One of the main characters in the story is an energetic pup and here he is on a flat card at full attention with ears and tail perked up when something catches his eye...
Through the book we follow him across town and in this new print you can see his visit to the dog park along with a lot of funny stuff going on including the idea that owners and their pets have a shared resemblance...
We also made a bookmark out of the traffic image we shared previously, but now you can spot the pup and guess what's got him on the run!
In addition to these fun images from the book, we also made a print out of one of our favorite Frostville series paintings ("Number 9") and a card with Daniel's fantastic "Bike Lovers" illustration. We are big fans of Daniel's work and can't wait to show more of the book!
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We're bringing our Living Things series of mini art books to a close with two final fantastic installments by Martine Workman (Vol. 9 "Dance") and JooHee Yoon (Vol. 10 "House Plant")! We can't wait to make them available online and in our SF mini store, but there are only a handful of copies in existence at the moment and most of them are headed to England for their international debut this Saturday at the East London Comics & Art Festival (ELCAF), courtesy of Portland's Reading Frenzy! ELCAF is organized by the awesome Nobrow Press and this 2nd year of the fest will feature tons of exhibitors, artists, talks, and workshops at York Hall. We're thrilled to be launching the conclusion of our series at such a great event!
Find our brand new Living Things and APAK 2014 Everyday Magic calendar at the Reading Frenzy table. Also say hi to London-based Living Things Vol. 1 and LO Annual planner artist Lizzy Stewart at her booth (news of this year's Annual with more great art from Lizzy coming soon)!
East London Comics & Arts Festival
June 22nd, 2013, 10am-7pm
York Hall
5 Old Ford Rd, Bethnal Green, London
£3 for adults, free for kids under 16 accompanied by an adult
Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE)
June 15 & 16, 2013, 11am-6pm
Center on Halsted
3656 N Halsted, Chicago
free and open to the public
Our fellow Portlanders Ayumi and Aaron (aka APAK) have a solo show, Dreaming Together, opening this Friday at the Land gallery. There will be lots of all new work including some 3-D sculptures! Also exciting is that there will be limited copies on-hand of their brand new Little Otsu 2014 calendar, Everyday Magic! We know it's early to be thinking about next year already, but it's never too early to secure your copy of this great calendar that features art from the show. And if you can't make it to the show in Portland, not to worry as they'll be available online shortly.
Dreaming Together
New work by APAK
Land, 3925 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97227
503.451.0689
June 7th-30th, 2013
opening reception with the artists June 7th, 6pm-9pm
1972 Republic of Chad
I found this complete set of five Chadian stamps in one of many glassine envelopes that I apparently acquired in the 80's from the Jamestown Stamp Company. The spiders are the most striking, with their stylized colored webs, although the almost psychedelic background of the rhino beetle holds its own.
]]>There is still time to order a gift or card for Mother's Day! We have a new frameable print of Becca Stadtlander's Flowers Card image and a fantastic new Happy Mother's Day Card by Martine Workman! Place your order by tomorrow (May 8th) and ship via USPS Priority Mail for delivery by Saturday (US only).
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You can read an interview the Zine Fest did with Martine and there is also an article about the Fest in the New York Times.
Brooklyn Zine Fest 2013
Sunday, April 21st 11am-6pm
Public Assembly
70 N 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY
FREE, all ages & open to everyone
The awesome UK graphic arts festival Pick Me Up starts this Thursday at Somerset House in London and provides the perfect opportunity to finally share one of our big projects with you! One of the international rising stars of the graphics arts world specially selected by an industry panel to be featured in the Pick Me Up Selects artist showcase is Daniel Frost and we're thrilled to announce that he's working on a children's book with us!
