February 8th, 2011 by jeremy
Halfway to a Threeway EP by Jim O’Rourke (Drag City)
Insignificance LP by Jim O’Rourke (Drag City)
These two records (yes, I still say records) are really excellent artifacts from the great indie rock years that were the 1990s (well, mostly the latter part. And technically Insignificance is from 2001, so there is spillover). Go out to your local record store and get these (or–I guess–download them).
February 7th, 2011 by jeremy
Daguerreotype taken in Richmond, VA Sept. 1849 (3 weeks before he died in Baltimore)
If you know me (and well really, you probably don’t), you know that I’m a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe. I grew up reading him and was born outside of Baltimore and moved to Virginia as a kid, eventually ending up at one time living across the street from the house where a good friend of Poe’s lived and is known as the last place where he recited “The Raven” (the house is called “Talavera” at 2315 West Grace Street). Really we thought of it as the “cat house” because there were a million cats lingering around there, but i’ve digressed enough for now.
The house where Poe lived in Baltimore is in danger of closing due to a loss of funding by the city and it must become self-sufficient by July 2012 or face closure. This will be difficult as it’s not in the most desirable neighborhood to visitors and lacks any adequate parking. On top of that it doesn’t have the range of artifacts of say, the Poe House in Richmond (which has a great collection, but the house itself–while historic–is not a place Poe actually lived and wrote in). What makes this building special is that one of America’s greatest writers really did live and write within its walls. It is the place itself precisely that matters.
Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, Baltimore, MD
Poe struggled with poverty his entire life and all of his homes are modest in size and bare in decor. His letters are littered with desperate appeals for money to keep him going and also to help him start his never-realized literary magazine, The Stylus. The fact that one of his houses faces financial difficulties is apropos (say it out loud for a fun pun) and certainly shows us that our history is alive and not always well.
There is no official website or blog or twitter that I can find for the house (although the EAP Society of Baltimore has a great site on Poe in Baltimore), but there is a petition on the Poe bicentennial page to send to the Mayor of Baltimore to keep funding alive for the Poe House. It’s a small thing and there are certainly bigger and more important issues happening, but history is always worth fighting for and hopefully the city adds this relatively small item back in their budget so we all have the opportunity to visit.
The Petition is here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-the-poe-house-and-museum-in-baltimore/
More info on the threat here: http://www.eapoe.org/threat.htm
L.A. Times article about it here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-poe-house-funding,0,2353983.story
February 2nd, 2011 by jeremy
I really like this new version of the classic and classically difficult The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (so difficult in fact that I haven’t read it yet). London-based independent publisher Visual Editions has only published two books so far, but both are the definition of books as objects– the kind of books you not only want to read, but look at.
February 1st, 2011 by jeremy
Dan Black (of the LO Annual Planner) and Jessica Seamans (of the Collection of 10 Postcards) make up the poster duo known as Landland. I always enjoy checking in to see what new posters they have. Check out their website to see a complete list of old and new posters: http://landland.net/
January 28th, 2011 by jeremy
Minneapolis artist Jessica Seamans is one of the next artists who is currently working on a Living Things Series book and we are so excited to show you what she’s drawn….but we’re not quite ready yet, so instead we wanted to highlight the postcards she made for her Collection of 10 Postcards collaboration with Jennie Smith as they happen to also be almost entirely about living things and were part of the inspiration for the idea of the series. This is one of my favorite projects we’ve ever done and we are excited to be able to work with Jes again! Check out all the images including Jennie’s here:
January 27th, 2011 by jeremy
Manuscript journals of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), 1837–61
One of our favorite museums The Morgan Library & Museum has a great new exhibit called The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives that is running until May 22. Unfortunately we can’t make it out to New York at the moment, but thankfully they have it as an online exhibit that–while not a real substitute for being there in person–gives a glimpse of what the exhibit is all about.
The largest part of the online exhibit is several featured diaries with audio guides that give more detail into the lives of the diarists. I especially liked the audio about Charlotte Brontë and how tiny her handwriting was (she had almost 2000 words on both sides of a 5″x7″ piece of paper!). Sophia & Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s shared diary is also interesting since they both contributed to it as a couple. The one below is just Sophia’s though (she’s one of the Peabody sisters!).
Diary of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809–1871), 1862
These are the kind of exhibits that when I step out of them (or into the gift shop) I immediately want to do my own journal in the same way that any good art exhibit makes you want to paint. Thanks to The Morgan for making these amazing objects available and documenting the creative process.
