I Heart

The second (third) post of I Heart works, including projects by Ross Sinclair, Yoko Ono, David Shrigley, Jeremy Deller,  Noah Lyons, Roula Partheniou & I, and Mark Pawson, who fashioned an entire practice (and lifestyle) out of celebrating the things he loved. 

Mark Pawson | Dividers

Mark Pawson

Dividers

London, UK: Self-published, 2015

[82] pp, 23 x 16 x 2 cm., loose leaves

Open edition

When Mark Pawson passed a couple of weeks ago I realized that I have never posted this great project that he sent me years ago. 

It’s a small cardboard box screenprinted with the title on the spine. Inside are printed sheets of coloured paper (making it a very economical publication to produce). The coloured pages are each represent a category of work in his collection, serving as a self-portrait of Pawson by way of his interests: 

Typewriter Art/Concrete Poetry/Visual Poetry

Zines/Fanzines

Radical Cultures/DIY cultures

Ray Johnson

Fluxus/Something Else Press

Book Making/Books About Books/Book Arts

Activist Graphics/Protest Art

Ant Farm & General Idea

Artist Monographs

Badges

Things I’m In!

Mexico

Kitsch/Dubious Tastes

Mail Art...

Dieter Roth

Fashion/Textiles/Pattern

Interesting Magazines Which I Only Have One Issue Of!

Artists Books

My Dad’s Books

Music/Sound/Cage

Photography

Hardly Worth Anything - See Later...

It was produced in 2015, eight years after he had moved into a new flat, when he realized that some books still remained in boxes. In one of them he found George Maciunas’ Flux Paper Events, which he had completely forgotten that he owned. 

“If I couldn’t remember such an inimitable book then it was definitely time to take action and develop a system for locating books quickly and easily,” he writes in the single page introduction. 

Much of Mark Pawson’s work used the materials of fan culture (stickers, buttons, badges) as a way to celebrate his interests and influences, setting up at book fairs and operating in the mail art community as a way of meeting like-minded people. 

This deviates only slightly from that larger body of work, with the librarian instinct that inevitably follows a collection that has grown so large that it demands some organizing principles. 

Mark Pawson, RIP

Sad to hear about the passing of Mark Pawson. 

I only met him once, at the London Art Book Fair where we were both tabling, but he has sent me some great things over the years, and was kind enough to write a guest post here several years ago. 

I was slow to appreciate his larger practice, but always loved his dedication to ephemeral media like stickers and buttons. Later I began to realize his work used the vernacular language of fan clubs to explore figures of influence (Johns Peel and Cage, above) and everyday enjoyments like Peace & Quiet and Fresh Air. The latter reminds me of Ross Sinclair’s excellent I LOVE REAL LIFE project and the former the many fan clubs of Cary Leibowitz and Ray Johnson. 

Below is a tribute from Robin Rimbaud (who also once contributed a Christmas guest post here) complete with a discreet nod to Henry Flynt. 

"Absolutely heartbroken to learn of the passing of my very old friend Mark Pawson, British based artist and publisher. We first met in the 1980s when I was hand making books and selling them at the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London. We would bump into each other in photocopy shops in King’s Cross, book fairs, and especially the local supermarket in Bethnal Green, where we lived just round the corner from each other for 18 years. Mark was an absolutely good egg. A true demolisher of serious culture. He was an absolutely champion of small press book making, selling and publishing. In my earliest days of engaging in mail art, sending letters and packages across the world to strangers, who’d then send equally magical packages back, I would gleefully apply the wonderful stickers he produced to every single item. Who else would produce an entire little book focusing on images of Die-Cut Plug Wiring Diagrams. Mark was a champion of counterculture, celebrating the underground zine and music world, and his presence will be very much missed. The @smallpublishers won’t be the same without him standing at his table, chatting to everyone!I know for sure I will miss him, a lot. Farewell Mark - keep stickering wherever you are in the universe!!”

