Moving on…

ArtMag has been on hiatus due to my recent move.  As I find new places for my belongings and begin to decorate my apartment, I am reminded of one of my very favorite magazines: Nest.

Nest was a quarterly magazine of interiors, published from 1997 to the winter of 2003/2004.  Each issue of Nest is a feat of creativity and design.  Just glancing at the covers, with their yellow spines, gives you a glimpse of the amazing design choices made by editor Joseph Holtzman and his staff.  One issue has holes punched through it, another issue is inside of a clear zipper bag, one has scalloped edges, one is bound with red string, and others have embossed paper and glitter.  No shortcuts were taken in producing Nest, and each cover is just as elaborate as the interiors and lifestyles contained within.  Some of my favorite covers include issue no.4(1999:spring) which is a photograph of cats inside of a bedroom, their litter boxes sprinkled with copper glitter and issue no.21(2003:summer) which has a colorful collaged image on the front and scalloped edges.

But now to get to the interior of Nest.  Besides the wonderful covers, excellent design decisions, and fancy paper, Nest is unique because it isn’t just a magazine about the spaces of the rich and famous.  The articles span a wide variety of people and places.  In issue no.4 there is an article with photographs of Cy Twombly‘s mansion alongside an article about a man who lives in a junkyard near the MetroNorth tracks in Harlem.

One of my favorite articles, in the summer 2001 issue, shows the interior of Ft. Thunder‘s space in Providence, R.I.  The photographs of their space show walls completely plastered with trash, grafitti, stickers, posters, photographs, etc.  It’s like a treehouse junkyard.  One photograph shows their screen-printing setup and in the same spread is a photograph of two members of Ft. Thunder dressed head to toe in knitted outfits: stockings, tunics, and masks.  The rehearsal space where bands like Lightning Bolt practiced is also shown, as well as a room with hundreds of stuffed animals hanging down from the ceiling.  At some point in 2001 the warehouse space was destroyed by developers, but the funky feel of their space lives on in the pages of this issue of Nest.

In the winter of 2003/2004, editor Joseph Holtzman wrote at the beginning of Nest that he was in a psychiatric hospital and that this issue would be his last.  When The New York Times reported on the demise of the magazine, they wrote that Mr. Holtzman had spent somewhere between 4-6 million dollars on Nest.  Although he had hoped it would be profitable, it never was.  And, although he was wealthy enough to keep the magazine afloat, he claimed he had run out of ideas and energy.  You have to have respect for someone who quits when they are on top and every issue of Nest is a testament to that.

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If you miss the excitement of reading the latest issue of Nest, Apartamento is a great contemporary.  It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Nest, but is refreshingly simple in it’s design and just the right size for reading in transit. In an earlier issue of my blog I wrote a review of Apartamento, which published it’s first issue last summer.  In a similar fashion to Nest, Apartamento is “an everyday life interiors magazine.”   Unfortunately the most recent issue, no.3(2009:spring) is already sold out!  And it’s hard to find in the United States.  So if you have purchased Apartamento in the U.S., leave a comment and let us know where we might be able to find it.  I bought my copy of issue no.2 at Motto Berlin.

Another fun place to look at interiors in on the webstie: The Selby.  Created by fashion photographer Todd Selby, The Selby is all pictures, with barely any content.  It is an engrossing glimpse at the interiors of the rich and famous.  (The photograph below taken by Todd Selby is of Melia Mardern and Frank Sisti Jr.aka Kid America‘s bookshelf in their Manhattan apartment)

While I’m on the topic of interior spaces and homes, I wanted to mention some new venues for looking at art that are popping up in New York City.  Hosting exhibitions in apartments is becoming more and more popular, especially as galleries close down and museums lay off employees.  Apartmentshow NY and Melanie Flood Projects are two ongoing curatorial projects to keep an eye out for.  They each represent the opposite ends of this trend.  Apartmentshow NY is curated by artists Joshua Smith and Denise Kupferschmidt.  For each show the two find an apartment, usually one that has been emptied out due to a move, and fill it with artwork for one night only.  They have hosted performances, installations, video art, paintings, and sculpture, and have showed a wide variety of artists from Peter Coffin to Alicia Gibson.  Melanie Flood Projects, on the other hand, is held in the Clinton Hill brownstone apartment of Melanie Flood.   I have only been to one event in the space: March Madness.  It was a low key gathering, mostly with artists selling small objects, magazines, zines, photographs, and other ephemera around the island counter in her kitchen.  Events like these seem warmer, no doubt because they are in a home, whether inhabited or not.

Bus(wo)man’s Holiday

This past week I traveled to Berlin and visited art museums, galleries, book and magazine shops, etc.  On my first day in the city, bleary eyed from jet-lag, I went to the neighborhood of Kreuzberg, to Motto Berlin.  Motto is a distributor of art magazines based in Switzerland and they recently opened this shop in Berlin.  It is located in this great space:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Motto, I purchased the latest issue of Cabinet.  The subject was Shame.  Later in the week, after drinking some wine in a cafe and reading about sleep patterns and sleep depravation, I am ashamed to say I left the issue on the table.  I hope whoever found it is enjoying it as much as I was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is a photograph of Dexter Sinister’s bookshelf for issues of Dot Dot Dot.  At the New York Artist’s Book Conference, David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey gave a nice slideshow of their work and spoke about these bookshelves.  In each space where Dot Dot Dot is exhibited/sold, a bookshelf is erected to house copies of the journal using the same specifications for measurements and made out of wood.  But, depending on the place, the wood is often different, and they showed photographs of various bookshelves made out of new wood or salvaged wood, etc.  It’s a nice gesture, and at Motto Berlin it looks so nice against the hazelnut color of the built in wooden bookshelves and panels of the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the table in the photograph above is an issue of Kilimanjaro Magazine.  I had never heard of this publication before, but I look foreword to seeing it in the future.  Motto Berlin also hosted a series of presentations given by Kilimanjaro, Gagarin, Piktogram, Spike, and Mono.kultur.  Unfortunately these all took place before my trip.

I returned to Motto on my last day in the city to find a magazine for my plane ride back.  This time I purchased Apartamento, which is a great new magazine.  It was the perfect thing to read as I left Europe.  The articles are all written in English, but many read as English as a second language, with spelling and grammatical errors.  I didn’t mind this at all, in fact it seemed appropriate given that I had been trying to communicate with people in Berlin all week – speaking fragments of German to people who then responded to me in perfect English.  Anyway, the magazine has a great mix of articles about people living in different kinds of places around the world from Argentina to London to the United States.  It’s augmented with colorful photographs of the interiors and exteriors of peoples homes: their gardens, plants, bookshelves, desks, record collections, their piles and messes, and neatly arranged objects, etc.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later in the week on my way to Kunst Werk, I passed by a magazine shop called do you read me?!.  They had a great selection of art, fashion, and design magazines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In New York City we have some great independent bookstores, and many of them have a good selection of magazines, but there isn’t a place that compares to either Motto or do you read me?!  It was fun to find such places in Berlin.

I was hoping to find the Magazine Room at Kunst Werk, but was told that it no longer existed.  But, I did see a great performance piece by Tino Seghal.

And, on my last day in Berlin I tried to find the e-flux reading room, but got so cold wandering around in the ice and snow that I never found it.  Instead I went over to a friend’s apartment overlooking a cobblestone courtyard and ate fresh olives from his parent’s home in Italy.

Until next time!

On Vacation

This week I am going to Berlin! Some of the places I hope to visit include the e-flux reading room at the building, the Magazine Room at Kunst Werke and the new Motto Berlin space in Kreuzberg. I will report back soon…