The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives
January 21 through May 22, 2011
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
New York, NY 10016
September 10th, 2010 by jeremy
We love calendars here at little otsu and on any given year we have several different ones around our office. But we never know what to do when the year is over and we have to throw away–well, throw in the recycle bin–the old calendar and no longer get to enjoy the art. So when Jennie Smith came to us in 2006 with the idea to make a calendar that had a poster on the back so that you don’t have to throw it away after the year was over, we knew it was kismet. We have used this as a central idea in all our calendars since.
a view of both sides of Ron Rege’s 2011 Calendar & poster
Over the last four years Jennie, Lart, Chris and now Ron have made some pretty amazing posters on the back of their calendars. I’ve seen people in the sf store buy them specifically for the poster side as wall art. That said, we think of function as necessary in everything we make, even if art is paramount. We love the idea that something that is only temporarily functional like a calendar for a specific year can live on in a completely different way. It’s almost like they are two different things at the same time, each to be enjoyed on their own even though it is one object. Certainly calendars are everywhere like your computer, iphone, ipad, ietc (i.e., the information is out there) and those are all great tools for knowing what day it is, but somehow it’s more fun when Ron Rege draws it.
So they are calendars that become posters and we used a functional form to represent that transformation–the fold-out aspect. People sometimes ask us about the folds and really it’s what I was talking about with one thing becoming another. The opening of the folds physically transforms this small square into a large 18″x24″ poster in front of your eyes and you are part of it. It also has the added value of making them easier to ship and store which is better for the environment and makes them less expensive to buy and sell. And seeing the folds on the calendar, while not an obvious advantage, is just a reminder of the transformation. I could be making too much of it–it is just a calendar–but it’s nice to think of these things.
poster side of Ron Rege’s 2011 Calendar & Poster
poster side of 2009 Treehouse Calendar by Jennie Smith
poster side of Lart C. Berliner’s 2009 Railways Calendar
So riffing off the idea of giving calendars a dual purpose that started with the calendar/poster, when we made the 2008 calendar Through the Year with Gordon The Fox with John Porcellino, we thought of the idea of having all the calendar information on the bottom of each page and putting a dotted line on the cover so that at the end of the year you can cut off any and all calendar info and it becomes a spiral bound mini book with no trace of the calendar it once was.
before and after the cut with John P.’s Through the Year with Gordon the Fox
Eun-Ha from Milkly Elephant came to us with a great idea to create a postcard calendar where the postcards are perforated and can be torn off after each month is over. We made sure there was no calendar info on the back of each postcard so now you have an amazing postcard set. Poof, a second life!
Milky Elephant postcard calendar is perforated for easy tearing
With Chris Duncan’s special “Two Years of the Youniverse” calendar, we made it two sided with a perforation so that after 2010 is over you can just cleanly tear off the calendar section and you’re left with this amazing double-sided art print. We love the idea that calendars we made years (or a year) ago are still spending time in people’s lives and on their walls as posters, prints, books, and postcards.
Two Years of the Youniverse print by Chris Duncan
September 1st, 2010 by jeremy
It’s rare that we turn something in to the printer with an artist literally in the same room, but with Dan Black out visiting Portland from Minneapolis before making his way to Flatstock in Seattle this weekend, we were able to do just that with Volume 5 of the Little Otsu Annual planner. He just had to make a few tweaks to the list pages and then finalize the cover (which turned out great …and yellow!) and we could sit in the same room knowing it’s now up to 1984 Printing in Oakland to print and cut and collate and bind and then finally ship out the final product to us and then your favorite hometown stores and then to you! Normally we work with artists over email and the phone and IM and we talk often and send each other files, but it’s not the same thing as being able to talk and give feedback together in the same room. Hopefully more artists visit Portland so we can work on stuff together in-person!
a sneak preview of Volume 5!
Since this was the fifth Annual we’ve done, we wanted to take the best ideas from each one and put them together to make something new. So we’ve taken the initial idea from Volume 1, added the “clean” look and similar size of Volume 2, added monthly pages like Volume 3, retained the look of the daily grids from Volume 4, and mixed in a new weekly layout and completely hand-drawn elements (including over 18 different typefaces). Of course it has the personal and list pages you’re used to and plenty of room for notes on each weekly spread. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited with the results!
an example weekly spread (click on it for a larger image)
Every year with the Annual so far we’ve changed the look, size, theme and grid, trying out different ideas to see what people like and what works best. With Volume 5, we’ve landed on what we think is the size, format, and weekly & monthly grid that really works the best for the most folks and we’re going to stick with the basics of it for each Annual from now on, but always with new themes and art. That way you can rely on having the organization you like with new art to look at each year. We love feedback on our planners so always feel free to let us know what you think! And stay tuned for Volume 5 to be available at the beginning of next month!
August 26th, 2010 by jeremy
Our new 2011 fold-out calendar & poster by Ron Rege, Jr. is now in our SF store (and will be available online next week)! Come check out its amazingness! It folds out to a whopping 18″ x 24″ and like one of those 3-D posters from the ’90s, seems to reveal things to you the longer you stare at it. It was printed in Hayward, CA on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks and we are making a limited edition of 50 unfolded posters available only at the SF store, so act fast!
front of calendar
poster side for after the year is over
close-up
