experiments ultimately felt like what David Foster Wallace called “metafictional titty pinching.” I finally just gave up and tried to present my stories as clearly as possible with the occasional shift in approach whenever it still felt instinctually appropriate.

I presume you’re only showing what you take pride in showing, but can you detect a clear evolution—or did you zig and zag before becoming Chris Ware?
Even though Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America’s biggest jerks—an arrogant philanderer who designed a logo for himself and buried his initials in the name of one of his best-known designs (Falling Water)—he was also an indisputable genius who regularly reinvented himself and so avoided staleness and sterility. I think about his relentless “doing the opposite of what he’d done before” and I worry I don’t have the fortitude, intellect or self-confidence to follow his example—but I try. I doodled a little strip about this in this last datebook, including Scott Joplin and Beethoven in the list of artists who regularly re-thought themselves up to their final moments. Theirs is a tough model to follow.

I love seeing the ACME “brand” take form. Was this always meant to be your signature, or was it initially a stop along the way?
I titled my regular periodical “The ACME Novelty Library” so I indeed wouldn’t have to put my name on it, since drawing and publishing is really its own act of quiet arrogance. Also, I noticed that in single-page comics the artist’s signature frequently acted as a sort of punctuation mark—or worse, an advertisement—plus, I didn’t want it to contribute to the rhythm of reading, as it interfered with the sense of life I was trying to get at. So “The ACME Novelty” part of this book’s title is now completely vestigial, if not completely insane, since I haven’t done an issue of my comic book in over a decade. However, the thought of titling a book “Chris Ware’s Third Sketchbook” is way worse. (Though really, what’s the difference? I still essentially made a pretentious logo for myself, just like Frank Lloyd Wright did.)

ACME is such a classic comic/novelty title. What does it mean to you?
“Acme” was a fairly common commercial brand name in the 1910s and 1920s, nostalgically invoked by Chuck Jones in his Roadrunner cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s, and all of which I was also trying to play on in the 1990s when I started publishing my own comic book. At that time, underground/independent/experimental comics tended to have one-word “loud” names, and I wanted to make something that was harder to remember and awkward and, especially, uncool. Also, since I was trying to tell stories in each issue that were as emotionally moving and literary as I could muster, by hiding them within this fussy shell I felt sort of freed up to experiment and embarrass myself.

When you designed your rule-breaking cover for The New York Times Book Review, I was struck by your exceptional lettering acumen. How did type and image become your metier?
Comics drawing, aka cartooning, has more in common with typography than with traditional drawing: the drawings in comics are meant to be read, not just looked at. However, most of the drawings in this sketchbook, done from observation or direct memory, fall more into the latter category. Or, in other words, unlike in my comics fiction where I use a ruler and geometric simplification for the sake of artistic clarity and literary transparency, almost all of what is in this book is just plain old drawings and watercolors about life as lived.

Since I hate wasting time but am still startlingly good at it, when I’m on the phone I nearly always draw, and during the pandemic, like everyone, I spent a lot of time on the phone, so sometimes just for fun I would copy 19th-century and early 20th-century comics, typography or whatever compelled me into my sketchbook—the only rule being that I didn’t know why it compelled me. [It’s an] activity [that] goes back to all of the great books you did in the 1980s and 1990s, and to which I still look to find something unusual that captures that strange balance between the “looking at” and “reading of” typography.

Finally, since you asked, I tried to teach myself to handletter by looking at examples of 1920s original commercial art, specifically those done for the Valmor cosmetics company, original scraps of which were sold by the Chicago novelty store Uncle Fun and run by Ted Frankel, who had inherited the company’s entire back catalog. I learned more from looking at those old inked and whited-out boards than I did from all of the old instruction books I tried to puzzle out, which always seemed reluctant to give up their secrets. These Valmor originals, many of which were by African American artist Charles Dawson, also affected the way I ended up drawing comics, which was to work more typographically than drawing-ly, for lack of a better word.

When you see the three volumes of Date Book, do you have any regrets, second thoughts, nostalgia or other emotions?
Of course; life is full of regrets, and confoundingly, while some of my favorite books are facsimile notebooks and sketchbooks (especially the sketchbooks of Robert Crumb, which, along with Art Spiegelman’s encouragement, saved me in art school), I didn’t realize the effect that publishing my own might have. As I say in my introduction, the decision to publish a sketchbook—where a sketchbook should be a place where one feels absolutely free to humiliate and mortify oneself—torpedoes its basic utility. So almost immediately after printing the first volume I started keeping a separate daily comic strip diary into which I diverted all of the private unpublishable stuff. Now I have a thousand unpublishable pages of a private comic strip diary, which I still compulsively keep mostly for my daughter, as it covers her life more than anything.

In the meantime, I still tried to thoughtfully arrange these three sketchbooks (aka “datebooks”), culled down from 13, into something that hopefully still somehow captures the inevitable passage of time and life, as the books begin when I was a teenager learning to draw and end right when my teenage daughter leaves home—yet here I am, still learning how to draw.

What other alterations, if any, do you have in mind for your work?
Well, aside from simply trying to get better, I’m currently working on three graphic novels, as well as the occasional New Yorker cover, and continue to make sculptures and paintings; also, I’m helping to design the exhibitions for a traveling retrospective of my stuff that began in the Pompidou in 2022 and went through other European venues, which will end in Europe next year at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona and then, finally, at the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbus, OH, in 2026.

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Each document is a curated dive into the different subsections and collections within collections of Berman’s overall holdings. They supplement and complement the newsletters that are free for the taking. We’ve written about this wealth of material before, but we can never thank Mr. Berman enough for his generous sharing of his collection with scholars and researchers.

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Collage has been the subject of so many art books and scholarly treatises that the publication of more is barely met with any degree of excitement today. However, excitement is an apt response to the current volume Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage by Freya Gowrley (Princeton University Press). It is new and deep in its exploration of the “mode” (Gowrley states, “In this book collage is neither a medium nor genre, but a mode; a means of processing the world as it was encountered by individuals across cultures and geographies, who subsequently produced a creative response to that experience”). Throughout the text she explores its range from religious to folk to avant garde approaches—from anonymous Victorians to Faith Ringgold’s African American quilts—and a bit of DIY.

Below, Gowrley, a scholar and the author of Domestic Spaces in Britain, 1750–1849, talks to me about the origins of the “mode” in its spiritual and rebellious manifestations (with a pinch of AI too).

You say that most histories posit the Cubist papier collé as the invention of collage. What do you propose?
I think any statement of a definitive moment of invention is going to inevitably misrepresent a more complex reality, so I probably wouldn’t propose a single alternative for when collage was “invented.” I guess I’d propose multiple instances of creation, whether using paper, or found objects, or whatever, as contributing practices which culminate in the kind of form we recognize as collage today.

Religion has a hand in collage. What was the reason for pictorial assemblages?
The relationship between collage and the expression of devotion is absolutely at the heart of the book. This manifests in both the romantic and religious senses of the term, and we see manifestations of the latter from early Christianity onwards. As we see later on, this kind of collage becomes associated with rituals of religious devotion, such as pilgrimage, as part of which you might acquire images and relics associated with saints. Likewise, relics become a vital part of the liturgical furniture in the medieval period, so we see the emergence of a whole religious visual culture predicated on the display of these goods subsumed within elaborate and often very costly compositions.

How was collage perceived in painting? Was it an opportunity to fit many narratives into one frame?
One of the things that really fascinated me about this way of approaching collage as a form was the opportunity to bring multiple forms of visual and material culture from across distinct periods into dialogue. Still-life painting, in particular, has a really clear relationship with later papier collé, as the recent MET exhibition Cubism and the Trompe L’Oeil really reinforced. The show brought together Cubist works with early modern painting in this beautiful juxtaposition. As a painterly mode, the collagic absolutely encourages the presentation of multiple narratives, but also multiple moments, multiple perspectives, multiple ways of seeing, something which is absolutely echoed in later work.

Is there a fundamental distinction between collage and assemblage?
The traditional answer here would be to stress a distinction between the “flat” and the “fat,” that is, between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. I can absolutely see this as being an important way of distinguishing between forms, but for me, I’m interested in how these forms are united by a shared mode of creation through the various acts that combination encompasses. Both collage and assemblage are united by a series of material and visual gestures that include acquisition, selection and arrangement, and those are the compelling relations between these modes to me.

Hannah Hoch is one of my collage heroes. What made her work modern?
Hoch is actually super interesting in that she’s often cited as being directly inspired by earlier modes of the fragmentary, specifically homemade photomontages, so I actually wouldn’t emphasize too strong a distinction between her work and that which preceded it. Nevertheless, what I think makes her work so distinctly of its period is her presentation of the modern feminine subject. Using images from contemporary women’s magazines, Hoch is literally reconstituting what it is to be a woman at a time when the contours of this were shifting and being redrawn. It’s that perfect culmination of art and the time and place in which it was made.

You suggest that collage is a woman’s language of art. How so?
Here, I’m drawing heavily on Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer’s essay, published in the 1970s, titled “Waste Not, Want Not: An Inquiry Into What Women Saved and Assembled — Femmage.” This is an absolutely foundational text within the feminist art movement, and it’s one that strongly shaped my thinking about how the various kinds of crafts and art-making women engaged in throughout history might be thought of not only as a distinctively feminine mode, but one that stretches across time. I wouldn’t say that collage is necessarily a woman’s language of art, but I would say that it’s one that folk who have often been excluded from mainstream art history engaged in, and that’s significant.

Can you explain what a “collage intervention” is? With punk, collage appeared to be vernacular. Was there something other than a DIY aesthetic at work?
I think what is crucial in punk collage is the end to which that DIY aesthetic is employed, namely in the interrogation of the socio-cultural hegemony, whether that is thematically or in its mode of representation. The work of Linder Sterling really emphasizes this to me—her work doesn’t necessarily have a DIY aesthetic (no more than all collage does), but her work is employed by bands like the Buzzcocks precisely because in skewers the mores of the day in its subject and attitude. On Sterling’s cover of the single Orgasm Addict, for example, we see a nude woman, her head replaced with an iron, whose objectification is rendered in a literal form in her collage.

Where is collage situated in the continuum of art today?
This is a difficult question that I try to address in the conclusion. There are undoubtedly more collagists than ever before. As a form it continues to be highly accessible and so there is an implicit equitability in its undertaking. Thanks to the work of craftivists and socially engaged artists, it continues to be a power tool for critique. But what does the future of collage look like? I guess in order to answer this question, I’d say we should look to the past, and the mutability and transmedial vitality that collage has always had. The development of increasingly sophisticated AI generators will inevitably affect these forms, as it will across all genres of art, but I think this will only be one more transformation in a form that has such a long and varied history.

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Kunz has long deserved the distinction of leader and master as a conceptual (satiric and editorial) artist/illustrator. With this latest exhibition and the book on which it is based, she has become elevated into a higher realm of both intellectual and expressive power. Visiting the Norman Rockwell Museum’s galleries, seeing the precise rows of over 200 of her forgotten “Original Sisters,” one will doubtless be rendered speechless by the beauty, gravity, intelligence and passion in each of these works.

The selection of who (and who not) to include in this show must have been excruciating. The temptation to ask “where is so and so” is mitigated, however, by the exhaustive number of women featured, each with an accompanying biography.

At the opening ceremony, Kunz, who was moved to make this array of “self-motivated” art during COVID lockdown, told the packed-in attendees that her goal was to do one picture a day. This not only implied sketching and painting (which she demonstrates in a sped-up process video), but writing the bios of the known and long unknown women, representing a broad spectrum from celebrities to clerics, from saints to sinners, from dead and living and all those figures that history, legend and lore have misplaced.

If there is a bias of any kind, it was lost on me. Kunz’s decision to forego the caricature element that she is best known for in favor of representative portraiture fills the air with respect for everyone she’s selected. The only editorializing that I saw was in the eyes of her subjects—some were looking forward, others looking askance and a few avoiding direct contact with the viewer altogether. An additional editorial feature—of consequence to designers—as Chip Kidd, editor of the book, noted during the brief live conversation moderated by curator Jane Dini, was the extraordinary variety of lettering used to spell out the names. A couple of them resemble script signatures, but the majority reveal a truly impressive reservoir of talent for typefaces of all shapes, sizes and styles.