The picture book takes place in his wonderful fictional town of Frostville--it's a charming place populated with colorful characters and humorous city life. We love Daniel's elongated figures, use of bold colors, expressive simplicity, and sense of the comical. It's been fun working with him on developing the book and we're super excited with how it's coming along. It won't be released until the fall and we'll be posting updates, but you can get sneak peaks of process and ideas on Daniel's blog and if you're in London, you can meet him and see his work-in-progress at Pick Me Up!
Pick Me Up (London, UK)
April 18th-28th, 2013
Somerset House, Embankment Galleries
Daily 10am-6pm (Last admission 5:15pm)
Thursdays 10am-10pm (Last admission 11:15pm)
£8, concessions £6, Festival Pass £15 (buy tickets online)
Jennie Smith’s delicate graphite drawings and watercolors continue to express her concern with specific ecological issues, such as the floating continent of plastic debris known as the great Pacific Garbage Patch, the migration of indigenous people, and the ecosystems of small, vulnerable animals. Equally enchanted by natural phenomena – wind, animal habitat, whale songs – and the creative, mythical, and crafted remnants of the human world, Smith responds with metaphorical renderings that entwine narrative threads to describe the gravity or wonder of her subjects and their relationships to the forces of nature. She says, “I draw what is close to me, what is beyond my physical reach, and what is from the realm of the imagined.”
Jennie Smith
Sending Out a Song
March 21 - May 4, 2013
Reception: Thursday, March 21, 5:30-7:30pm
Rena Bransten Gallery
77 Geary Street (between Kearny and Grant)
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 982-3292
image from Rena Bransten Gallery
]]>All the hubbub yesterday about funding the Veronica Mars movie made us think that we should make a plug for the effort to restore and digitize the classic French movie musical by Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's the 50th anniversary of the film this year and Demy's family (lead by the awesome director Agnès Varda) is trying to raise a modest 25k Euros to finish paying for the process of restoring it to its original splendor for a debut screening at the Cannes Film Festival in May (and for all posterity). If you've never seen the movie, it's full of colors, awesome wallpapers, a 20-year old Catherine Deneuve in her first major role, sung dialog all the way through (it totally works), the realities of young love, the town of Cherbourg, lots of great shots, and a main song that will be stuck in your head for weeks. Watch it regardless, but you have 32 days to help them meet their goal and keep one of the best movies alive for years to come.
]]>Film Diary: Krylya, 1966, directed by Larisa Shepitko
Russian director Larisa Shepitko's career was cut way too short when she was killed in a car accident at age 41, but thankfully we have access to her two major works through Criterion's Eclipse Series. Wings is her first feature after graduating from the All-Russian State Institute for Cinematography and it is already a mature, quietly stunning film. The combination of a memorable performance by Maya Bulgakova as the main character, universally human moments, and beautiful compositions makes this film stand its ground with its contemporaries and mourn for all that could have been for this remarkable director. I highly recommend both Wings and The Ascent.
]]>Martine started sketching out her ideas during her residency at VCCA and we zeroed in on this drawing in particular as we felt we hadn't seen anything like it before as far as Mother's Day cards go (or otherwise). "Fancy string" made us think of bakers twine and the typography was just something unusual. As you can see, it started out as a very rough idea, so the next step was for her to draw and ink the lettering and try out some colors.
Next she added the detail to the string and cleaned up the drawing. Harking back again to bakers twine, we thought blue and green would make for a nice combo--it's feminine without using the typical pink. The standard red, while most familiar, was a bit too candy cane/Christmasy for the occasion. The lettering looked great, but felt too stark on just white so she played with lots of combos for the background, pumping up the color for the lettering so it wouldn't get lost in the mix.
There were a lot of great options, but in the end, we both had a gut response to one version as being the one, and thus our new card was born! We can't wait to have the final printed product in our hands in a couple weeks so we can share it with you and the moms in your life.
