Highschool Space Hosts Zine Making Party Nov. 21
 
Wicker Park, Chicago, IL —
Highschool Art Space hosts “READ Zine Making Party #5” at 7:30 p.m. Sunday,
Nov. 21st 2004.
 
The READ Party promotes media literacy and DIY ethics in a hands-on
environment.
 
Bring your friends, cameras, journals, and ideas to fill the blank pages
distributed at the entrance.
 
Pages created at the READ Party will be published in READ Zine #5, the
culmination of the event.
 
Publishers and zinesters are encouraged to bring their wares to trade &
sell.
 
In the past two decades “zines” — an informal word derived from “magazine”
— have become
a street art and literary phenomenon.
 
They are self-published periodicals often photocopied, noncommercial, and
frequently confrontational with mainstream culture and media.
 
The estimated 20,000 zines that exist in the United States today vary
largely in topic appealing to numerous audiences with specialized interests.
 
The READ Zine Making Party is made possible by Quimby’s, Loop Distro and a grant from the City of Chicago’s Community Arts Assistance Program [CAAP].
 
For more info on this event please contact project coordinator at
bradley_adita@yahoo.com.
More press, info & sample pages from previous issues can be found at
http://www.adita.org/read
 
Highschool is located at 1542 N. Milwaukee Ave. 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL,
60622 and maintains a website at http://www.highschoolspace.com or email
reeducation101@yahoo.com

Steve Brodner signsFreedom Fries
Sunday, October 17th, 4:00 PM
FREE
 
For more than two decades, Steve Brodner has been the most savage editorial cartoonist/ illustrator to work in the United States. His pitiless illustrations, cartoons, comic strips, and illustrated reportages have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek as well as most other major magazines and newspapers in North America.
 
Freedom Fries is Brodner?s absurdly nightmarish journey through the last 30 years of American politics. And what a cast of characters: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II (and those are just the presidents). Add in such pretenders to the throne as Newt Gingrich, both Doles, Gore, and Nader, craven cabinet officers and legislators and you have the most horrifyingly hilarious rogues? gallery of striking resemblances anywhere.
 
Extensively annotated with Brodner?s own pungent commentary and reminiscences, and including some images that were simply too provocative to print the first time around, Freedom Fries is a stunningly reproduced, exquisitely barbed walk through the last 30 years? political landscape ? part coffee table art book, part madcap manifesto. In many cases, Brodner?s political perspective has only gained resonance in today?s climate.
Released as the 2004 election season heats up, Freedom Fries fits squarely into the tradition of provocative commentary by such firebrands as Michael Moore, Al Franken, Mark Crispin Miller and Molly Ivins ? except in Brodner?s case, the commentary is also a treasure of handsome visual art.
 
For this event not only will Steve Brodner be signing copies of Freedom Fries, he will also be drawing the 2004 presidential candidates live on the spot.
 

The Business of Holidays book release event
6PM Friday December 3rd
 
The Business of Holidays, ed. Maud Lavin (New York: Monacelli Press): Holiday celebrations in the United States are a surprisingly strong force behind the country’s $3 trillion retail economy. From New Year’s diets to Festivus-flavored ice cream, Presidents’ Day care sales to Independence Day barbecues, Hanukkah cards to Kwanzaa candles, the social and material culture of holidays has been transformed into a finely tuned marketing extravanganza. Contemporary holiday rites showcase a particularly American obsession with celebration–and the shopping, decorating, card sending, feasting, drinking, and advertising that goes along with it. This witty and satirical look at thirty-three of our most loved (and hated) holidays explores the history and the traditions, the kitsch and the color, of the business of holidays.
 
For the book release event join Maud Lavin, Alyson Beaton, Eliza Rosen, Courtney Perkins and Ben Finch
 
Maud Lavin is an associate professor in visual and critical studies and art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduate director of visual and critical studies. She is the author of a monograph on the Berlin Dada artist Hannah Hoch–Cut with the Kitchen Knife–and a book on design and politics–Clean New World.
 
Alyson Beaton is an instructor in visual communications at the School of the Art Institute. Her recent artists’ books are in the collections pf Printed Matter, Collette, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at SAIC.
 
Eliza Rosen is a freelance graphic designer in Chicago whose clients have included Deborah’s Place and Chicago Magazine.
 
Courtney Perkins is an independent curator who has organized exhibitions in Chicago at venues including 1926 and ThreeWalls and in Austin, Texas.
 
Ben Finch is the owner and creative director of The Killswitch Collective, a Chicago multimedia and design firm. He specializes in web and print design for the creative and music industry.