{"id":74716,"date":"2026-03-26T07:28:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=74716"},"modified":"2026-04-23T23:07:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T03:07:18","slug":"artist-books-zines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2026\/03\/26\/artist-books-zines\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Books & Zines with Kat Goffnet & Cary Loren"},"content":{"rendered":"

This conversation continues a talk held at the Cranbrook Art Museum on February 19, 2026<\/a> between curator Kat Goffnett and Cary Loren on contemporary artist-made books as part of the exhibition: Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Mail Art<\/h3>\n

KG: \u201cCorrespondence art\u2014also known as mail or postal art\u2014is a dialogue, a connection, a testament to the enduring power of creativity\u2026\u201d – Elio Canale-Parola, Ray Johnson Project Cataloger in the Art Institute of Chicago Archives, \u201cSigned, Sealed, Delivered: Correspondence Art<\/a>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though this type of art can be traced back to Marcel Duchamp, the Italian Futurists, and beyond, New York artist Ray Johnson\u2019s practice of sending small collages, prints of abstract drawings, and poems to art world notables sparked the beginning of the New York Correspondence School.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cary, you\u2019ve also spoken of the importance of Wallace Berman and his mail art publication Semina. Can you speak to mail art, its history, and your relationship to it through your zine work and beyond?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CL: Both Ray Johnson (1927\u20131995) and Wallace Berman (1926\u20131976) practiced collage, pioneered mail art in the mid-fifties and discovered new ways to disseminate their work. Berman used a compact letterpress for his series of SEMINA<\/em><\/a> (1956\u20131964) publications\u2014a loose intermedia<\/a> dossier filled with scraps of letterpress poetry, art, collages, mystical diagrams, and images reproduced on a Verifax copy-machine.<\/p>\n

A great deal of care went into each edition. He used library card pockets pasted into folders, often paired with photographs or illustrations, to hold various \u201cseed packets\u201d alongside his own artwork and photography. Berman collapsed several forms of communication into Semina, as well as in his Verifax collages<\/a> (a wet-process copy-machine image produced by Kodak as a competitor to Xerox).<\/p>\n

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Recent publications have made Berman’s art more accessable: the book Semina Culture<\/a> published in 2005, covered the artists and poets who interacted with Berman, and two recent exhibition catalogs have gathered his art; Wallace Berman: America Aleph<\/a> and Wallace Berman: Off the Grid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ray Johnson\u2019s series of Moticos<\/em><\/a>, like Semina<\/em>, formed another collage system of esoteric portable signs, often linked to performances staged on the streets of New York City or distributed through the mail. Johnson and Berman worked around the same period, drawing from pop culture, be-bop jazz, and the avant-garde of the 1920s.<\/p>\n

Destroy All Monsters Magazine<\/em> grew out of the band’s Xeroxed art and was distributed as mail art-work I first encountered through Lightworks Magazine<\/em>. I exchanged work with Ray Johnson in the 1970s and participated in the \u201cnetwork\u201d\u2014an informal group of mail artists and global exhibitions. Johnson did some performances at Book Beat and contributed a centerfold design for Nightcrawlerz Magazine #8<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Barry Roth & Cary Loren: Nightcrawlerz No.8, and Ray Johnson condom centerfold, 1989<\/p><\/div>\n

Before the internet was everywhere, Mail Art, zines, and the post-punk “noise” culture of the 1990s had a brief surge\u2014echoing the counterculture\u2014then eventually collapsed into digital platforms; techno, Photoshop, and iPhone photography. When the risks and abuses of online platforms and screen devices became known and accepted a backlash emerged and another cycle of zines, letterpress printing, and glitch culture resurfaced.<\/p>\n

This return cycle can be traced back to the Mimeograph Revolution<\/a> of the 1950s and the psychedelic newspapers and underground graphics of the 1960s\u2014a period when the production and distribution of media rested in small, independent networks. Its no coincidence to find this collective consciousness <\/em> connected to the return and use of psychedelics and mind-body healing.<\/p>\n

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William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience, title page 1794<\/p><\/div>\n

Art Books and Zines<\/h3>\n

KG: Can you speak about the difference between these objects beyond notions of scale? Their different philosophies, means of production and circulation, etc.?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CL: I tend to see artist books and zines as interchangeable. When William Blake created work, he wrote, designed, carved woodcuts, printed, hand-colored, bound, and self-distributed the books. That process isn\u2019t so different from making a zine at Kinko\u2019s\u2014though far more time-consuming and difficult. Zines are inexpensive and easier to produce, but they retain the same imaginative potential and rebellious spirit.<\/p>\n

The artist book opens private worlds\u2014reflections of the maker\u2019s hand. Blake\u2019s work was both cosmic and of its time, delivering social critique alongside a utopian cosmology.<\/p>\n

Artist books present greater risk for publishers. Only a small number of presses focus exclusively on them, with some overlap in letterpress and the expansive trade of illustrated children\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