Kunz explained that she was set to title the book Originals, but Kidd suggested Original Sisters would have more resonance. And resonance it has, as a document of achievement over time.

One room referencing Kunz’s political satire and other caricature she’s done for a wide array of causes and publications is an impressive introduction or coda (depending on one’s orientation upon entering the galleries) that displays the soul and spirit of an artist who has devoted her vast painting talent to more than simple illumination of a writer’s message. She is not the messenger but the visualizer of ideas and ideals she holds dear.

It is a tribute to Rockwell, who was known for mythologizing the commonplace USA, as well as calling out its racial strife and social foibles. The show is currently on view through May 26.

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The Hyundai Museum of Kids’ Books & Art (MOKA) in Seoul, South Korea, tackled the subject of nothing as part of its recent programming. MOKA is a cultural and educational space established by the Hyundai Department Store Group in 2015 to support the arts and contribute to the local community. It is the first museum in Korea dedicated to the theme of books.

As curator Saehee Kim explains, “MOKA plans a variety of exhibitions and interactive programs designed to inspire imagination. In the ‘Open Library,’ visitors can freely explore over 6,000 picture books on themes like family, adventure, promises and courage. Additionally, the museum offers workshops with artists and a range of short- and long-term educational programs led by MOKA’s educators.”

MOKA’s second space, MOKA Garden, is currently hosting an exhibition based on the children’s book The Museum of Nothing by Steven Guarnaccia. Below, Saehee explains the existential importance of nothing and her curatorial interpretation of this concept.

Why did you decide to do an exhibition on this book?
MOKA introduced Steven through the exhibition Oasis at MOKA in 2022. This exhibition introduced the ÓPLA Archive, located in Merano, Italy, which collects artists’ books. Steven designed the logo for this institution, and his books are also part of its collection. As a curator particularly interested in collections, I was drawn to Steven’s design and style from the very beginning of preparing for the exhibition. I believed his picture books uniquely showcase collections focused on fashion, architecture and furniture design.

While following his work, I found out that The Museum of Nothing was published in 2023. I was captivated by the idea of a museum dedicated to “nothing.” I found it philosophical and aesthetic, especially considering that the concept of nothing is not confined to one definition. It can be perceived as something invisible, a literal empty space, or as an idea existing solely as the concept of zero, inviting endless contemplation of its meaning. The idea of exploring such a profound theme within a single book was captivating, which led me to invite him to MOKA for a solo exhibition.

Museum exhibitions focus on visible information, emphasizing visual clarity to highlight the content. What are you doing by cutting loose from that convention? This exhibit is clearly something and that’s not nothing! No?
Although the main content of this exhibition is the wonderful illustrations by Steven Guarnaccia, I wanted to propose an experience that allows visitors to perceive what is unseen yet present, a crucial idea in The Museum of Nothing.

In the exhibition space, there are two voices emanating from speakers hidden behind walls. One voice narrates the text from the picture book, while the other introduces and provides background information on the items showcased in the exhibition (the picture book). Labels (designed by Steven) on the empty bottles evoke Marcel Duchamp’s 1919 work 50cc of Paris Air, while the pieces in the painting gallery are highlighted as significant works in the history of art, such as Robert Rauschenberg’s and Robert Ryman’s. Since the audio players are not visible, visitors must pay attention to discern where the sound is coming from. This exhibition does not aim to teach or explain but rather to create a space where “nothing” exists, inviting people to naturally reflect on the concept of nothingness.

I’d like to share one more consideration from the planning of the exhibition. In the book, there’s a scene where Otto [the boy in the story] approaches a black hole, is immediately pulled into it, and reappears in another dimension, as if “within the frame.” To recreate this in the exhibition space, I planed to paint the wall black, built a low wall with a hole, which is a passage for children to walk through. While it’s challenging to fully represent a concept like the multiverse in exhibition design, my hope was for visitors to directly sense that what initially appears as a flat surface transforms into an empty space they can enter when approached closely. I felt this approach would provide a sensory experience of a “black hole” rather than explaining it conceptually.

What has the pubic’s response been?
Due to its location within Hyundai Premium Outlet Space1, MOKA Garden frequently attracts visitors who stumble upon the exhibition by chance. When they first enter the gallery, visitors encounter impressive graphics, empty bottles and blank books before reading The Museum of Nothing. After reading the book, they revisit the exhibition with a new perspective on the theme of nothing. They enjoy stepping into the black hole and exploring the exhibits, marveling at the labels designed by Steven Guarnaccia as well.

The exhibitions at MOKA Garden always aim to convey the artists’ intentions, inviting visitors to be active participants rather than passive observers. Just as Steven designed labels, visitors engage in the activity of creating their own labels to capture intangible memories. During the exhibition, the fragrance of MOKA Garden, warm sunlight and popped bubbles fill transparent bottles with visitors’ interpretations of “nothing.” In this museum of nothing, each person creates their own version of “something.”

The post The Daily Heller: Now is a Good Time for Nothing appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

According to the publication, the mission is to inspire children to embrace the joys of healthy food. (CHEW acknowledges that not all families have access to food and will be donating 10% of the magazine sales to food banks, as well as offering a 30% discount to schools.) Studio Anorak’s founder Cathy Olmedillas says, “There increasingly seems to be a disconnect between the food on our plates and its source. In our humble way, with CHEW we want to educate children (and their families!) about how incredible a simple vegetable or fruit is, and inspire them to cook and eat healthily.”

Below, Olmedillas and I bite into CHEW.

What inspired you to produce CHEW?
CHEW almost came instead of DOT, 10 years ago, but I ended up publishing a children’s food book, which was called Food is Fun. The reason I launched DOT first is because parents were asking us for a younger version of Anorak, so I obliged! In the summer, I revisited the plans I had for CHEW, and I was struck how fully formed the ideas for it were. Around the same time, I came across some depressing stats about children’s diets in the U.K. and USA, so it felt like CHEW could be of use, too. Not just a pretty mag!

Why did you launch it as a print magazine?
I think the magazine format helps children to get interested in many different things, outside of the school curriculum. It’s also less of a commitment than a book. It’s an easily digestible format (pun intended!) and I hope that it will ignite curiosity in children about the joys of simple food and the amazing larder Mother Nature gives us.

What has the early feedback been like?
So far, so good—everyone we have shown it to has fallen in love with the mixture of beautiful illustrations, all done by Sara Arosio, and the fun content.

Do you have enough funding to continue publishing it?
Yes, we have funding aside for six editions, which is nearly two years, as the magazine is quarterly.

Do you believe the magazine will reach its audience? And who is the audience?
Well, I hope so and think we will, because we have a good network of parents who follow us already. The audience is children aged 6+ and their families. Like with DOT and Anorak, I would love for CHEW to become a shared experience, but this time around food.

What is your favorite part of the magazine?
I love everything about it. I feel like a spoilt magazine-mamma with this one! If I had to pick one thing, it would be how we take one humble fruit, the orange, and build a whole around it: from a wacky comic about oranges and lemons fighting for centuries, to a cow that steals oranges, educational pieces about the history of the orange trade, and recipes.

The post The Daily Heller: Yummy, I’ve Got “Chew” in My Tummy appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Together, James Sturm, co-founder of CCS and co-author with Emil Wilson, lead cartoonist of the new volume, discuss the need for this helpful guide to personal fortitude. A free copy is available from The Center for Cartoon Studies.

What was your goal in creating this guide to creative work?
We imagine our goals with Art & Courage were similar to Ted Orland and David Bayles’s with Art & Fear: to offer fellow or aspiring artists a few insights that might help them persevere. Creating art is often a mental game, and we hope this comic gives artists a reassuring pat on the back—a way to say “we understand,” along with a reminder that every artist encounters moments of fear or lack of motivation to push forward in their work.

You list such disciplines as photography, collage, writing, songwriting, etc. How does a reader really know which area to pursue?
Most likely through a process of elimination. It’s usually a bit of a journey for any artist to figure out what medium best suits them. Many also combine mediums, blending techniques in ways that blur distinctions. We’re hoping that the book speaks to all artists, whether they have one discipline or dabble in several. 

How does it compare to the previous volume, Art & Fear?
Art & Courage distills the main themes of the original book, updated for challenges facing today’s artists, such as navigating social media—an influence that didn’t exist when Art & Fear was first published. The comic also has a stronger focus on mental health. Plus, our book is filled with visuals to bring these insights to life.

Where do fear and courage ultimately fit into the equation?
They seem like two sides of the same coin, and all artists use both. Sometimes an artist must courageously leap before they look, and other times fear could help them be appropriately cautious and sensitive.

If we all have some creativity in our DNA, as I believe we do, how does one get it out of the body and into the world?
For some, it’s a necessary part of life, as essential as eating. For most people it’s profoundly challenging. Having basic needs met (housing, proper medical care, living wage) is a good starting place to be in a position to create and share art. But even then, there’s all kinds of cultural stigmas that discourage people from making art. The specter of the “starving artist” warns that investing too much in creative pursuits can lead to ruin. Yet, when you manage to silence the negative voices—whether they’re real or imagined—it becomes far easier to summon the courage needed to bring your work to life.

You have a page on “What Makes Art Good Or Bad?” Is not all creativity created equal?
For artists, being preoccupied with whether one’s art is good or bad is profoundly unhelpful. How we assess work is constantly changing depending on shifting cultural trends or one’s current blood sugar levels. Plus there’s the fact that in order to make good art you have to make a lot of not-so-good art. Art isn’t like mathematics, where one answer is correct and accepted. One person’s masterpiece is another’s junk store donation. And that’s what makes art so special, so alluring, so exciting. There are so many different kinds of art that shock or feel unfamiliar, made by artists who see the world uniquely but maybe don’t have an audience who can appreciate their work—yet.

The post The Daily Heller: How to Not Snuff Out Your Flame appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The six books below are just a few recent fiction and nonfiction projects that have captured my interest over the past few months. There are others … but too many books and too little time to appreciate them as they deserve.

Reading Brian Blomerth’s Lilly Wave (Anthology Editions) was something of a flashback for me. I did not know Blomerth’s work and was unaware of John Cunningham Lilly, a leading psychedelic researcher from the 1950s through the ’70s. But the explosive power and the hallucinatory essence of the art and narrative presented by Blomerth was not lost on this child of the ’60s. Lilly Wave is a biographical deep dive into Lilly’s life and covers the generational shift from his scientific neurological research to the mind-expanding visionary (and recreational) impact of psychedelics on a battalion of inner-mind-out-of-body explorers.

Although I was not able to maintain enough energy to absorb the entire Blomerth experience, I am extremely impressed by his own graphic stamina and narrative gymnastics. What I was able to follow gave me new insights into a dimension of neuro-pathological discovery that has united popular culture and serious science.

This was produced for an audience that can better appreciate the cognitive anomalies that are described. I’m of the old prude school. Never having taken acid or psychedelics of any kind, I have nothing to base my opinions on, but I was turned on by Victor Moscoso’s ZAP comics. Blomerth’s work is possibly the next level to the fantastic work that Moscoso and his cohort of psychedelic artists invented in the ’60s.

The graphic novel and zine genres, like the underground comix that preceded them, have grown with incredible speed and brilliant imaginative power. The titles themselves have also evolved beyond familiar formats into the realm of more precious artist books. Raw Sewage Science Fiction (Drawn & Quarterly) by Marc Bell, another artist (and designer) previously unknown to me, has pieced together from eccentric self-published and small press booklets a distinctly eclectic mix of sci-fi, hi-brut, low-art manifestations. He draws as he writes, with an eye and ear toward the past and future of his personal realm of the absurd. The book feels in design and physical presence as though a diary/scrapbook/catalog of personal graphic tropes, which on the surface seem anarchic but are nonetheless very deliberate.

I wonder whether there is any symbolism in the large “RAW” on the cover. There is a certain suggestion of the original RAW magazine, famous for its band of first-generation experimental comix artists. And I don’t mean that this is derivative, but rather just as exciting.

