Half Letter Press

At the NY Art Book Fair - feels good to be part of this great book and ongoing project edited by Michalis Pichler. Join us for a discussion about Publishing Manufestos in the Classroom at 3:30 today. #nyabf2018 @printedmatter_artbookfairs (at MoMA PS1) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2otUcKFW3p/?igshid=xo7wd47g3r5w

New book! Inside the Matrix: The Radical Designs of Ken Isaacs by Susan Snodgrass was ready at the printer this morning and we will have copies available at the NY Art Book Fair tomorrow! The first twenty buyers get signed copies. Inside the Matrix surveys the highly individual practice of American architect and designer Ken Isaacs (1927-2016), whose populist, DIY designs created from the 1950s to the 1970s challenged conventional architectural concepts in housing, as well as mainstream definitions of modernism. We are extremely grateful for the beautiful work of the designers at Partner & Partners, the printer M&G Graphics in Chicago, Mairead Case who co-edited the text with us, and the Graham Foundation for their grant support of this publication. We’ll have copies available for purchase online (including some more signed copies) early next week. Quimby’s Books in Chicago has copies already! https://www.instagram.com/p/B2kH7oOFrEZ/?igshid=c92dnrtwvatr

New in our webstore from Public Collectors: Mystery Guitarists. This offset photo booklet features snapshot photos of 21 unknown guitar players, found through a flea market discovery followed by epic eBay diving. Available online (link in bio) for $6.00 or get a copy from us at the NY Art Book Fair this weekend. Temporary Services / Half Letter Press will be at table P09 in the Friendly Fire section. #publiccollectors #marcfischer #photozine https://www.instagram.com/p/B2g9eXTFdYM/?igshid=1ch9ddeysqeao

Just banged out 225 more copies of this lil’ Temporary Services booklet we first published back in 2002. Now in pretty medium blue ink. Available in our webstore now. #temporaryservices #groupwork #RISO https://www.instagram.com/p/B2GBAselzhO/?igshid=1acq2zfr3n1ln

Goodbye Jean! You were a lovely, kind, prickly man and a true pleasure to know. Also, you would have never seen this, because you refused to use the internet! Because you insisted you were banned from the internet! Download the booklet we made together here.

Temporary Services / Half Letter Press will have a table at this year’s edition of Madison Print and Resist. Can’t wait to return to this great city and event. Stop by and say hi and check out all of the latest publications if you attend!

Half Letter Press will have a table at Zine Mercado this Sunday. All the latest from Temporary Services, Public Collectors, and Breakdown Break Down Press!

Thomas Kong makes collages and assemblages out of advertising, packaging, and other surplus material while managing Kim’s Corner Food, a convenience store in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.

In this publication, Chicago-based Australian artist Dan Miller introduces Kong’s prolific art practice and the first three years of their experimental collaboration. Together their productions have ranged from business cards and shopping baskets to The Back Room at Kim’s Corner Food. Housed in a converted storage room behind the store, The Back Room is a community-oriented art space and expanding archive of Kong’s work. Writing about the development of this interdependent relationship across gaps in age, culture, and artistic education, Miller reflects on what might be learned from both the ingenuity of Kong’s practice and their unlikely alliance. At Work with Thomas Kong includes excerpts from several interviews with Kong and illustrations by artist Ruby T, one of the project’s growing number of co-conspirators.

Just cranked out a fresh new stack of Artist Book Fruit Diagram posters on the RISO. Available in our shop for just $4.00.

Breakfast has been consumed. We are ready for Chicago Zine Fest! Find us at table G20. See you there!

Temporary Services is sad to share that we have lost our longtime friend and collaborator Angelo. Angelo was found in his apartment outside of Los Angeles sometime around Christmas. The cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest. He had recently turned 73 years old. Angelo made thousands of pages of drawings, sketches, and writings, but he is best remembered as the author of the book Prisoners’ Inventions, a collaboration with Temporary Services. Prisoners’ Inventions was first published by WhiteWalls in 2003, and presented as a larger exhibition in numerous venues since its first showing at MASS MoCA. Working with Angelo taught us just how irrelevant the distinction between art and other forms of creativity is. We learned that in prison you can cook a sandwich with metal furniture, light cigarettes with pieces of wire and paperclips jammed into electrical outlets, and communicate with others through the plumbing of a toilet. Angelo's writings and drawings about the creativity he observed in prison collapsed the distinctions between art and everyday survival. He transformed our thinking in ways that have influenced everything we've done since. Angelo spent over two decades in prison. He was released in late 2014. We finally gave Angelo a copy of his book Prisoners' Inventions in person soon after his release. It was his first time seeing the finished book. He was never allowed to receive a copy during his incarceration because his own drawings showed how to make contraband objects. After being released, Angelo was able to live a modest but comfortable life, thanks to a pension from a pre-incarceration job. He walked a lot and attended a reading program for recently released prisoners. One of the first things he did after getting out from prison was obtain a library card. He spent countless hours scouring the city for movies on DVD and VHS that he had been unable to watch while in prison. He viewed as many as seven films a day and kept an index card inventory of the thousands of titles he quickly amassed in his small apartment.  He was a huge history buff and film adaptations of historical events were a favorite. Angelo led a fairly solitary life after being released from prison, but he always sounded happy. Marc last spoke with Angelo on election night, just days before his 73rd birthday, and hours before the horrifying Presidential outcome became clear. Angelo was in great spirits—apologetic as always about never turning on his cell phone and being hard to get a hold of. He was more interested in talking about his favorite illustrators than the election. It remains our intention to reprint Prisoners' Inventions. It has been out of print for far too long, and Angelo generated several dozen pages of new invention drawings and writings since the last reprinting of the book. We are looking forward to sharing that material in the next edition. We will forever be grateful for the experience of working with Angelo—even though our collaboration was mostly from afar and almost entirely through written correspondence. We will always be moved and inspired by what he was able to do with so little, and we will miss his kindness and generosity. Collaborators like Angelo are truly once in a lifetime. — Temporary Services / Marc & Brett

Every single item in the Half Letter Press webstore is 20% off for the rest of 2016! Load up here!

Mexico City!! Temporary Services / Half Letter Press coming your way for Rrreplica! Hope to see you at the fair, or at Marc Fischer’s talk at Aeromoto on December 1st! 

New handbills! We just cranked out a bunch of new Temporary Services / Half Letter Press handbills on the RISO on various colors of card stock. Order anything from www.halfletterpress.com and we'll throw one in with your order. 

Lonely Books documents these finds, with captions to indicate the bibliographic details, and little questions and comments interjected here and there. A simple but great publication about a very New York phenomena.