CONVERGE in St. Louis

Our latest print drop has happened along Cherokee Street in St. Louis, MO as part of Intertext, a site-based exhibition that coincided with this past weekends Annual Meeting of the Friends of Dard Hunter. Thanks to Nicole Donnelly for the photography and hands-on support!

Broom paper

Book Bombs reunited this week in the Bay Area for some rabble rousing papermaking. Continuing our investigation of invasive plants, broom fiber was harvested from Farm Alley and the parking lot of Wildcat Canyon Regional Park (pictured above and below).

The stalks were soaked to harvest the bast fiber (below).

And papermaking ensued. Pictures to come...

Guide to Street Manners

Book Bombs Zine #5 has been incubating for a while. Ms. Book's and Ms. Bomb's Guide to Street Manners is a response to street harassment we have both experienced in our own neighborhoods. Mary did some test hangs of a variable print (pressure print with xerox) and zine bouquet in a targeted Philadelphia location along Baltimore Ave (where she experienced one of these street harassment incidents). Keep your eyes on the streets -- and here -- for more in Philadelphia and the Bay Area in the coming week!

with thanks to Suzanne for the photo + assistance!

"I feel the rage of a woman walking out alone. I refuse to curb my mobility."

Book Bomber Michelle Wilson visits Lost Coast Culture Machine

Book Bombs first encountered Lost Coast Culture Machine when we participated in their exhibition, Paper! Book Bomber Michelle Wilson recently visited the space - check out her post about them here.

Every Day Work

Some shots of "Every Day Work," the exhibition of Impractical Laborers at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, IN, featuring Book Bombs! Copies of "The Ethics of Wheatpaste" (downloadable here) and "Horizontalidad," are free for the taking. AS MANY HOURS AS IT TAKES

Horizontalidad! Book Bombs Issue 6

Horizontalidad: Book Bombs Issue 6 was released this past week in conjunction with Occupy Together and the Friends of Dard Hunter Regional Meetings (a gathering devoted to handmade paper).

This zine addresses the Occupy movement, the economic situation, and the term horizontalidad.

In Argentina, they call actions like the Occupation horizontalidad – “horizontalness” in English. A word that arose from autonomous movements, indicating a lack of hierarchy and a level playing field, Horizontalidad goes beyond revolution to the idea of ongoing evolution without entrenched ideology.

Covers are printed via letterpress on handmade paper incorporating scraps from other papermakers. The zines invite readers to add their own stories to the narrative of the zine, and to distribute the zines in public spaces (and to send us documentation!). Zines were distributed in Pittsfield and Dalton, Massachusetts, including gallery and hotel spaces. Look for coming news of wider distribution, including a pdf download, on the blog.

 Interiors were printed at the Crane Museum of Papermaking, thanks to Peter Hopkins, with binding help from Allison Roscoe.

Thanks to Melanie Mowinski, proprietor of Press: Letterpress as Public Art, for letterpress printing support!

 The covers, hot off the Universal.

Book Bombs Zine #3 Available for Download

The Ethics of Wheatpaste, #3 in the series of Book Bombs zines, is now available for download as a .pdf file at www.bookbombs.net. Print out the 8.5 x 11 single-sided sheet and follow the instructions in the corner of the page to fold your own book.

The Ethics of Wheatpaste was released as part of Amze Emmons's Refugee Reading Room at Space1026 in February 2011.

Hydrologies - Zines & Snow Stenciling in the Twin Cities

It was a busy weekend in Minneapolis for Book Bombs activities. After the opening of Urban/Urbane at Susan Hensel Gallery, there were still zines to be folded down:

Thanks to Micah Ludeke and Rachel Wandrei for folding help (and to Micah for the amazing chocolate chip cookie fuel).

And snow stencils:

Reader's Art Opening

Book Bombs had a blast as part of the Reader's Art 11 show at Susan Hensel Gallery on Friday night. Thanks to everyone who came out to chat about the project and about water, in conjunction with Book Bombs Zine #4: Hydrologies. Mary folded down zines on site and passed them along to visitors, who were invited to take the zines home and love them, pass them along to someone else, and/or leave them someplace for another person to find. Please contact us with any photos of the zines on site, and keep an eye out here in the coming days to see documentation of the Book Bombing of Minneapolis.

Note photo documentation of prior Book Bombs projects in the background, and thanks to Suzanne Fischer for taking and sharing these photos of the opening!

Book Bombs in Minneapolis!

Book Bombs is will be part of the upcoming exhibition, Readers' Art 11, Urban/Urbane, at Susan Hensel Gallery, in Minneapolis, MN. The exhibition runs from March 4-April 30, 2011, and features 29 artists exploring issues of urban living in artist book form.

Join us for the opening reception on First Friday, March 4, from 7-10 PM, where we will be distributing copies of Book Bombs #4. The weekend following will involve a public print bombing of Minneapolis, taking a quite a new form from some of our bombings past....

Mobility in the Bay Area

Any readers in the Bay Area? Keep your eyes peeled for this print! We enjoyed book bombing in such balmy winter weather, after print drops in Philadelphia blizzards earlier in the year.