Like Blomerth’s book, this is a feast that will go half-consumed, but I will keep it by my nightstand for those periods of increased insomnia when I wish I were able to create my own Raw Sewage.

The cover of Edward Steed’s Forces of Nature (Drawn & Quarterly) is as curiously ornamented as it is decoratively appealing. It reminds me a little of Edward Gorey’s eerily, ironically, comically neo-gothic/Victorian short tales (even Steed’s title page resembles lettering done by Gorey). But this work is not fashioned in Gorey’s contiguous narrative manner. Steed is a “gag” cartoonist of decidedly refreshing humor; he is skilled with the single-panel captioned joke—the mainstay of The New Yorker, where his comedy often appears.

Steed’s drawing line is loose and expressive, simple and inherently hilarious. Combine that with his absurd captions and he excels at making commonplace situations ridiculous. Take the cartoon directly below: The fireman on the ladder is calmly explaining to the woman he’s about to rescue from a burning apartment that the hook and ladder lying on its side below, next to two bodies, “hardly ever” tips over.

Steed’s wordless humor is just as precise. With his few scrunchy lines he evokes an emotional satisfaction that few gag artists achieve so consistently. He may not be that other Edward, but Steed has similar witty deviousness and, from what I can assume, a lot of fun doing it.

Distant Ruptures by CF (aka Christopher Forgues), edited by Sammy Harkham (New York Review Books), is another welcome discovery. CF’s most-known book, Powr Mastrs, is glowingly referred to by the publisher as genre-defying punk. After spending time with Distant Ruptures, I agree with the assessment … but I can’t quite get a Gary Panter deja vu out of my head. I know that CF’s comic world is different and his ecosystem of characters and creatures profoundly varies, but the spirit is a nagging reference to Panter’s variegated view.

Distant Ruptures is a collection of rough sketches and notes. Of most interest are the unfinished strips, like “Hearing Loss,” “Wolf Problem” and “Sex Comic,” which live as one-offs of ideas that CF appears to be trying out. I’m also seduced by the simple complexity of “Wizard Acorn,” and where this storyline is headed.

Like Raw Sewage, Distant Ruptures fits well into the comic/art book genre outgrowth of the zine scene and is well worth delving into further.

I am forced to admit that my ignorance of Japanese comics is woefully extensive. I’ve read some manga books and have obtained a few wartime collections. But I’m currently reading as much as possible to catch up—a goal that eludes me as time speeds by. Oba Electroplating Factory by Yoshiharu Tsuge (Drawn & Quarterly) is one book that I had previously put aside, believing from a superficial once-over that it was a lesser Gary Panter. I was dead wrong.

I’ve since learned that Ysuge is a pioneer of the form, from his first comics in the mid 1950s through to his opus entry into surrealism with Nejishiki. Oba was published in 1973, and it was the first time he created manga that, per editor Ryan Holmberg’s introduction, “aspired to a realistic representation of his personal past”—a bleak one, indeed, having grown up after the war in the midst of American occupation.

It is always enlightening to see what cultural traits influence comics, and my mistaken attribution to Panter was admittedly me looking out when I should have looked into the window of Oba Electroplating Factory.

Although not a comic, this small book is, in a delightfully inspiring interview-style format, the voice of one of my favorite illustrators/comics artists. Q & A (Drawn & Quarterly) by Adrian Tomine is an ersatz memoir constructed using questions from fans that he has dutifully answered during free time on Sundays. He writes in the introduction: “From 1995 to 2015, I published what I considered the most interesting of the incoming mail in each issue of my comic book series Optic Nerve, but also made an effort to respond to people directly, usually with a handwritten postcard.”

Times have changed. Tomine “might not do so again,” so this book is a substitution. In it he has selected some FAQs about technique and technical issues but keeps things lively with answers to queries on how to pronounce his name to such questions as, “Do you ever do sketches for fans?” (His answer: “I’m terrible at off-the-cuff drawing, especially while people are watching, but I’m happy to do a little unimpressive sketch for anyone at a book signing event.”)

The book is like being at just such an event. It is a comfortable pocket-sized volume, generously illustrated with sketches, progressives and finishes, and is a pleasant read for those boring rides on the Metro North after the end of Daylight Savings Time.

The post The Daily Heller: A Graphic Novel Dump appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright (the reunited stars of Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump), the film’s pioneering of AI into the creative process has stunningly unnerved some in Hollywood (who may have welcomed headlines this week like Forbes‘ stinging “Flops At Weekend Box Office”—although The New York Times was more favorable). For this production, cast and crew teamed up with AI studio Metaphysic on a tool to rejuvenate and “age up” the actors—a process conventionally achieved with makeup and CGI visual effects. Here was shot from one static camera, positioned for the most part in the corner of a suburban living room. Like McGuire’s graphic novel, the viewer sees frames within frames showing not just the passage of time but simultaneous views of the same place.

Having written about McGuire’s book, I felt that Here was an opportunity to get the artist’s take on how AI accomplished or reinterpreted his artistic goals, especially in a different medium with live actors. His commentary may surprise those in the illustration world who dread the specter of this tool.

When you created and published Here as a graphic story/comic strip, did you originally envision your storytelling elements in motion? Was it always a static juxtaposition of different times in one place?
I never envisioned it in motion. I was primarily thinking of it as a diagram. A few years after the original six-page strip was published in 1989, a live-action student film was made that was low budget but technically pretty sophisticated [below].

How did you react when Robert Zemeckis wanted to create a feature film of Here?
Honestly, I was shocked. My agent sent me an article from Variety that said it was actually happening, and that it would be starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. I just couldn’t believe it! About a year earlier my agent told me that Zemeckis was interested in adapting the book and wanted to talk. We had a Zoom call, and I remember him saying that he wanted to make it “just like the book” with a locked camera. I was joking with him, saying, “I get it, you want to go old school, back to the Lumière brothers. Sounds great.” But I was thinking, Who would finance a film without the camera moving? It’s never going to happen. 

Was there any reluctance on your part to have your work transformed into a live-action “experience”?
No, I was excited by the idea! There had already been a few live-action adaptations before Zemeckis. In 2019, there was a stage production that was renamed Déja, put on by a Norwegian theater group called The Krumple. It was first performed at a theater festival in Stamsund, which is a fishing village on an island off the north coast of Norway. I had to take three planes to get there to see it. They came up with all these clever ideas to make it work, including little battery-operated illuminated boxes that would show the year that the action was taking place. They also built tiny versions of the set and used puppets to be able to show multiple views of time.

There had also been talk of it being a TV series. A script was written, and it was shopped around and nearly bought by the Starz channel. 

In 2020, a British company called 59 Productions was interested in making it a VR experience. The company Intel had been experimenting with a new technology that could digitize actors using hundreds of cameras to simultaneously capture a performance in a huge domed stage set. They were looking for the right content to try out this system so they joined forces. It all fell apart in post-production. Intel pulled the plug and it was never finished, but there is a trailer.

Zemeckis directed many well-received films that experimented with live action, illustration and animation. I recall that when Chris Van Allesburg’s Polar Express was made, it was a cinematic innovation. Did you get excited by the concept that Zemeckis was proposing?
At the beginning there was no mention yet of using any AI. At some point Zemeckis told me about the company Metaphysic Live that could do real-time “de-aging.” When I visited the set I got to see some examples. They were impressive.

Did you have any hesitation about sharing your creation with another creator who would restructure, rewrite and recast your original work?
Film relies on emotion for storytelling. I knew they needed to develop storylines and characters that an audience could invest in emotionally, but I nearly did a spit-take when he told me Hanks’ character would be named “Richard” and that he would be a “failed artist”!  

That’s hilarious! What about control? Was there anything in the script or treatment that made you think twice?
I didn’t want to read the script.

Were you involved in the shooting in any way as a consultant, producer or observer?
I had been asked if I wanted to be a consultant on the film but I declined. I felt everything I had to say was already in the book. Eric Roth was already on board to write the screenplay. He and Zemeckis worked together on Forest Gump and Castaway. 

I was also extremely busy working on a pitch for a new book project and a retrospective exhibition of my work for a museum in Switzerland. I had my hands full co-designing the catalog for the show, as well. 

Was the outcome as you expected? Or was there a sense of something indescribable when you saw the film for the first time?
I saw the trailer first and I was overwhelmed by it. Then I got to see the film in a small screening room and it was very emotional. I had a million thoughts running through my head and it was nearly impossible to be objective, but there was one thing for sure: It’s unlike any film I’ve ever seen. I think it was brave to make this film.

When I met Eric Roth on the set, he was surprised that I hadn’t read the script and that I didn’t want to. He did fill me in a little bit about the ending, which I won’t spoil for you, but he said “everyone cries at the end.” And god dammit if that isn’t exactly what happened to me! I was thinking, I am such a sucker. How could they push those buttons when I knew what was coming?

Is it your work or does it now belong to the adapter?
It feels like someone is covering a song I wrote. I am perfectly fine with someone making it their own. Multiple realities are built into the book, and the concept is expansive, so therefore anything is possible. I am just thrilled to have had this crazy experience of seeing it adapted and presented on this level. Being able to visit the set, meet the actors, see the army of technicians at work, walking down a red carpet at the premiere—it’s surreal! I’m also detached in a way. I’m just along for the ride, and it’s been a wild one so far. 

The post The Daily Heller: Richard McGuire’s Book ‘Here’ is Now a Movie appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

For those who do not know Atrissi (who I met over 25 years ago when he was student at SVA MFA Design), his work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim in New York and is in the permanent design collection of the Affiche Museum in the Netherlands. He has taught at the American University in Dubai as well as the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, and currently teaches at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands. His research focuses on visual culture in the Middle East, as well as the history of graphic design practice in the Arab world. He is a founding member of The Design Alliance Asia, one of the most extensive collaborative networks of designers on the continent, with a shared vision of advancing Asian identity as a vital cultural force and a strategic platform for design.

Atrissi and I later reconnected to discuss his teaching work and Beirut today.

What was it like to be in a war zone once again? I understand that you managed to leave the city, but the psychological impact of the air raids must take a toll.
I grew up during the war. The first 12 years of my life—and hence most of my childhood—were spent in war-torn Lebanon. Some of my earliest memories as a child are from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut.

When I decided to accept a teaching invitation at the American University of Beirut—my alma mater—I didn’t expect to find myself halfway through in a war zone again. Experiencing this situation as an adult feels surreal. It brings back many memories of the war. It makes me angry because I know what it is like to be a child living in war, and I don’t think any child should endure this. No child should be waiting for a ceasefire. I am also angry because the world is not doing enough to stop this. I am one of the privileged people who recently had the option to leave Lebanon and one of the fortunate ones who found a flight out of the country. But many—including my students, colleagues and their families—do not have this opportunity. Knowing what they are still going through is mentally exhausting.

What were you doing during the peaceful interim of your stay in Beirut? You’ve always been a type and lettering historian, have you continued to do that?
The first part of the semester was still peaceful—despite the uncertainties of an impending war. I managed to take advantage of being back in my hometown to pursue the urban typographic documentation I have always worked on in the Arab world: capturing the charming typographic landscape of Beirut. What fascinates me most about street typography in the city is the intersection of handlettering, classic Arabic calligraphy, and type, which creates a unique and rich visual language. Street typography has always been a major source of inspiration in my graphic work. Several identities we have conceived in my studio, Tarek Atrissi Design, were inspired by the typographic visual language of Arab-world streets. Many Arabic typefaces I’ve designed in our type foundry have drawn inspiration from the handlettering found in the streets of Beirut.

Since you were last in Beirut, I understand that the design archives have become more robust. What have you uncovered?
I finally managed to visit one of the most fascinating poster archives in Lebanon, City Lights Posters, and received a private, intensive tour of their new location. The collection contains spectacular film posters that capture unforgettable cinema memories from the Arab world, particularly from the golden age of Egyptian cinema. They are organized into different thematic categories and are remarkable in both the quality and variety of their illustrations and lettering. I can’t help but worry about the risk of possibly losing such a wonderful archive during the war. After all, the attacks on Lebanon are sparing neither cultural nor archaeological sites.