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1976 Vietnam
It didn't occur to me how difficult it would be to pin down some information on the stamp. Searching the text brought up lots of Vietnamese language pages which wasn't too helpful. Finally I pinned down this page and translated it to find that this seems to be half of a stamp set issued in 1976 marking the re-unification of the country. According to this Wikipedia page about the postal history of Vietnam, these must have been issued in July/August as it still has the name of the North Vietnamese state printed on them (the text along the top). The whole page is an interesting read as you consider that stamps were originally issued there in 1862 under French colonial rule and then there was a Northern and Southern state. Anyhow, that's a lot of history for a 12-cents stamp!
]]>US Orders:
USPS First Class Mail or UPS Ground: order by Monday the 17th
USPS Priority Mail or UPS Three-Day Select: order by Wednesday the 19th
UPS 2nd Day Air: order by Thursday the 20th
UPS Next Day Air Saver: order by Friday the 21st
USPS Express Mail: order by Saturday the 22nd
If you choose Free Shipping it is unlikely that it will arrive on time.
]]>Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Holiday Sale
Oregon Convention Center, Hall C (we're at booth 23)
777 NE MLK Jr. Blvd, Portland, OR 97232
December 8th-9th, 11am-6pm
free admission
The Portland Bazaar
Sandbox Studio, 420 NE 9th Ave, Portland, OR 97232
December 8th 9am-5pm, December 9th 9am-4pm
free admission
Urban Craft Uprising
Seattle Center Exhibition Hall
321 Mercer Street
December 1st-2nd, 11am-5pm
admission is free
On Friday October 4th, 2002 around 2pm, we took the newspaper off of our windows and opened the doors to our store called Otsu at 3253 16th Street in San Francisco. It's been a long and short ten years since then. Our business has gone through many permutations, from selling vegan shoes and bags and handmade goods and comics, to making artist t-shirts, to having two stores in two different states, to launching a paper goods line and changing our name, to running our store on Valencia from a state away, to being a publisher with just an online shop, to where we are now. Neither of us came from a retail/business background and it's been a matter of organic turns and discoveries and flops and learning on the job. Every year that we celebrate an anniversary is a small victory in itself, but turning ten seems to be a more momentous occasion. It is humbling that we are able to do what we do and take these crazy chances that succeed more often than not--it is a bounty that we are genuinely thankful for.
And of course we would not be where we are today without the help and support of lots of people and we want to express our gratitude to everyone who has contributed to the longevity of our little enterprise: all our customers, all the artists we've worked with, all our vendors, anyone who has ever written about us, our families & friends, George, Kirk, Amara, Alexa, Anna, Crystal, Kate, Lart (happy birthday!), Martine, Tony, Chi-hui, Tommy, Jennie, Dave C., Greg S., Amy & Richard (1984 Printing), Cindy (Favorite Printing), Pat & Aaron, Chad & Emiko, Phil, Yuri, Lauren, David C., Steve & Olivia, Sara O'Sullivan, Creativity Explored, Gabrielle & Andy, Eun-Ha & Karl, Alissa, Chris D., Dustin, Jason, Jill, Laura & Austin (Pinball), Rita, Kaori, Kristine, Claire, Helen, McSweeney's, Andrew, Dave E., Vendela, Barb, Heidi, Angela, Jordan, Eli, Adam, Greg L., Laura, Chris Y., Brian, Giselle & Phurba.
We don't know what the next ten years will hold, but we hope to keep sharing them with you. Thanks!
]]>Little Otsu Mini Store at Rare Device
600 Divisadero Street (corner of Hayes)
San Francisco, CA 94117
415.863.3969
Mon-Fri 12-8, Sat 11-7, Sun 11-6
XOXO Festival Market
YU Contemporary
800 SE 10th Avenue, Portland, OR
Market hours: Friday September 14th-Sunday September 16th, 9:30am-6pm
We had a great time working with fellow Portlanders APAK on their Space Garden calendar last year so making a new calendar for 2013 came naturally. We're now pleased to present the results! The theme this time is "Simple Life" and you'll find colorful scenes of life among the trees, from sleeping in a hammock to gardening, picnicking to making music. It's a happy companion to the year and a reminder to enjoy every day! It's available now in our online shop and at our SF Mini Store with wider release coming soon.
