#artnoose

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday, Part 1

On this date, October 25 in 286 CE, Saints Crispin and Crispinian, the patron saints of leather workers, curriers, and shoemakers, were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian. This day is now celebrated as their feast day, made famous in Western cultural literacy by Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day Speech, or "Band Of Brothers" Speech, from his play Henry V.

Crispin and Crispinian are believed to have been twins who were cobblers and leatherworkers by profession, and were persecuted and tortured for their beliefs and activities by Rictus Varus, governor of Belgic Gaul, but to no avail. Ultimately, however, they were beheaded by the Emperor’s orders on October 25.

To commemorate their martyrdom we present three typographic prints from American artist and letterpress printer Karen Switzer’s small 1996 artist’s book The Martyrdom of SS. Crispin & Crispinian, printed in an edition of 36 copies under Switzer’s Artnoose imprint in Oakland, California. The captions for the images from top to bottom are:

1.) They were pierced with nails. 2.) They were boiled alive in a cauldron. 3.) They were beheaded.

Artnoose is most well known for Switzer’s zine Ker-bloom!, in print since 1996 and the only fully letterpress-printed zine that we know of. Switzer currently owns and operates the Berkeley, California, letterpress shop Deep Ink Letterpress.

View our other Milestone Monday posts.

[deardiaryzinefest]

Tabler Spotlight: Artnoose!

Project name: Ker-bloom!

Location: Berkeley, Ca

Description: Ker-bloom! is a letterpress printed perzine published every other month since the summer of 1996. Topics have included over the decades: love, heartbreak, recovery, bicycles, traveling, books, grief, cats, and single parenting.

Why I love perzines: I appreciate hearing the stories of people’s lives in their own words. There have been many times that I have found commonality reading someone else’s experience, and what is even more valuable, I have had the opportunity to hear about experiences unlike my own. I also like perzines as an outlet, a way of communing with other people.

ker-bloom.tumblr.com

etsy.com/shop/artnoose

[quimbysbookstorenyc-blog]

The new issue of Ker-bloom! takes parenting lessons from octopi. #artnoose #perzine @quimbysbookstorenyc #brooklynbookstore #zinestore #independentbookstore (at Quimby's Bookstore NYC)

[antiquatedfuture]

Find Your Way Postcard

It takes time. Advice from the one-and-only Artnoose. Printed by Hope Amico.

[seagreenzines]

Zine Review: Ker-bloom! 116: The Cat Who Flew

Zine Review: Ker-bloom! 116: The Cat Who Flew

Ker-bloom! 116: The Cat Who Flew artnoose https://www.patreon.com/artnoose I love how some zines seem to come into my life with spectacular timing. Ker-bloom! 116, featuring a tale of a cat and moving across the country, fits the bill… Ker-bloom! 116 is a short tale about moving back and forth and the adventures of finding the best way to get a cat from Pennsylvania to California while accounting…

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[ker-bloom]

This just in! The Ker-bloom! twenty-year anniversary reading will be at Pegasus Books in Berkeley! 7:30 pm on Wednesday, June 1. Be there!

[christinacats-blog]

Artnoose

"The obsession with the quantity overlooks the qualitative missing ingredient often (but not always) found in longer relationships with people and places, remembering the punk house down that used to exist or when a person was an annoying teenager. And it's not just about living in the past. There's something that grows slowly, like a tree, and you can't find it in one summer. 'You can avoid it if you want to. You can live without it. But why would you want to?" -Artnoose

[yoursecretary]

In praise of a zine I very much enjoy.

I am often teased about once flippantly saying that "dollar zines" are trash. It is difficult to put a price on a zine. In an ideal world, zines should be free. Free to make, free to copy, free to read, but they aren't. Some of us have copy hook-ups. Some of us make fancy covers. Some of us spend hours stitching bindings or other cover details. Some of us can afford to sell/give away our zines at-or-below cost, while others can't. The cost of a zine, to a certain extent, is relative. 

That being said I like to buy zines that are ideally in the $1 - $5 range depending on many factors.

What I really want to write about is a zine I unhesitatingly, 100% recommend to you and think is worth every single penny I spend on it (and more!) It costs between $2 - $3 and is often about 10 - 12 quarter sized pages. Each page is letter pressed and the zine has been produced bi-monthly since the 90s. 

The zine is Ker-Bloom! by Artnoose. 

Every issue takes the reader from the mundane to the profane. The last four issues have dealt with Artnoose's plan to become a parent and the results of this plan. If you know me  (or maybe if you don't) you might know I could care less about someone's desire to be a parent or the logistics of getting pregnant. What makes Ker-Bloom! so inspiring to me as a reader and writer is that Artnoose's ability to write about a topic I have no relation to - from having a child to moving a 2 ton letterpress machine - and make me care and relate. I know that this isn't every writer (or zinester's) goal - to engage the reader, but it is something I look for and enjoy in the zines I list among my favorites.

At CZF 2012, after being blown away by Artnoose's reading, I bought a year subscription of Ker-bloom!. (YOU CAN BUY ONE HERE) The most recent issue (#97) arrived in my mailbox today. Here is a paragraph from it:

"It kills me to think that someday people will hurt you, possibly badly. The scratches you sometimes already get make me feel for you. Talk about your pain. Let it foster the humanity to understand the pain of others. Empathy will make you a better neighbor, better lover, and better friend. Trust me on that one." - Ker-bloom! #97. July August 2012

Actually it doesn't say "humanity." It says "humity" which is not a word and probably a typo, another joy of zines. I like this typo because it can be read different ways. Humanity? Humility? Good to have both.