As part of my research work at the American University of Beirut, I have also been organizing, documenting, studying and analyzing a portion of my own design archive in Lebanon, which was given to me by my late grandfather, Chafik Nehme, a journalist who worked in publishing. The archive includes a wide range of printed items, such as an incredible collection of magazines, letterheads, booklets and brochures from across the Arab world, especially Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. The archive provides a unique insight into the history of Arabic graphic design in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Particularly intriguing to me are the various logos found on stationery items, the packaging design seen in advertisements, and the bilingual adaptation of typographic titles in brochures promoting films.

You collect other designers’ work and create your own graphic design as a response to past and present events. Can you share some of these?
As a graphic designer, part of my work has always been connected to the social and political reality around us. My strong stance against the violence taking place in the Middle East over the past year, particularly in Gaza and Lebanon, has resulted in a series of works ranging from poster designs to personal sketches and lettering calling for a ceasefire and denouncing war crimes and genocide. Another digital poster series celebrated the resilience and strength of Palestinian women facing displacement, visually reinterpreting old and new national and resistance symbols associated with their defiance.

The growing design community in the Arab world has been very active in producing a wide range of creative work to protest against these injustices. I have been actively collecting and documenting some of the most powerful and striking works produced, as I believe this will become a rich collection of meaningful contemporary graphic design and illustration in the Arab world today. The work of Mazen Kerbaj and Eline van Dam is an example of this strong body of work that has captured my attention.

What is it like for your students to be in the midst of war?
I am so proud of my students. They are living under the most extreme conditions—many of them displaced and all of them enduring daily heavy bombardment—yet they remain dedicated to their classes and eager to develop their design skills. Remarkably, they are producing solid typographic work in the visual identity classes I am teaching. Life always finds a way to continue during war, especially among the young and ambitious.

I am equally proud of my fellow teachers, who are working under unbearable conditions to keep classes going in any way possible. We all feel that design education, under these circumstances, is more important than ever and is our way of fighting back and understanding what we can do as designers.

Do you plan on returning to teach at the American University again once normality returns?
Yes, absolutely. I feel my work involvement in Lebanon is more important than ever. I am hoping this will be over next year so I can return and teach the fall semester and continue to work with the next generation of Lebanese designers.

The post The Daily Heller: Tarek Atrissi in Beirut Now appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Fittingly, a group of artists sought to memorialize the end of this bilious presidential campaign cycle. This past weekend, the Australian studio Bear Meets Eagle On Fire helped take the trash out in New York. Here is their justification:

The creative studio Bear Meets Eagle On Fire has partnered with independent artists in the New York City area on an anti-Trump design protest project.
The result is a series of orange “DUMP TRUMP” garbage bags emblazoned with the contentious political figure’s face. The swollen orange bags, strewn across the city streets in Manhattan and Brooklyn just days before the election, are a visceral metaphor for a candidate who’s run one of the most divisive and contentious campaigns for president in U.S. history.
“The most consequential presidential election in our lifetime is taking place in the U.S. this week; we just felt even a minor satirical statement was worth making,” said Micah Walker, founder of Bear Meets Eagle On Fire. 



In a sign of the ever-increasing political temperature in the U.S., Bear’s creative and production partners in the U.S.—designers, printers, photographers and even the volunteers who helped place the bags across the city—have asked to remain anonymous around their involvement in the project.
“It just gives you an indication of how fearful so many people are of a second Trump presidency,” Walker added. “I hope after next week it’s something none of us have to worry about ever again.”

The post The Daily Heller: Weaponizing Garbage appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Now, however, I have another vision in my mind’s eye as I re-read the book. Igor Karash‘s illustrations for a forthcoming limited edition from Easton Press bring more nuanced darkness to Vonnegut’s shadows. Karash, known for his satiric depictions of Stalinist Soviet Union, brings into play dramatic shades of light and dark that illuminate Vonnegut’s personal feelings about the horror of war.

Below, Karash and I discuss the making of this emotionally tense, tactile rendition of a 20th-century classic, which is bound to become a 21st-century treasure.

I’ve read Slaughterhouse–Five at least five times over the past 20 years (and saw the film three times). I am very taken by your visual interpretation. How did this project begin?
In the fall of 2021 (about five months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine) I was approached by the publishing company Easton Press in Connecticut. Honestly, I believe it was only the second or third time in my illustration career that a publisher contacted me directly with a commission. Easton Press is best known for deluxe editions of illustrated classics. When I heard they were interested in me illustrating Slaughterhouse–Five, a book I always admired, it only took me a few seconds to reply with a confirmation that I was fully on board.

My initial step was to formulate a few possible visual scenarios—concepts and mood boards consisting of sketches, previous work that could stylistically work for Kurt Vonnegut, and inspirational images, including war-time photography. One particular concept titled “SO IT GOES” was inspired by an event in the book when Billy Pilgrim watched a black-and-white newsreel backwards and how the Tralfamadorians viewed reality as a thousand images in one glance. The other two concepts involved integrating religious imagery from the early Renaissance, or, quite the opposite, visuals inspired by American sci-fi illustrations of the ’50s and early ’60s.

The “SO IT GOES” concept was chosen by the publisher and I began to develop the series.

You mentioned that you started working on it at the outset of the Ukraine-Russia war. How did it impact your work?
Not in the greatest way. When I started developing the visuals, I was predominantly moved by the idea of examining the “horrors of war,” bouncing on the borderline between the darkest side of human nature and the paradoxical presence of good (this is the main message of the book for me). And then, the first war on the European continent since WWII turned everything upside down. Ukraine for me isn’t just another country—this is where I went to art school, where I met my wife, and where both of my children were born. From day one of the Russian invasion I was closely watching and following all news from Ukraine, contacting my friends there, etc., and almost immediately my drawings of the “horrors of war” on the surface of my drawing tablet started to feel bleak, unimportant and fake compared to the tragic reality unfolding before me, and I more deeply sunk into the hole of “PEOPLE DO NOT LEARN FROM THEIR PAST. SO IT GOES.” It took me a while to find enough inner peace to continue the project.

When were you introduced to Vonnegut’s writing, and what was your initial impression?
I was first introduced to Kurt Vonnegut’s prose during my “previous life” in the Soviet Union. There were few translations of his novels published in the USSR—most notably Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. Not a lot of American authors were lucky to be published in my country (I say this with sarcasm in my voice). I think the Soviets liked Kurt Vonnegut’s rebellious criticism of the West, satirical commentary of the system, and anti-war sentiment. For us, the then-young generation (in contrast to the official government’s stance), his books were a small window to the West and we mainly enjoyed Vonnegut for his dark humor, surreal settings, fantastic worlds, elements of eroticism, and the oftentimes unusual structures and timelines in his books.

I only read Slaughterhouse–Five in English when I started working on this project. I have read it in its entirety about 10 times during the illustration process, and would periodically revisit specific chapters and sections.

What I like most is that none of the images you’ve made conform to my vision of the book, which I think is dictated by the movie. What is your thinking behind the pictures?
Somehow, perhaps subconsciously, my experiences in the Soviet military (1979–1981) shaped my vision for this project. Let me explain: There was a very strict draft system, so everyone had to serve in some capacity. I was drafted into the army while I was a student taking evening classes at an architecture college in Baku, Azerbaijan. I was a young 19-year-old dreamy/artistic type, so even though they found a military uniform and a pair of boots for me, I was very unprepared and quite unfit, a Soviet-style Billy Pilgrim.

I think what came through in my drawings based on my personal experiences is the feeling of being a misfit and a deep loneliness. The places I was stationed shaped my vision—I found myself in the midst of former German lands in the Kaliningrad Region (the city of Kaliningrad was built on the remains of the German city of Königsberg). When the city was taken over by the Soviets at the end of WWII it was somehow rebuilt as a typical Soviet city, but the region as a whole looked like a “frozen in time” war zone. One of these places, a small village called Kornevo with a dying collective farm, was at some point a fairly prosperous German town called Zinten. Not a lot remained of Zinten except for a few ruins. Scars of war were everywhere—holes from artillery shells on the buildings, wild apple trees where blossoming apple orchards once were, and ruins of homes with swimming pools in their backyards. Our regiment was stationed in former German barracks—a really well-built former German Tank School. These buildings were the only well-kept structures in Kornevo. When I started working on Slaughterhouse-Five, all my memories of this place came back, and now looking at my drawings I see some resemblance and reflection of these experiences.

On a general note, I always think my primary goal (when illustrating classic literature or modern classics) is to formulate a fairly independent and novel visual experience for the reader. But it is also important to me to find some balance between audience expectations regarding the theme, characters, time period, etc., and my artistic freedom. In the end, I hope the work has contemporary relevance and presents a balance of three worlds: “the world of the book,” “the world of the author” and “the world of the artist.”

You’ve also focused more on the return to Dresden than the character’s life in the suburbs. Did you prefer to stick to the surreal aspect of the plot?
This book, despite its small size, has a very complex structure (like the time travel) and an exceptional number of characters, so I had to make a decision very early in the process to limit my choices and focus on a few primary themes, like the Dresden bombing/scars of the war and the time/space travel that is part of Billy’s mental state … or is it?

This is a full-throttle deluxe visual experience. Do you feel it enhances or complements the reading?
A well-produced illustrated edition of an important influential book is something that, in my mind, corresponds to seeing a great theater performance or watching a great film based on a well-known classic. Yes, the story is familiar, but a new production or fresh creative direction adds new relevance and surfaces overlooked nuances. I think the modern reader is less interested in seeing visually what is already well-described in the text and appreciates illustrations that are more atmospheric, conceptually sophisticated and enigmatic.

This special edition also reflects the full creative freedom endowed to me by Easton Press—not a single concept or image I proposed was dismissed—including the most bizarre and strange imagery. I hope Kurt Vonnegut would like that!

The post The Daily Heller: Kurt Vonnegut’s Time Traveler Reimagined appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“The Cathedral” by the sculptor, wood engraver and editorial illustrator James Grashow, is completely carved out of basswood. Unveiled in September, it has been one hell of a weight on his shoulders: “I never did anything like it before,” he told me.

Grashow has made mammoth pieces out of paper and cardboard. “Of course I did woodcuts, but never carved like this, [and] had to completely retool. It was a commission but it was all my idea, inspired by a now 82-year-old man (me) trying to figure out how to keep his faith alive in an increasingly chaotic world.”

It took him four years to complete. Miraculous!

The post The Daily Heller: For James Grashow, a Weight Has Finally Lifted appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Recently, designer Andy Outis collaborated with journalist David Margolick on a series of posters and memes highlighting how Donald Trump’s vile rhetoric would have been directed at earlier immigrant groups—Jewish, Irish, Mexican, Japanese, and others.

“David’s intent is to provoke Trump-leaning voters to question whether their own forebears would have been subjected to the same bigotry and hate, and reconsider how supporting or voting for Trump is a wise decision,” Outis explains.

After the horrific rally on Sunday (where J.D. Vance accused Americans of being “too sensitive”), this message is all the more urgent and necessary.

“There are nine posters in the series; a 10th featuring Trump’s own German immigrant grandparents was cut,” Outis says, “so as not to cheapen the core message with the distraction of invoking his own heritage.”

The posters were produced in two sizes: letter-sized PDFs for printing, and Instagram/Facebook vertical variants for social media. They are available in two sizes here.

The post The Daily Heller: ‘Who Are The Real Americans?’ Takes Center Stage appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The Washington Post notes that Cuban sci-fi authors are reminiscent of the “satire of Rabelais and Swift.” With that in mind, I asked Rodriguez to reflect on sci-fi as a tool of dissent.

What exactly does this niche of fiction mean?
Some of these stories reflect on what is happening in Cuban culture and politics under the cover of science fiction. It gives writers a way to be social critics in an indirect manner. They can tell stories about corruption, migration, shortages and other social ills in a dystopian setting that is not directly tied to Cuba.

Are the books produced in Cuba for Cuban readers?
The books are written in Cuba by Cuban writers but have mostly been published in Spain. Some of them have been published in Cuba; it just depends on the nature of the writing. The books by the author Yoss are not printed on the island, though they do make their way back to readers there.

