Nervous Nelly

You are already so tuned in that you know you want a copy of Riot Grrl Revival or Loudmouth or Scatterbrain or, maybe The Rations’ For Victory EP. You just don’t know where to find it.

Brian Thompson

Try Nervous Nelly.  Find Nervous Nelly at Handmade & Bound Nashville on October 6. Brian Thompson and Kale Edmiston of Nervous Nelly will share their small treasures and demonstrate the art, craft, and personal expression of the zine.

Join Nervous Nelly and 25 plus other book artists, zinesters, small presses, and bookies of every stripe for Handmade & Bound Nashville, Watkins College of Art, Design and Film, 2298 Rosa Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37228, 11am-4pm.

What are you wearing this season?

Handmade & Bound Nashville goers should be sure and check out our volume 2 t-shirts.  Printed by our compadres at Friendly Arctic Printing and Design, there are a very limited number of these tees in international orange, Library at Watkins blue, and too-cool-for-color white.   Check out the shirts and all the goodies from our vendors, demonstrations, Familiar Relics, the artists book exhibit, Zine-O-Rama, our zine display, your favorite food trucks, and live music featuring Kristy West and Ron Perrault.

ZINE-O-RAMA!

Zine-O-Rama is a glimpse into the world of zines (rhymes with beans).  Zinesters from Antioch, TN, to Italy have contributed their creations to this exhibition which illustrates the wide range of techniques and subjects that typify this very personal form of publishing. The addition of a few librarian selected zines from as far away as Australia and Malaysia, ensures examples showcasing art, photography, vegan cooking, politics, fiction, lots of comics, and more in a variety of shapes, sizes, and bindings.  Zine-O-Rama is on display during regular library hours October 4 through October 31 in the Library at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, 2298 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., Nashville, TN 37228.

a stack of books

Drop by Watkins College of Art, Design & Film to participate in our Community Book Sculpture Project, Thursday, October 4, between 9 am and 4 pm.  Join book artists, students, and neighbors as they re-use and re-purpose unloved hardbound books into a fun and meaningful art piece. People at all skill levels are invited and tools will be available.  Unleash you inner Henry Moore.

Citius, Altius, Fortius, Liber-ius

Faster, higher, stronger, book-ier, while not an improvement on the Olympic motto, might be appropriate for H&BN 2012‘s zine exhibit with international participation from as far afield as Scotland, Germany, and Australia. We will accept zines until October 1, so there is still time to join in.   Handmade & Bound Nashville wants you to send more zines.

Thank you.

Send your zines to: Lisa Williams, Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, 2298 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., Nashville, TN 37228.

jump jive is alive

Balancing the cool heat of Familiar Relics will be the sweltering cool of Eight O’ Five Jive playing to beat the band at the opening reception on October 5, 6:30-8:30, in the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, 2298 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard, Nashville. Take a listen, then, come take a look.

More zines than you can shake a stick at

Our open display running the gamut of zine-dom is growing nicely.  We recently passed the “good number” and are zooming to the “that’s a lotta” point.  Our goal is “more zines than you can shake a stick at.”  If you’d like your zine to be included send it to: Lisa Williams, Watkins College of Art, Design & Film Library, 2298 Rosa Parks Blvd. Nashville, TN 37228.  Zines will be displayed in the Library at Watkins through October 26, 2012 during regular Library hours.  We’ll pay for the shipping back to you or add your zine to our library collection if you’d like. Be sure to identify your zine with return address and bibliographic data (i.e. who created, where, and when).  Our zine collection holdings will be available for searching in our online catalog in the coming year.

Christmas in September

“Fifty-Two” by Susanna Johnson

The carefully packed boxes, triple-padded shipping envelopes, and the odd steamer trunk have begun arriving with the pieces which will be displayed for Familiar Relics, H&BN‘s 2012 exhibition of artist created books. Susanna Johnson’s Fifty-Two arrived yesterday, to the delight of the lucky folks who unpacked it. Utilizing found materials and obsolete technologies (just what is this “typewriter” she speaks of?), Johnson has created something unexpected yet inviting to the viewer.  The pull to examine the delicate scrolls and contemplate their message is almost irresistible. This relic deconstructs a physical book only to rebuild it in a form that recalls the physical experience of  books while highlighting and strengthening the relationship between the form and the content.

Join us in the Brownlee O. Currey Gallery at the Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, October 5, 6:30-8:30 for the opening reception for Familar Relics.

Vendors for H&BN vol. 2

Our list of Vendors just keeps growing. With participants ranging from EraBellum, an artisan co-op freshly opened September 1, through bookstores like East Side Story, community projects like Chicago’s North Branch Projects to the book artists of Brown Dog Bindery and Linenlaid & felt, we cover the range of things bookish.  Check out the whole list through the link on our Vendors page.  Even better reserve a table and join us at Handmade&Bound Nashville, October 6 in Nashville.

King-Cat or cat king?

John Porcellino

John Porcellino is bringing King-Cat and his catalog of mini-comics, comics, and graphic novels to Handmade & Bound Nashville. His celebrated self-published series King-Cat Comics, begun in 1989, has inspired a generation of cartoonists. Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man, a collection of King-Cat stories about Porcellino’s experiences as a pest control worker, won an Ignatz Award in 2005, and Perfect Example, first published in 2000, chronicles his struggles with depression as a teenager.  King-Cat Classix and Map of My Heart, published in 2007/2009, offer a comprehensive overview of the zine’s first sixty-one issues, while Thoreau at Walden (2008) is a poetic expression of the great philosopher’s experience and ideals. According to cartoonist Chris Ware, “John Porcellino’s comics distill, in just a few lines and words, the feeling of simply being alive.” Come see for yourself, October 6, 2012 at Handmade & Bound Nashville, vol. 2