The more widely distributed a book becomes, the more its content tends to be compromised. Publishers are risk-averse and publish only by \u201ccomparatives.\u201d Staple-bound zines, by contrast, remain under the artist\u2019s control and produced cheaply on copy machines. They circulate quickly among collectors, bookshops, and artist networks, placing them closer to mail art in scale and spirit.<\/p>\n

KG: When thinking about books and zines, you deal with notions of copies, multiples, reproduction and the original object vs. the unique object. Does scarcity matter? If so, how or why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CL: Books complicate the question of originality and aura. As Walter Benjamin noted in Unpacking My Library<\/em><\/a>, book ownership is the most intimate relationship one can have with an object<\/em>. This intimacy restores a kind of aura through personal association. Books occupy a paradoxical position: they are reproduced multiples that should lack aura, yet they function as powerful dream objects, anchoring personal and historical memory.<\/p>\n

Benjamin also suggests that in collecting, it is the collector who lives in the books, not the other way around. The library becomes an extension of a fragmented past and personality\u2014a kind of labyrinth and container of all things, a universe.<\/p>\n

Scarcity does matter\u2014particularly to collectors. Artist books are often produced in limited editions, and as copies become scarce, the market responds.<\/p>\n

Artist books can be intermedia, incorporating unusual papers, inserts, silkscreening, collage, cutting, and hand-coloring. These elements disrupt the appearance of uniformity and can be interactive, moveable for the reader.<\/p>\n

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El Lissitzky, Vladimir Mayakovsky: For the Voice, Berlin 1924<\/p><\/div>\n

KG: We have previously discussed the question: \u201cWhen is a book more than a document?\u201d Can you share your thoughts on this idea?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CL: A book transcends documentation when it becomes immersive or transformative\u2014when it offers emotional depth, complex world-building, or a lasting influence rather than simply conveying information. If we think of books as Benjamin-inspired dream objects, they contain both desire and intellect. Attachment forms easily. Books play in the mind and help shape identity and interior life. Here are several book artist\/ presses who’ve shown innovation and creativity beyond the document:<\/p>\n

El Lissitzky<\/a><\/strong> (1890-1841) revolutionized 20th-century book design by treating the page as a dynamic, architectural, and communicative space rather than just a container for text. He integrated Constructivist principles, using bold sans-serif type, geometric forms, and photomontage to create interactive, “vocal” layouts that transformed reading into a visual experience.<\/p>\n

Lissitzky’s book design For the Voice<\/em><\/a> (1924) was a masterwork of Russian futurism. He stated, \u201cMy pages stand in much the same relationship to the poems as an accompanying piano to a violin. Just as the poet unites concepts and sound, I have tried to create an equivalent unity using the poem and typography.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ira Cohen, 7 Marvels,
Bardo Matrix, Kathmandu, 1975<\/p><\/div>\n

The Bardo Matrix<\/a> was a 1970s Kathmandu-based bohemian publishing collective and press founded by artist\/poets Ira Cohen and Angus MacLise. It produced finely crafted, limited-edition, counterculture poetry and art on handmade rice paper using traditional woodblock printing, creating an “Indo-Surrealist” aesthetic. The press served as a hub for expatriate artists exploring Eastern spirituality and psychedelia. In his memoir: The Great Rice Paper Adventure<\/a>, Cohen writes:<\/p>\n

“Angus had always been interested in innovative printing, and working with Piero Heliczer on the Dead Language Press <\/a>making unique books from treebark or fashioning long horizontal handmade books after the Tibetan or Indian style. It was Angus who, working with local craftsmen and woodblock artists, really began the great rice paper adventure”[…]<\/p>\n

“By the mid-70’s the poetry scene was thriving. The Spiritcatcher Bookstore became a meeting place where weekly readings took place, everyone bringing their newest poems to read and perform with musicians joining in on drums, sitar, flute and violin. […]<\/p>\n

The next book in the series was my own 7 Marvels. One day a Tibetan looking for employment as a woodblock artist came to a printshop where I was living and I gave him certain images from Marvel Comics which I wanted to prepare for printing: the Silver Surfer, Professor X, sleeping Atlanteans from Sub Mariner, etcetera. I began writing poems to accompany each print. After the images were printed in a variety of colors by Nawang Norbu, I paired them with the poems I had written, handstamped them with a set of magical symbols, and placed them in a specially designed folder with a stitched pocket. This edition was published on the occasion of the coronation of King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev in 500 copies which was the rule for most of the Starstreams chapbooks. It also featured Specially designed colophons and emblems as well as other small printing blocks which I found lying around the Sharada printing shop, mandalas, skeletons and stupas.”<\/p>\n

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Ira Cohen; Electromagneto meets Leon Neon [Ira Cohen and Jack Smith] 1966<\/p><\/div>
\nWalter Hamady <\/a>(1940-2019) is a key example of someone who transformed the book. Often called the \u201cgrandfather\u201d of modern letterpress book arts, he moved the book beyond a vessel for text into a complex, tactile object. Through his Perishable Press, the use of own handmade paper, and his role as an educator, poet, and artist, Hamady subverted traditional bookmaking. His works are intricate expressions of humor and worldview.<\/p>\n