Are the writers dissidents?
I don’t think they are dissidents per se, but some have been looked at in a negative light by the establishment. This is why some of their books are often published overseas. I believe that the writer Agustín de Rojas was embraced by Cuban institutions while the writer Yoss was not.

What do you feel is a smart sci-fi scenario? And is there a Cuban narrative?
My favorite thing about these stories is seeing the references to Cuban culture, the conversation style and scenarios which mirror what is happening in the Cuban society. A Cuban narrative is when all goes to hell and the characters are desperately trying to right the ship, whether it be a boat, a country or a spaceship.

How many covers have you designed, and do you expect any more to come your way?
I’ve created seven book covers over the years so there may be more in the works. My latest for Restless Books is a cover for the The Third Temple, a dystopian novel based in a futuristic Jerusalem by author Yishai Sarid.

The post The Daily Heller: Cuban Sci-Fi and Hope for the Future appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The term fascist has become a catchall for repression, state terror and political evil—a counterpoint to Democracy—and has also become a description for ideological conservatives of all right-wing stripes. So often is it used for the slightest infraction of the liberal position that some critics have argued that it has become trivialized. But as of this national election, candidate and former president Donald Trump has invited opponents to label him fascist or fascistic, and the description has stuck; critics have been forced to agree that if it talks like a fascist, acts like one and spews the bile of one, then it is one.

The board game Secret Hitler is not specifically a critique of Trump’s overt sympathy with dictators and dictatorial power, and it’s decidedly not the first game to address political, social and economic issues. Table games pitting Marxism against Capitalism, the U.S. against Castro, and such general war games as Strategy and Battleship have been popular since the Cold War, but this is the first such game that has used the hot button of “Hitler” in the title. Which contributes to an overwhelming fear that democracy is indeed in danger. (Witness the rhetoric of last night Madison Square Garden Trump rally, seeped in divisive, racist, vulgar and hate-filled rhetoric)

Some historians believe that fascism cannot happen here in the United States—but it is undeniably clear that many of the paths to tyranny are being espoused in the current election rhetoric.

Here is the official product description for the game that brings our dangerous polarization into the spotlight:

Secret Hitler is a dramatic game of political intrigue and betrayal set in 1930’s Germany. Players are secretly divided into two teams—liberals and fascists. Known only to each other, the fascists coordinate to sow distrust and install their cold-blooded leader. The liberals must find and stop the Secret Hitler before it’s too late.

Each round, players elect a President and a Chancellor who will work together to enact a law from a random deck. If the government passes a fascist law, players must try to figure out if they were betrayed or simply unlucky. Secret Hitler also features government powers that come into play as fascism advances. The fascists will use those powers to create chaos unless liberals can pull the nation back from the brink of war.

The video below provides detailed instructions on what an insurrection in a liberal democracy can look like …

The post The Daily Heller: The Board Game Where the Whole Nation is the Loser appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Brasher is, as The Washington Post recently wrote, the greatest nature painter you’ve probably never heard of. A self-taught artist and longtime resident of the Northwest Corner, at age 16 he made it his life’s work to paint every bird in North America—producing a 12-volume compendium in 1929–1933 featuring descriptions of nearly 1,300 species and subspecies, including 874 color prints. Unhappy with the quality of four-color printing at the time, Brasher had black-and-white versions of his paintings printed, and he then colored them himself with watercolor, totaling 87,400 individually hand-colored prints over four years. One hundred sets of The Birds and Trees of North America were produced and sold to collectors, schools and libraries. Twenty complete sets are known to exist today.

“We are thrilled to partner with the Rex Brasher Association to produce these books and help spread awareness of this singular talent,” said Jim Coudal, co-founder of Field Notes. “The Association is currently fundraising to build a museum on Brasher’s home in Kent, CT, and a portion of the proceeds from this edition will be donated to support the effort.”

The set is grouped into two three-packs. Pack A includes the Rocky Mountain and Mexican Screech Owls, the Blue Jay and the Brewer Sparrow; Pack B includes the Pine Grosbeak, the Baltimore Oriole and the Sulphurbelly Flycatcher. The covers are printed on Mohawk Via Felt 100#C in Pure White, a supple and toothsome stock that evokes watercolor paper.

“When you see a Brasher bird, you have seen the bird itself, lifelike and in a natural attitude,” said T. Gilbert Pearson, a conservationist and president of the National Audubon Society from 1920–1934.

The post The Daily Heller: Watch the Birdies, They’re Watching You appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Philipp Penka, a rare books dealer and researcher based in Berlin, is an expert in Russian and Eastern European avant-garde art and literature and maintains a longstanding relationship with the gallery’s namesake, Richard Frary, an enthusiastic collector in this area. Penka curated the exhibition, and below he discusses how it offers a glimpse at one of the defining periods in European Modernism and “enables a better understanding of a time marked by major political, social and cultural transformations.”

What were your curatorial goals?
The exhibition offers a fresh and innovative perspective on the art of the European avant-gardes, including some of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century, including Futurism, Dadaism, Suprematism, Constructivism and Surrealism. It pairs abstract works across geographic boundaries, linguistic differences, urban centers and the periphery to reveal an international exchange of ideas that gave rise to new visual vocabularies in a Postwar world transformed by industrial mass warfare, revolutionary violence and economic crises, as well as extraordinary scientific progress and technological change. The exhibition illuminates the role artists played in advancing sociopolitical change by actively participating in creating a new, more just, and more authentically modern way of life.

The works on view from the historical avant-garde also help contextualize our understanding of today’s technology-driven changes in the arts. The Constructivists’ efforts to substitute quantitative reasoning for a traditional concept of the creative human, versus the Surrealists’ embrace of art that lent form to complex human experiences, including the realm of dreams, the unconscious and the absurd, parallel contemporary debates in art around how to respond to the all-encompassing mechanization of life and the inexorable growth of artificial intelligence.

Finally, another goal of this exhibition is to showcase a number of highlights from the Frarys’ own collection that has been built over the past two decades—items that are both historically significant and of great personal significance to Richard Frary. The works on view from the uniquely broad international holdings of the Frary Collection enable new conversations around the central “-isms” of modern art and advance a deeper appreciation of European Modernism.

Why is the avant-garde of the teens and ’20s the first exhibition?
Art and Graphic Design of the European Avant-Gardes is the perfect exhibition to open the Hopkins Bloomberg Center’s Irene and Richard Frary gallery because it speaks directly to Johns Hopkins’ mission in Washington, D.C. The Hopkins Bloomberg Center strives to foster dialogue and a global exchange of ideas across a wide range of viewpoints. Similarly, the exhibition shows how artists across the European continent engaged in an international exchange of ideas to develop new visual vocabularies in response to a world transformed by the modern Postwar age and give shape to a more just and truthful society.

The inaugural exhibition excellently illustrates the purpose of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center and the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery to convene a diversity of artistic and ideological perspectives to foster discovery, democracy and global dialogue.

What is planned for subsequent shows? 
Upcoming exhibitions and programming for the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery will be announced in the coming months. The gallery will present rotating exhibitions at the intersection of art and democracy drawn from the university’s collections and special exhibitions in partnership with leading museums and collections. With its new gallery, the Hopkins Bloomberg Center will bring a bring a fresh infusion of artistic expression and cultural dialogue to Pennsylvania Avenue.

The post The Daily Heller: A New Gallery With Vintage Treasures appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The project from Mascioli—a designer and art director based in Rome—features over 370 logos related to space exploration, divided into eight chapters and published in five separate booklets. Each logo is selected to tell the visual story of space exploration from the 1940s to the present day.

Mascioli notes that SELA will be printed in risograph on natural recycled Fedrigoni paper, in collaboration with riso specialist Oreri. Along with the booklets, the project also includes space propaganda posters and a set of stickers featuring the most iconic logos. As a complement, Mascioli has launched an online archive with the logos in vector format, all free to download.

While he is flying high, Mascioli and I communicated about the future of this retrospective collection.

How and why did you launch (no pun intended) this collection of logos and marks?
I started thinking about the idea roughly a year ago. Originally, the project was only meant to be a totally open and accessible online archive. I wanted anyone to be able to use it freely, and I realized that there was no such place.

I have also been a passionate collector of design books and logo collections for many years, so the idea of collecting everything in a book seemed like the natural evolution of the project. The idea was to make something that I wanted to own in the first place.

What sources did you use to obtain the examples?
The internet obviously played a crucial role, but unfortunately a simple Google search was not enough to get what I needed. I scoured thousands of pages for months, but the communities of enthusiasts played the key role. Without them, this project would not have been possible. They include spacefacts.de, collectspace.com, spacepatches.nl, space.com and africanews.space.

Were you surprised by how many space agencies and industries exist in the world?
Absolutely. My initial goal was to select only the best, prioritizing quality over quantity. I knew I would find a lot of material, but the more weeks went by, the more I kept adding dozens and dozens of logos. So, I went from an initial estimate of 150 logos to over 370!

I see you’ve included fictional logos as well. Is there a symbiotic relationship between real and fantasy?
Yes, very often science fiction anticipates future technologies, and sometimes even defines their aesthetics. That is why it seemed sensible and coherent to me to add this selection as well.

What do you hope your audience will take away from this project?
This project was born as a tribute to all the designers who contributed to make me so passionate about this topic. I hope that the work I have done will help pass on this heritage and that it can be an inspiration to others, as it has been for me.

The post The Daily Heller: Logos for the Wild Blue Yonder appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

It is why today we all must pay tribute to the subtle genius of the in-house design department of LiveOnNY, a nonprofit that helped arrange 1,000 vital organs for transplant last year, “thanks to the selfless acts of organ donors in the greater New York area—a record.”

But still, “there are nearly 9,000 New Yorkers statewide—131 of whom are children under the age of 18—waiting for a lifesaving transplant, according to United Network for Organ Sharing.” So, LiveOnNY is advertising for more donors through a subway campaign that is as brilliant, from its nuanced concept (“New York Needs Organ Donors”) to its soft-touch design, as it is patently urgent for those who require these lifesaving services.

It speaks for itself.

[Heart]felt congratulations to the team at LiveOnNY.

The post The Daily Heller: The Missing ♥ of the Matter appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Rubin’s work has been absent from public view since the 1960s—and Safdie’s enthusiasm in the exhibition (on view through Oct. 24 at the SVA Flatiron Project Space) and the following interview helps compensate for this disappointing fact.

“Despite being a prolific and influential educator, Rubin’s own work—collages and color constructions, which he only made until 1966—have been largely overlooked, and many of the works in the show have either been in storage for decades, or never exhibited until today,” Safdie told me.

Safdie and Robert Wiesenberger also co-authored an accompanying catalog, which was designed by Darling Green.

What is it about Irwin Rubin’s work that appeals to you?
Rubin’s work puts a grin on my face. I love the particular shapes and colors he fit into each composition, whether I’m getting lost in the deep canals of his large red construction, in the minutia of his teeny tiny collages, or find a gallery of candy pops smiling back at me. There’s also a pleasure to discovering his work through archival research, putting together the puzzle of his mostly overlooked career as I discover forgotten artworks in unexpected places.

Rubin appears to have been doing work in the Modern idiom that has one foot in graphic design and another in the art world. Do you agree?
I would say yes about the graphic design and art world part, but I’m hesitant to peg him as a Modernist. In the 1960s Rubin had his foot in the door of both worlds, working as a book designer for McGraw Hill and teaching color theory at Pratt, while at the same time exhibiting with leading galleries—like Bertha Schaefer, Martha Jackson, Byron and Stable—in New York City. But while he was part of a creative lineage coming out of the Bauhaus, and was at the forefront of mid-20th-century shifts to color and design conventions—shifts that brought us the now-familiar psychedelic rock posters of the late ’60s, and the pink and orange of the Dunkin’ Donuts logo—Rubin did not at all consider himself a Modernist, due to his obsession with adornment, surface and decoration. In Candy Land: Irwin Rubin’s Color Constructions, the catalog essay for this show, Robert Wiesenberger points to Rubin’s passion for antiques, antiquities and architectural ornamentation from around the world and across centuries. By embracing Premodern forms, Rubin’s work never quite fit into the minimalism, pop and op idioms of his time—it can be seen through the lens of what is now known as Postmodernism.