- Robin Rimbaud/Scanner

Mark Pawson | Moustaches

Mark Pawson

Moustaches

London, UK: self-published, [1992]

[16] pp., 21 x 14.9 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

A collection of images of clip-on plastic and other false moustaches from the prolific mail artist. A sixteen-page booklet with a printed vellum sheet stapled in. 

This Week on Tumblr: I Love

In the mid-seventies in New York City crime was at an all-time high and tourism at an all-time low. The New York State Department for Economic Development tasked Madison Avenue ad firm Wells Rich Greene to develop a marketing campaign that would counter the negative coverage of riots, blackouts, muggings, fires, the Son of Sam killer, garbage strikes, a drug and crime epidemic, and neighbourhoods that had fallen into a state of disrepair.

The resulting 1977 campaign included the Steve Karmen song "I Love New York" as a commercial jingle and a now-ionic log by Milton Glaser (previously best known for a psychedelic poster of Bob Dylan). The logo was conceived in a taxi cab, with "I  ❤ NY" scribbled in crayon in a single line, which later changed to the present stacked letters (which Glaser later admitted might have been "subliminally" influenced by Robert Indiana's LOVE), and the serif typeface American Typewriter.

The campaign was truly a labour of love, with Karmen relinquished his publishing rights for the song, and Glaser also working pro bono. “You want to do things like that, where you feel you can actually change things,” he said in a recent interview in The Believer.

The campaign was launched forty-two years ago today, on Valentine's Day, with TV commercials featuring eighty Broadway actors, singers and dancers performing the "I Love New York" theme song. Originally intended as a five-week campaign, it continues to this day. 

Glaser's original concept sketch (above, top) and presentation boards are currently in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The New York State Empire State Development, New York’s chief economic development agency, holds the trademark to the “I Love New York” logo, and licenses its use. It's estimated that sales of merchandise such as mugs and t-shirts emblazoned with Glaser’s design generates more than $30 million a year. The state fights to uphold its trademark with over 3,000 objections against imitators so far, and an average of 100 trademark objections and cease-and-desist letters filed yearly.

The works above presumably fall under fair use. They are by Cary Leibowitz, David Shrigley, Mark Pawson, Sarah Nasby, Jeremy Deller, Claude Closky, Ross Sinclair, Adam Rolston and Ugo Rondinone (about Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol, John Giorno, John Cage, Claude Closky, etc.)

Mark Pawson | Bicycle Wheel Theft Commemorative Enamel Plaque

Mark Pawson
Bicycle Wheel Theft Commemorative Enamel Plaque
London, UK: Coracle Press/workfortheeyetodo, 1995
23.5 x 17 cm.
Edition of 30 signed and numbered copies

Traditional enamel plaque with text in red, green, blue and purple on a white background, corner holes for fixing, comes in a signed, numbered envelope with an explanatory booklet.

Included in the Chelsea College of Art and Design Collection, the Getty Research Library, and featured in Stephen Bury's book Artists' Multiples 1935-2000. 

Available here for £50/£53/$85US.

Holiday Recommendation Guest Post #17: Mark Pawson

"For over 20 years I've sold a selection of self-published print creations which span the territory from zines to artists books, and recently I've been reminiscing about some inspiring publications from the 90s, and wondering if any of them were still available, with the intention of getting hold of copies and making them available to a new younger audience and people who missed them first time around. Most of the titles I searched for had been unavailable for years, but I was delighted to find that DUPLEX PLANET was still available.

In 1979, fresh out of Art School in Boston, USA, David B. Greenberger took a job as activities coordinator at the Duplex Nursing Home. As he chatted to the elderly residents and got to know each of them individually he became fascinated by their conversations, they had led long and varied lives, many had lived through the great depression and two world wars and had a wealth of experience and viewpoints that they were happy to share.

He realised that this was a unique opportunity to talk to older Americans who he would not have met in other circumstances and began recording their conversations. Side-stepping the conventions of oral history, David's method was to start conversations with offbeat questions such as :

What would you do if you were Governor?

Did the future turn out the way you thought it would?

Tell me about bowling

What does a sharp dressed man wear?

