release party

May ’08
5
7:00 pm

Quimby’s will host an evening of new books and publications by nine author/artist/publishers.

Devin Bustin, Rebecca Cooling-Mallard, Ariane Nelson, Cortney Philip and Sean O’Connell consider the object of the book and the act of reading as integral to the generation of textual projects. Mary Kiolbasa, Stephanie Sauer, Kristine Servia, and Danielle Sommer have constructed printed publications that reflect collaborative projects.

Devin Bustin plays music in a band called Asher Lev, teaching Chicago’s suburbs to rock. He’ll present a book of sentences that do the work of a chiropractor, that adjust the angle of the neck.

Rebecca Cooling-Mallard is combing the dust off her skin with the language brush.  She will present a reading and diagrams of the constellations of the southern hemisphere as filtered through the shape of Adrienne Rich’s poem “The Planetarium.”

Ariane Nelson is a Canadian artist who resides in Chicago.  She works with historical photographs to explore mental illness in the family.

Sean O’Connell is textually engaged in the aftermath of music and poetry in the twenty-first century: most often inhabiting a body that has lasted twenty-three years and exists in proximity to books: but at other times occurs digitally via telewebpresence. His project: books made: to be musical instruments and the score simultaneously, to be read through tactical performance, to be handled and sounded.

Cortney Philip is a Chicago writer who never loses at cribbage. A Food Family History reconstructs a family narrative through food verbiage and cardboard boxes.

Mary Kiolbasa is a graduate student, studying poetry at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her Popsicle recipe book is one component of a larger project, which makes a close study of ice, in terms of consumption.

Stephanie Sauer’s work focuses on intersections of various kinds, from myth and culture to language and medium. Her current publication features a collection of sketches by General Esteban Villa of the Royal Chicano Air Force.

Exercise 1: Evident and Invisible Interactions is a correspondence exchange project between groups in the Caribbean and North America. The booklet “EXERCISE I,” published by Fold Press, gathers all the documentation generated within the exchange. Fold Press is an independent publishing project founded by Kristine Servia, a first year graduate student in the Fiber and Material Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Danielle Sommer is an artist and writer earning her Masters in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Here/Now (March 15, 2008) is the first publication in a series designed to document how individuals understand the idea of “here” while at the same time creating a tangible connection between a variety of perspectives and communities. Everyone who participates in the documentation receives a copy of the finished publication and is asked to pass the name of the project on to others for future documentations.