How did Josef Albers influence his collage and 3D works?
In the 1950s, Rubin took Albers’ color course at Yale three times. It was here that he discovered collage, traded his brushes and easel in for a utility knife and table, and adopted collage as his primary medium. Albers taught his students to preconceive their work, and introduced the idea of having visual or verbal justification for what they did. He challenged ideas of pure abstraction by thinking of “evocative color” and “evocative form.” After graduating, Rubin pushed his collage practice into three-dimensions, first by incorporating cardboard relief, and then by cutting, painting and assembling wood. The constructions became both structures atop which Rubin conducts planar explorations of color harmony and optical phenomenon, but also containers for collecting and celebrating a wide range of art historical references.

He was known as a teacher. In fact, he was your teacher. What did you take away from his class?
Wonder and joy, a destabilization of what I had assumed to be the truth, an appreciation of color as a readymade material and a subject, a commitment to craft, an intergenerational and posthumous connection to artists of the past, an endorsement for picking things up out of the trash. I was really lucky to study with Rubin in the final year he taught his foundation color class at Cooper Union. We spent the entire first semester working with Color-Aid paper, influenced by the magic show that is Interaction of Color, the second semester devoted to “free studies” using found paper and mixed media. We did all of the cutting and pasting at home, and the entire four-hour studio was devoted to critiquing and discussing our color compositions in all their successes and failures. I would not be the artist and teacher I am today without Irwin Rubin.

You obviously feel Rubin’s work has relevance today.
Rubin’s constructions and collages come across as remarkably fresh today, and it’s been wonderful to see artists from across generations connecting with them at SVA. Ben DuVall’s HTML/CSS Painting (after Rubin), 2024, a web-based painting created especially for the exhibition, is just one example of how Rubin’s work relates to contemporary practices. But what I find most relevant is to look beyond Rubin’s individual artworks, to look at his broader creative life that included teaching and collecting, and remember that artists might not always fit in with their time or do what is expected of them, and that’s great. Polychrome, meaning not just multi-colored but referring specifically to architectural elements and sculpture decorated in multiple colors, is an ancient practice that has at times been dismissed, overlooked or forgotten. Framing Rubin’s painted wood constructions as polychrome takes them outside of linear narratives, where they can be the ancient predecessor to their Modernist counterparts, and live outside of conventions like yesterday and today.

The post The Daily Heller: Teaching Color, One Pigment at a Time appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Tell me about the origins of this project.
For many years, I have investigated issues surrounding the loss of identity and privacy in the context of global monitoring of people and information. These issues have become increasingly relevant as technology continues to evolve and security concerns arise. The kinds of technology that are implemented for the sake of security often rely on the imaging of the human body and personal items. While maintaining public safety is an important concern, the introduction of physical security inspections, body scans and X-rays of personal possessions introduces an erosion of privacy. 

As an illegal immigrant, one exists in a constant state of uncertainty, inspiring the name “Incited” for the first project addressing immigration and privacy. This project begins with a tragedy: on Feb. 24, 2015, a cargo van carrying 54 illegal immigrants from various countries crashed near Leskovac, Serbia. “Incited” presents this accident from several perspectives, one of which is through animation using computer game technology. Viewers see a bird’s-eye view recreation of the event, emotionally distanced from it through augmented reality. This interactive AR experience allows the audience to visualize individuals inside the van, resembling an X-ray depiction. This concept extends to VR and printed installations on large glass surfaces, where transparency enables dual imagery, switching between normal and X-ray views based on the light source. Spending time in the gallery during late afternoons enhances the effect, revealing the full range from transparent to opaque imagery.

With the LEGO Immigration series, I am pushing this recreation concept further, bringing games and playing outside of the computer and technology.

At the core of my art projects is exploring empathy and reflection. The issues concerning immigration, security and privacy are complex and multifaceted. The individual must consider many angles and perspectives, but the discussion is not always approachable, or at least it hasn’t been until now. 

There is nothing more friendly, more approachable than the concept of play. While playing with LEGO bricks with my sons Maksim (17) and Toko (9), I realized that the LEGO building system is a perfect vehicle to tell a story that LEGO itself will likely never address. We had plenty of LEGO pieces, and with the help of my young apprentices, Maksim and Toko, I started a family business of building LEGO sets related to illegal immigration. In a fusion of the familiar and the unexpected, I decided to use LEGO brick as a medium for social commentary within the Immigration Series, made up of the sets “Human Trafficking,” “Border Wall,” “Migrant Boat” and “Migrant Raft.” Additional sets exploring stowaways, river crossings and semi-truck human trafficking scenarios are currently under construction. This project aims to address the issues of illegal immigration in a way that is accessible to the average person. While the Immigration Series depicts scenes of the peril, struggle and vulnerability that illegal immigrants face, it does so in a way that is meant to encourage interaction. Many of us grew up with these delightful building blocks. We understand them as vessels for wild ideas and creativity. This medium aims to transport the viewer to a child-like moment where they can imagine these issues in a learning environment without preconceived notions. With education at the heart of this project, adults and children alike are encouraged to engage with the complex issue of illegal immigration. While the idea may seem uncomfortable to some at first, it also teaches us not to be ignorant. Empathy, compassion and change only arise when we face hardship.  

At the forefront of all these projects is the effort to place us in the shoes of others, to not simply ignore problems because they do not personally affect us. This work encourages us to initiate a dialogue around personal privacy and the dehumanizing process of immigration and displacement. These issues, albeit uncomfortable to confront, offer opportunities for meaningful interaction and personal transformation.

LEGO is a registered trademark—are you using “parody” “satire” and “fair usage” to get around the trademark? In fact, can a work of art be your justification?
I use all of those legal means to criticize our society without anyone being spared. Without the freedom to express and point to injustices through art and design work, I think they would not be visible to as many people. This work is critical and political, utilizing a known system of building worlds to explore realities parallel to the positive and carefully crafted worlds of official LEGO sets. While there is nothing wrong with the prioritization of “positive” learning that LEGO seems to be invested in, it can sometimes come across as a one-sided and performative endeavor. With this work, I offer an alternative form of play that isn’t inherently positive or negative but instead does not shy away from the idea of conflict. The educational component of these sets might be the best part of the attempt to bring these issues to young minds that will be tasked with solving many of the problems we are facing today.

Where will this be exhibited?
So far, I have shown the LEGO Immigration Series of work in several university shows, where I wanted to test its value and impact on the targeted population. I am just entering the real-world art scene with this project and have had conversations with several museums and contemporary art centers. 

What has the reaction been to date?
I received a very positive reaction from the audience. Most of them are college students, so I believe they understand and appreciate the hidden messages in these LEGO sets. The college crowd has the background and education to understand the complexities of the message while also being familiar enough with the medium to appreciate the subversion of the beloved LEGO brick. 

Many of them approach the sets with familiarity. I even had one student who worked at the local LEGO store tell me she didn’t know the company had come out with an immigration set, just to find out that they indeed had not. What struck me about this interaction was the blind trust that came with seeing the familiar “brand” and toy. People are curious enough to approach the issue because of their association with bricks, but they stay for the dialogue that the topic and presentation inspire. It was very satisfying to see the students’ interest in the project and how believable the packing and presentation turned out to be. A lot of care went into finding the specific materials for this project, trying to get that nostalgic feel just right.

A lot of research and trial and error went into formatting the packaging of these sets. I noticed that LEGO has a very specific way of angling and positioning the character figurines and backgrounds depending on the audience they are trying to reach. This was a very interesting challenge to face. Packaging often comes secondary, but in this case, it felt essential to the project because it gives it that feel of legitimacy. The initial believability of the project as an official set is what puts the audience in the specific mindset of trying to reconcile the project as a work of art but also a toy that they could dare to interact with. 

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“You and I travel to the beat of a different drum …”

It is my Proustian moment—À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

“So, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I knock it
It’s just that I am not in the market
For a boy who wants to love only me …”

Of the countless songs about unrequited love that I wallowed in as an oft love-sick, rejected teenager, these lyrics (written by former Monkee Mike Nesmith) said it all, driven home by Ronstadt’s voice filled with self-assured finality. Although I heard and lived those lines too often in my pubescent years, it made me fall in unabashed masochistic love with the singer … not the song.

Which is the reason my memories have been churned with a recent spate of Ronstadt fan pages on Facebook—and why every post that catches my eye is marked with a heart emoji.

It is also why I eagerly anticipate the Netflix documentary scheduled for March 2025: Linda Ronstadt: A Voice for the Ages. I would have preferred a less cliche title … but I’ll watch it over and over no matter what it’s called.

The reason I bring this up: a post-Proustian moment when Ronstadt and I stood two feet away from one another for a long minute. She was combing her hair. I was speechless. She said “hi.” I returned the greeting. That’s it! But the memory lingers like the scent of fresh cut lilacs.

It was November 1970. I was the AD and designer of the poster and adverts for a Rock magazine–produced concert at the New York Academy of Music, starring Tim Buckley, Van Morrison and Ms. Ronstadt. It was one of a half-dozen events that we produced (we ran three sold-out Oldies shows there) and our first contemporary rock gig.

The Academy of Music, a storied 2,000-seat music hall turned grand movie theater (my grandmother would take me there for matinees), transformed into a rock palace and later became the Palladium Ballroom and nightclub. Eventually, it was bought by NYU, torn down and replaced by a dormitory and Trader Joe’s (such is progress, such are property values).

As I noted, this was our first real rock concert, featuring three amazing headliners and their respective bands. We advertised it in all the weeklies—Village Voice, East Village Other, The Rat, Rock—and expected the same overwhelming ticket sales as our Oldies extravaganzas. We had stupidly not reckoned that the other New York rock palaces were also booking big acts for that same weekend. The Fillmore East, Electric Circus and Capitol Theater in Rye, NY, all had major acts from the Rolling Stones to Procol Harum to Moby Grape. I think Jimi Hendrix was in town, as well.

There was more talent than demand. We averaged a paltry 500 tickets each night for a 2000+ seat theater. This brilliant financial failure was, however, the stuff of good storytelling. Each performer gave their all despite the disappointing crowd size. However, I didn’t even notice all the empty seats. The Academy of Music had a deep orchestra pit from the good ole days that went unused and was where I watched each of the four shows alone. At 1 a.m., after the last show on Saturday night, I was hanging out in the lobby. It turned into a lucky chance to be close to the lovely Ms. Ronstadt.

When Linda—forgive me, Ms. Ronstadt—stopped in front of one of the lobby’s 10-foot tall mirrors to comb her flowing black hair and bangs, I felt the fates had given me the opportunity I had been waiting for. I was just about to tell her I was the concert’s graphic designer and love all her albums. I waited for the right moment … after her combing was done. Then all of a sudden, seeing me staring at her in the mirror, she said “hi.” I was tongue-tied but manage to say “hi” back. Then I watched as she walked under the pale yellow marquee lights into a waiting car. The moment of a fantasy fulfilled was over in an instant. I returned to the room where our concert producer was catatonic, shocked by the indignity of the weekend’s receipts. All of a sudden he looked up at me and growled, “This was a disaster! Why are YOU grinning?!”

“Linda Ronstadt just she said ‘hi’ to me,” I said.

The post The Daily Heller: The Night I Said Hi to Linda Ronstadt appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Arlen Schumer may not have indulged in the ice milk ritual, but he is proud to have joined the fanbase at the same time, when he was 4-and-a-half years old. A comics-style illustrator by profession, he remained a loyal fan well into his twenties, at which time he stepped over the line separating substance from. imagination and became an expert. By expert I mean he has published two books, writes profusely and lectures extensively on “The Twilight Zone.” His latest, The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone, is a collection of astute essays on the over- and under-currents of the show’s essential plots.

He is reluctant, however, to allow himself the “expert” moniker.

“The first visual image I can recall in my childhood was seeing the black-and-white ‘Twilight Zone’ ‘eyeball’ in outer space, from the series’ 1963 opening.” Years later, in junior high school, “I remember having to write a paper on an American artist for English class, and chose the sculptor George Segal, whose ghostly white plaster figures made from real people’s molds, I wrote, had a ‘Twilight Zone’ feeling. Then, in high school, we had to make a 16mm short film, and I basically made my little version of the classic ‘Twilight Zone’ episode ‘Eye of the Beholder,’ about the hideously ugly woman getting plastic surgery (she’s revealed to be beautiful, while all the doctors and nurses, previously seen only in shadows, were pig-faced creatures themselves).”