What makes you really mad?

Did the pilgrims play bingo on the Mayflower?

He selected a variety of the responses, typed them up, printed a small self-published magazine and named it the Duplex Planet. When the magazine was ready he gathered the Duplex Nursing Home residents together and gave them copies. They were interested to see their names in print, but when they realised that David was just giving out magazines and not sandwiches or cakes they quickly lost interest and drifted away. This lack of interest from the target audience was disheartening, but later that evening he showed copies to his art school friends, who appreciated it immediately and were soon reading it aloud to each other. Greenberger realised that Duplex Planet did have a readership after all, and made the inspired, audacious decision to keep publishing it. And he continued publishing Duplex Planet for over 30 years!

Duplex Planet appeared up to 9 times a year, containing a mixture of conversations, poetry and musings from nursing home residents and day centre users across the USA, accompanied with photographs. There were themed issues, issues dedicated to particularly talkative contributors and tribute issues to much-loved contributors who had died. Throughout this time Duplex Planet remained the same modest size and format, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, 16-20 pages, offset printed with a fairly utilitarian layout. The most recent issue I have is #187 from 2010.

'Touching on the humorous and sometimes philosophical, the (stories) focus on thoughts, feelings and insights about life, loss and the passage of time but especially life lived vividly in the present'

Duplex Planet grew to encompass a range of publications and other media including book length compilations published in the UK and USA, a series of Duplex Planet Illustrated comic books published by Fantagraphics and several CDs, with David Greenberger reading monologues from the Duplex Planet with musical accompaniment as well as compilations with assorted Indie bands and musicians using texts from Duplex Planet as lyrics. These are all good and they're all on my shelves, but for me the original magazine itself is indispensable, because of the unique take on life it shares with readers, self belief in the original concept and impressive longevity.

Several times during quiet periods at book fairs or zine festivals, I've picked up an issue of Duplex Planet from my table to read and afterwards put it aside to keep for myself - an ultimate accolade."

Back issues of Duplex Planet are available here for $2.50 each or a giant Duplex Planet package of 50 different back issues, plus a free CD, is available for $35.00 - $65.00.
 


Mark Pawson is a self-confessed Image Junkie, Photocopier Fetishist and Print Gocco Fiend. He's a one-man production line and since 1987 has created a constant stream of artists books, postcards, badges, multiples and other essential ephemera. He has collaborated with jewellers Tatty Devine and worked with Levis Vintage Clothing. His publications are in the collections of the Chelsea College of Art Library, London, MOMA Library, NY and Bjork.

www.mpawson.demon.co.uk

Bring The Dead Back To Life

Gavin Everall and Jane Rolo [editors]
Bring The Dead Back To Life
London, UK: Bookworks, 2012
224 pp., 38 x 25.5 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown


"Specifically engaging with the circuits of practice that have materialised in the form of books, writing, magazines, language, spoken word, performative research and archival practice, contributors include: A Estante, An Endless Supply, AND, Banner Repeater, Claire Makhlouf Carter, Eastside Projects, Maria Fusco, Dora García, Melissa Gronlund, Sam Hasler, Stewart Home, Ian Hunt, Jonathan Monk, Apexa Patel, Mark Pawson, Bridget Penney, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Plastique Fantastique, Sarah Pierce, Laure Prouvost and Rory Macbeth, Publish And Be Damned, John Russell, Slavs and Tatars, Spike Island, Barry Sykes, The Serving Library, The Showroom, Torpedo, Ubuweb, Marina Vischmidt, McKenzie Wark, White Columns and X Marks the Bökship – in the form of: artists’ pages, exploratory interviews, new writing, and a range of publisher and project space responses to the questions: Why Distribute? Why Archive?"

- cover blurb

RRR-100

[Various]
RRR-100
Lowell, USA: RRRecords, 1993
7” 45 rpm single
Edition size unknown


See previous post, here, for a more extensive description. These images just arrived, courtesy of artist  Mark Pawson, and provide a sense of the varied edition.