In his film, he played the central character. So I’d say he’s an expert.

I have watched the “Twilight Zone” marathon on New Year’s eve and day ever since Syfy began doing it. I suspect Schumer has done the same. But that’s not what I asked him about in the interview below. I am more interested in how his new, insightful book came together. So put your reading goggles on, you are about to enter a discussion that we call “The Twilight Zone.”

How long have you been a “Twilight Zone” expert?
In the fall of 1980, I’m fresh out of Rhode Island School of Design (having majored in graphic design) and working in New York City in the art department of PBS’ flagship station, WNET Channel 13. I hear through the pop culture grapevine that Bantam Books was going to publish a book, The Twilight Zone Companion, an episode guide to the series (at the time, there was only one book about a television show, 1968’s The Making of Star Trek). Immediately I imagined that if I were art director/designer of such a book about my favorite TV series of all time, I would art direct/design “the concrete book,” in which every aspect of a book’s design, from font selection to page layouts, should reflect its subject matter. Ergo, a book about a surreal black-and-white television show like “The Twilight Zone” should have the look and feel of a small black-and-white television set—and its beautiful black-and-white television images should be treated like black-and-white art photography.

So in my after hours at Channel 13, I created an accordion-style folded book dummy/proposal with those concepts, and sent it off to Bantam. They promptly returned it with a short note thanking me for my interest, [but] they were going to design the book in-house. Though obviously disappointed, I realized that their book would be a trade paperback of mostly text, accompanied by black-and-white publicity photos shot off set back in the day—certainly not the type of hardcover coffee table art book I wanted to do.

That set me on a 10-year odyssey to get my (first) book about “The Twilight Zone” published, which would happen in 1990 with Chronicle Books (San Francisco). [That was]Visions From The Twilight Zone, in which I also transcribed dialogue and narration excerpts from the run of “The Twilight Zone,” ones that contained the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of the series, then typeset and designed them to read like poetry. [They were] “illustrated” by images I had photographed right off a black-and-white TV screen, in an attempt to graphically communicate the scan-lined nature of the television image itself. But it was during that 10-year trek that I was introduced to you (Steven Heller) in the fall of 1987, when you were still art director of The New York Times Book Review, by the editor of PRINT magazine, whom I had pitched (successfully) the idea of PRINT doing a special issue on the recent explosion of comic book art and graphic novels (caused by the 1986 confluence of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and Frank Miller’s epic, The Dark Knight Returns).

PRINT sent me to you because you were going to write one of the articles in the special issue. When we met, I showed you my portfolio of graphic design and illustrations, as well as my Twilight Zone book dummy that I had been schlepping around throughout the decade to various agents and editors, with no success. But as soon as you saw it, you lit up—because you were a massive “Twilight Zone” fan! You immediately asked me if I had ever lectured on Rod Serling’s legendary series—I hadn’t—but nevertheless invited me to put together a lecture about “The Twilight Zone” for a Fall ’88 symposium you organized for the School of Visual Arts, “Modernism and Eclecticism”!

That lecture at the SVA symposium was my first professional lecture, and the first of so many live multimedia presentations (and eventually webinars) on various aspects of “The Twilight Zone” I’ve been doing ever since. But it was only after that first lecture that I could honestly call myself a ‘Twilight Zone’ expert”!

I presume that you’ve seen every episode, including the inferior hour-long ones?
Of course, because I was a kid who grew up on “The Twilight Zone” through reruns. I must’ve seen every episode (there were 156) the proverbial thousand times since, more for the episodes I like/love (68, the number of essays in my book, The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) than those I don’t, which include 15 of the 18 one-hour episodes that you noted were indeed “inferior.”

I presume you had to do a lot more TV watching for the new book?
So even though I have seen all those 68 “Twilight Zone” episodes the proverbial thousand times, I re watched them all freshly for my book, while taking copious notes, and then incorporated any related outside research and input I collected, allowing for the many allusions and insights into the surrounding past and present social and popular culture—and both high and low art—that these rich “Twilight Zone” episodes riffed on and provoked in me, and out of me. If I’ve succeeded, even the most ardent aficionados of the series will glean something, learn something, feel something fresh and/or different about “Twilight Zone” episodes they’ve known and loved for years, or decades, causing them to see those episodes anew.

If Rod Serling had not died, how much longer do you think he’d have been able to keep the series going?
Well, “The Twilight Zone” had ended back in 1964, and was never revived, up until Serling passed at the age of 50 (from all those cigarettes he smoked!) in 1975. But had he lived, he would’ve seen the enormous and ubiquitous influence “The Twilight Zone” had on a new generation of television and filmmakers, directors, authors and artists of all types, who didn’t really emerge until after Serling’s death: the Steven Spielbergs, the Stephen Kings, the David Lynches and James Camerons and J.J. Abramses, and so many more, all of them Serling’s metaphorical children, whose creative imaginations were sparked by his brainchild when they were teenagers. And had that happened, I’m convinced that the original network [of “The Twilight Zone”], CBS, would have revived the show with Serling at the helm in the early 1980s—instead of the couple of horrible “new” “Twilight Zone” syndicated series that were actually produced in ’85 and 2000, both entirely dismissible (as was the recent new “Twilight Zone” one hour series that aired on CBS’ streaming service for two seasons in 2019–2020, creatively led by writer/director Jordan Peele, who was given the keys to Serling’s kingdom because of the success of the very “Twilight Zone”-ish film Peele wrote and directed in 2017, Get Out).

You declare in your new title that five themes exist in Serling’s portfolio. What are they?
With this book, I was inspired to curate what I thought were the best episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” collected in a framework that would separate my “greatest hits” of the series into distinct themes that would encompass the diversity—and similarity—of the best episodes by Serling and company. Of course, one can argue that there are more than just five themes of “The Twilight Zone” that the breadth of its 156 episodes would suggest, but I decided rather quickly on the following five, almost as if they suggested themselves: “Science and Superstition,” “Suburban Nightmares,” “A Question of Identity,” “Obsolete Man,” and “The Time Element.” (Of the five, “Suburban Nightmares” is the only one I coined that does not have a direct “Twilight Zone” connection; bonus points for recognizing that “A Question of Identity” comes from dialogue spoken by the protagonist of [the show’s] debut episode, “Where is Everybody?”)

Which five episodes are your favorites?
Asking me to choose even five of the greatest “Twilight Zone” episodes is like, yes, having to choose your favorite child. But duty calls: For the theme “Science and Superstition,” I would choose the first episode (Oct. 2, 1959), Rod Serling’s “Where is Everybody?” about an amnesiac trapped in a totally deserted American town, without any knowledge of how he got there. After a series of harrowing experiences, he’s revealed to be an astronaut in training, in an isolation tank for two weeks to simulate a solo space trip to the moon and back—and so the entire episode was his nervous breakdown delusion, visualized for us, the viewers, upsetting the tacit agreement between creator and audience that what you’ve been watching was “real.” It’s the first great “Twilight Zone” twist ending that the series became renowned for, and perhaps the most perfect pilot episode in television history, in that it included virtually all the existential and surreal motifs that “The Twilight Zone” would become associated with: isolation, fear of the unknown, confusion with mannequins, hallucinogenic delusions that seem all too real. “Suburban Nightmares”: Rod Serling’s acute ability to identify both primal and Postwar American fears and crises, then build stories around them, set in commonplace surroundings—a psycho-American Gothic of sorts is perhaps the single factor most responsible for the success and longevity of “The Twilight Zone.”

Ergo I would choose “The Hitch-Hiker” that Serling, a master adapter (a dozen of his 41 episodes represented in my book are adaptations), based on the 1941 radio play by Lucille Fletcher (of “Sorry, Wrong Number” fame), about a woman (the incandescent Inger Stevens) driving cross-country from New York to Los Angeles, plagued all the while by the recurring sight of a foreboding, dark-suited man hitching a ride. At the end of the episode she comes to realize she’s been dead the entire time (shades of Bruce Willis in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense!), killed in a highway blowout back in Pennsylvania, and the hitchhiker was, of course, Death personified.

“A Question of Identity”: When author Jonathan Lethem wrote in the online journal Gadfly in 1999, “What Serling created was a homegrown vernacular of alienation, identity slippage and paranoia … the titles of the best episodes read like a found poem of All-American dread,” he might’ve been thinking of the dehumanizing dread inherent in the chilling, clinical title of the great Charles Beaumont’s “Twilight Zone” episode, “Person or Persons Unknown.” It’s a taut, tense, noir-ish tale in which he posits his take on “Twilight Zone” creator Serling’s “worst fear of all … the fear of the unknown working on you, which you cannot share with others.” In doing so, Beaumont writes the quintessential episode of one of The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone, about “a man who has just lost his most valuable possession … the matter of his identity,” to quote from Serling’s on-screen introduction. “Obsolete Man” is Rod Serling’s most recurring theme throughout his career—alienation of the individual through bigotry, racism and corporate and technological oppression. In this quintessential Serling “Twilight Zone” tale of a near-future totalitarian state where individualism is scorned and books are banned, a librarian is condemned to death by the fascistic chancellor of “The State,” with its most memorable, monotone mantra, “YOU ARE OBSOLETE!”

“The Time Element”: If time travel was a cornerstone of “The Twilight Zone,” a dimension Serling described as “timeless as infinity,” a strong case can be made for his first-season episode “Walking Distance” being not only the best time travel episode of the series, but the best episode of “The Twilight Zone,” period. Serling’s most autobiographical episode, about a thirty-something Madison Avenue adman who can’t take the rat race, and returns to his upstate New York hometown (Serling grew up in Binghamton), where he literally walks back in time and visits himself as a boy. In all facets of television production—concept, story, dialogue, acting, direction, photography, lighting, editing, music (one of the great Bernard Herrmann’s greatest soundtracks)—”Walking Distance” is simply a masterpiece, the Citizen Kane of television.

We have “Black Mirror” on TV. But could “Twilight Zone” be made as well today? Or are these episodes locked in the prison of time?
The British anthology television series “Black Mirror” (which debuted in 2011, with only 27 episodes over six seasons), stories about technology run amok, is literally the only post-original “Twilight Zone” series to deserve the branding of “a 21st-century ‘Twilight Zone’”— because Black Mirror has a unique, singular vision stemming from a single creator, just like Serling vis-a-vis “The Twilight Zone,” Charlie Brooker, the creator, showrunner and head writer of “Black Mirror.” While his series has its fair share of clunkers like Serling’s had, “Black Mirror” has more than a handful of great, brilliant episodes that measure up to the pedigree of “The Twilight Zone.” So in a way, “Black Mirror” is filling the void where a new “Twilight Zone” series should rightfully be. As previously mentioned, CBS’ 2019 2020 attempt to revive the series on its streaming service with writer/director Jordan Peele as showrunner was a creative flop. I’ve always thought the brilliantly bizarre David Lynch was Serling’s only legitimate heir his two greatest films, 1985’s Blue Velvet and 2001’s Mulholland Drive, are both “Twilight Zone”-esque fever dreams, not to mention the two versions (1990 and 2018) of his sui generis TV series “Twin Peaks”—and therefore would make perhaps the perfect host and showrunner of a new “Twilight Zone” television series. I can dream, can’t I?

As to whether my great “Twilight Zone” episodes are “locked in the prison of time,” I take issue with the premise of the question itself—because like all great art in any medium or genre, the 68 episodes I write about in The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone are both of their time, and timeless, their ideas and issues and morals and messages that Serling and his fellow writers imbued in their 25-minute meditations on all the great themes since man first told stories, still speak to us and our societal and interpersonal concerns in the 21st century, 65 years after “The Twilight Zone” debuted. Buy the complete series on DVD, or stream it on CBS’ Paramount Plus, and use my book as a viewer’s guide; watch each episode as I’ve ordered and organized them, then read each one’s essay, and see if you don’t agree.

Click here for tickets to Schumer’s New York City screening and book signing on Oct. 27. And to order a signed copy, click here.

The post The Daily Heller: Your Next Stop, The Twilight Zone appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The message of the exhibition was Now is Better, coinciding with a talk by Sagmeister on Oct. 5 at Dysarium, the largest Ukrainian design conference.

Given the war, there were no flights to the event. But a car was waiting for Sagmeister in neighboring Warsaw. Below is a report of his stay in Lviv.

“Overall, it was absolutely amazing. Four thousand people attended in person and another 4,000 watched it live online, which makes Dysarium one of the largest design conferences in the world.

“Considering how difficult it is currently to get into the country, I have to assume this was a purely Ukrainian audience with few designers traveling in from abroad. Lviv is a gorgeous historic city of a million people, all UNESCO heritage sites, with an effective mayor [who] I met up with three times—he came to the opening, the lecture, and stayed for hours.

“There was intermediate and long-lasting applause during and after the lecture, and all conversations I had during the opening of the exhibit were all extra supportive. I must have heard the sentence, ‘Thank you for coming to Ukraine and bringing this message,’ literally hundreds of times.

“Initially, I was unsure if our core message about long-term thinking and Now is Better would be something that could be appreciated in a country facing such real and significant hardship.

“My anxiety evaporated when it became clear that our positive message landed in the hearts and minds of the people in Lviv—it was actually welcomed much more than among countries and people who live in comparably peaceful and secure situations.

“A friend commented that a future optimistic message resonates more with a society that is experiencing a traumatic event such as a war, possibly similar to the optimism during the first Postwar decades in the U.S. and Western Europe. My Ukrainian friend Andreii thought that if your life is filled with a lot of real trouble, it sharpens the senses for something good: the possibility to sleep through an entire night without having to move to a bomb shelter. Or, in this case, a positive design exhibit.

“On the first day we visited a giant hospital for the wounded in the war, with many buildings, thousands of beds and departments for designing and building prosthesis devices.

“On our last day we were told about a large number of incoming Iranian drones. They asked us to download an app that showed us which districts in Ukraine were affected, and if we needed to temporarily move into a shelter during the night. We checked with the hotel for the nearest shelter. The drones wound up coming close to Lviv but ultimately were all intercepted. We slept through the night.

“The Ukrainian hospitality reached legendary levels, and we truly felt in very good hands.

“We could not have felt more welcome.”

The post The Daily Heller: Stefan Sagmeister in Lviv, Ukraine appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

I spoke to Schütz to learn more about the studio’s type in motion.

Do you see graphic design and typography as moving ever more toward motion?
Absolutely. Digital applications of typography are becoming dominant, with more and more text displayed on screens. In the realm of display type especially, motion has become a powerful tool for creating expressive design. Motion is now as fundamental to the typographic systems we develop for clients as letterform, color and layout. It’s an elemental feature we incorporate into every project.

Many designers use tools as if they were toys to be played with. I for one have secretly been toying with some AI, but will try hard not to use it for creation.
We like to approach the creative process with a playful mindset. To encourage this, we often adapt our tools—or create new ones—that support or even enforce this mindset. For instance, we replaced the standard mouse and keyboard input with a gamepad, which is typically used in a recreational setting. The muscle memory from the gamepad tricks your brain into feeling like you’re playing rather than working, which changes the vibe and the creative output.

What are, in your opinion, the most significant of all the tools you have conceived?
I’d say the tool we call touchtype. It’s the product of a long, iterative process that started years before the current version was finalized and put online. This tool embodies everything we aim for when developing new tools: It’s innovative, intuitive and playful. Plus, it supports a fast-paced, experimental workflow for creating lettering, which is central to our approach.

Your studio is both a business and a recreational venue. How do you achieve balance?
Our projects naturally define the business side—meetings, planning, deadlines, and so on. Even during periods of intense work, though, we make a point of blocking out time in the calendar for creative, playful projects and discussions. During the summer, we start most days with a relaxed espresso meeting outside, talking about personal things and design ideas. Many of our best concepts have started in this “recreation time.”

How do you expect the studio to progress in the future?
I think our design practice will always be shaped by the projects that come our way. But we’d like to use our free projects to guide the studio towards more experimental and interactive typography. Ideally, clients will come to us for work that satisfies both our creative interests and business goals.

What is on the drawing board now?
We’re currently working on several typographic tools, both commissioned and personal projects. I’m excited to share them once they’re finished! 

The post The Daily Heller: Experimental, Playful and Practical Lettering appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

We talked about the backstory, the current impact, and the making of this personal and political family saga.

How long have you been working on Amalgam?
It was 12 years in the making, beginning in 2009.

I don’t recall seeing any long-form narrative work from you before. Was this story just waiting to bubble up?
After 25 years of illustrating political articles with linocut prints often completed overnight (which I loved), I wanted to make pictures in series with larger, labor-intensive images.

Still about politics, they increasingly focused on individuals caught up in history.

Amalgam initially started as another artist’s book. Without a set deadline, each 18” x 24” linoleum block, etched with a small cutter, could take several weeks to finish. I’d edition a small number of handmade books with original prints for special collections libraries in universities, the NYPL, and the Library of Congress.

The story involves your grandfather’s escape from Poland and the politics that brought him here.
It begins with my grandfather’s 1911 departure from Poland to escape the Russian draft. His job as a pocket maker in a NYC factory precipitated his role as a foot soldier in America’s “Armies of Labor.” The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, established in 1914, put an end to the 70–80-hour workweek. The union, derived from the word “Amalgam” was a mixture, a blend –“a curious amalgam of the individual and the group” – “a curious amalgam of the pragmatic and the visionary.” The new country, the union, and the family were all “curious amalgams” — mixtures; blends that were sometimes made up of contradictory elements. So my story grew in length and in time. My grandfather was an unyielding patriarch, who believed in freedom in the workplace but never at home. The children weren’t allowed to have toys – books were their only playthings. These images increasingly mixed the personal with the political.

The span of the book reminds me of my own grandparents . . .
The first part of the book ends with the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, factory workers, including those in my family, made the clothing worn by all of America, and because of unions, they became part of an emerging middle class (or as Orwell might have put it, the upper-lower middle class).

This is more than a memoir or family history . . .
That this book is, in part, a memoir was not something I initially considered, but as it kept expanding, this eventually happened — history and aspects of personality are both handed down.

The Epilogue is about the demise of the union, what happened to the family (so many deaths), and to my grandfather’s houses — what continues and what’s changed.

Did you share your work with your grandfather? Given your political leanings, he must’ve been proud.
In 1979, on a visit back to Brooklyn, I showed my grandfather an illustration I’d done for The Nation, about the anti-union tactics of the misleadingly named “National Right to Work Lobby.” He talked proudly of his days as a renegade, climbing up fire escapes, and breaking into shops where workers toiled seven days a week without a living wage.

Several years ago, my cousin and I visited the brownstone on Putnam Avenue where my mother, his father, and our aunt grew up. The house looks much the same as it did when they were children. The cross street, which was called Sumner, is now Marcus Garvey Boulevard. As we stood in front of the house, I imagined my mother as a young girl descending the stairs.

The union was dissolved in 1976. New unions are emerging. The fight for a living wage continues.

What did the research process entail?
Books lent by my cousin, who taught labor history helped with early research, as did the New York Public Library’s picture collection, the Kheel Center at Cornell, family photo albums, a search of Ellis Island records, and later, online searches.

With a Cullman Center Fellowship for Scholars and Writers at the NYPL, research for Amalgam expanded in directions I hadn’t anticipated. A fellow in history directed me to books and documents, and a Soviet propaganda poster of a religious Jew wearing a yarmulke and cradling a pig. The Dorot Division added information about Jews in Russia. Elsewhere, at the library, there were books about Frances Perkins and Sidney Hillman, both of whom were responsible for humane legislation.

In the Map Division, there was a document that showed Poland’s changing occupiers over a few hundred years. Every day at the library, I passed a vitrine honoring Andrew Carnegie for the millions he had given to build libraries, while I simultaneously read about the massacre, years earlier, at his company, the Homestead Steel Mill, that his manager, Henry Clay Frick, had instigated, and which he approved. He was a man of great contradictions who grew to deeply regret these deaths. When they were old men who hadn’t spoken in 20 years, Carnegie sent Frick a letter asking to meet, and to let “bygones be bygones.” To which Frick replied, “You can tell Carnegie I’ll meet him. I’ll see him in hell where we are both going.” A new section about labor history was added to Amalgam, with other “Meetings in Hell.”

I love the way you’ve blended and contrasted different graphic/visual approaches. For instance, your line is looser than your editorial work. What was your thinking, doing the book in this manner?
These pieces began as small drawings that were blown up (as did most of my earlier editorial work). The drawn line that expresses both meaning and human feeling has always been my starting point—if that isn’t working, the time-consuming finish is just technique. Occasionally, I’ve cut faces out of the lino block and glued in replacement cuts that felt truer to the person. Some of the people are drawn more realistically, while the scribbly lines in others, sometimes within the same picture, describe the character. It’s not usually a conscious choice — the larger scale and self-imposed deadline probably allow for more attention to variation and experimentation.

As far as different visual approaches, many with collage elements, without a deadline I had time to pick out Zabar’s most beautiful challah that became my grandmother’s many-breasted torso. And to get vintage candy from Economy Candy for the outfit of an uncle who owned a candy store underneath the EL on Kings Highway.

An actual girdle that had belonged to someone in the family (it was a relief not to have to buy one on eBay) became the bungalow where my grandfather had packed in so many of us.

I am also impressed by the design of the book. It falls into the graphic novel/memoir genre, but it goes beyond the conventions. What was your intention in avoiding the comic strip format?
This book is a hybrid, with both single-page images, several running overspreads, and others composed of multiple parts. My only considerations were whatever made sense for a particular part of the story, along with how everything would work together. I’d initially thought of this book as an artist’s book, a concertina with attached small accordion fold books in a numbered edition of 15. But it became increasingly important to me to have Amalgam out in the world- published as a graphic non-fiction. And I’m extremely excited that it was produced with a foldout that gives the book so much added meaning.

What is the significance of the keyhole (and other metal door parts)?
Doors, and their parts — hinges and keyholes — reoccur throughout Amalgam. The gilding on the cover’s Golden Door is wearing away. Parts are rusty. The peephole is ominous. Walt Whitman said, “Unscrew the locks from the doors. Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs,” which meant quite a different thing to my grandfather. With always open doors in the 4-family house, three generations were hinged to each other.

Everyone could look inside everyone else’s life as if people were composed of keyholes.

Factory workers were Locked Out and Locked In, disastrously. The book ends with my grandfather’s departure, outside a small screen door.

Was there any part of the actual history that you left out? Or left to the imagination?
The foreman’s son, who worked in the factory stole war relief funds, probably to pay his gambling debts. He was found out, escaped by joining the army, and was killed in the war. He left behind his wife and child, along with his father. With so many tragic stories about wartime, I don’t know why I find this one so haunting.

(Unions contributed donations to the war effort that were sometimes deducted from paychecks. But there was no clear image to work with and nothing I could find to document this.)

I never completed a story about my mother and her friend Pauline’s visits to the USO in New York City. They would go there to talk and dance with soldiers. Pauline would always remove her wedding ring. My lovely mother was not chosen to be a USO hostess. I couldn’t find photos of the interior of the NYC USO to flesh this out, despite the wonderful title at the library, a book called Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun.

What would you like the reader to take away from this story?
Someone once remarked about this book’s focus on an “ordinary” person. I never thought that my grandfather was ordinary despite a lack of fame. He believed in something truly extraordinary: fairness in an unfair world, and he fought a good fight.

When I first told my beloved mother (who, contrary to everyone’s opinion was occasionally not sweet) about what I was working on, she had said, “Who’s going to be interested in our family?” After which she added, somewhat more kindly, “But I was wrong about the other one” (artist’s book on torture.) I hope that she would have liked this book.

A woman wrote to me that the depiction of my grandfather conjured up her father’s character (although my grandfather was employed by Howard Clothes and her father by the World Health Organization).

So I guess that is what I would like someone to take away, that in the images of this very specific family, they could recognize their own.

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