]]>We are so excited to introduce our newest Annual Weekly Planner to you! We were able to team up again with the lovely Lizzy Stewart to bring you 12 months and 54 weeks filled with her charmingly rendered objects, landscapes, buildings, and fauna. You can pre-order the planner which will ship around July 27th, but if you act fast, we have a handful (11!) copies to ship now, first-ordered first-filled. There will also be a few copies at our SF mini store on Friday. Be one of the first to get one!
]]>Urban Craft Uprising
Seattle Center Exhibition Hall
321 Mercer Street
July 7th-8th, 11am-5pm
admission is free
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**note: I am not endorsing Netflix in any way as there are certainly better sources to find movies like your local indie video store, but since so many people use it I thought it was worth making a list.
Les Bonnes Femmes, 1960, directed by Claude Charbrol. A lesser-seen movie from the French New Wave. At times charming, suspenseful, violent and atmospheric, and always beautifully shot. The ending alone is worthy of a long conversation.
Metropolitan, 1992, directed by Whit Stillman. This is my favorite movie; a comedy of manners about a group of friends that goes to deb parties in the late 80s. Whit Stillman writes dialog like no one else, full of literary charm, youthful questioning and the heightened reality that is (was?) the Upper East Side. The cast of first-time actors makes it more realistic and awkward. See it twice to get more references.
The Bicycle Thief (aka Bicycle Thieves), 1948, directed by Vittorio De Sica. Considered one of the best movies ever made, this Italian neo-realist film is a must-see (it should be noted that this isn't the best print of this movie, but worth seeing anyway). Done entirely with non-actors, it is bleak, beautiful and yes, totally depressing.
32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, 1993, directed by François Girard. An unconventional biopic co-written by Don McKeller (who wrote and starred in the cult classic tv show Twitch City) which presents the life of genius and all-around weirdo Glenn Gould as 32 different short vignettes, structurally referencing Gould's most famous recording, Bach's Goldberg Variations. Even if you have no interest in classical music this is worth seeing for its originality. Famously there was a Simpsons episode inspired by the movie called "22 Short Films about Springfield" (which I also recommend).
A Woman is a Woman, 1961, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. A French New Wave color wheel starring Godard's then-wife and muse, Anna Karina. Not my favorite Godard, but a great movie that is definitely worth seeing if you love '60s aesthetics and Pantone swatches.
Alice, 1988, directed by Jan Svankmajer. A retelling of Alice in Wonderland by this incredible and creative Czech director & animator. Using live actors interacting with stop-motion animation, this adaptation is bizarre enough to do justice to the writing and create a dream-like world that is genuinely unique. All art students should see this. NOTE: not for kids, it's too scary!
The Gleaners and I, 2000, directed by Agnes Varda. (UPDATE: The Gleaners and I is not longer available on Netflix Instant streaming, but it is still a great movie and definitely worth renting from somewhere.) A documentary by New Wave director Agnes Varda (who's one of my favorite directors: see dvd versions of Cleo from 5 to 7, La Pointe Courte, etc) about gleaners in modern day France inspired by the Jean Francois Millet painting "The Gleaners." I'll admit that sounds extremely boring, but it's the "and I" of the title that makes this film. Varda is so charming and relatable to the gleaners in the movie that you find yourself smiling throughout and looking at what we leave behind in a different way. Ok, maybe it still sounds boring but trust me, it's not--it is truly great.
So there are a few recommendations to start with. Please tell me what you think and in the future I'll post more. Thanks!
]]>CAKE
June 16 & 17, 2012, 11am-6pm
Columbia College's Ludington Building
1104 S Wabash, 8th floor, Chicago
free and open to the public
From the museum's website:
"The graphic compositions by the British artist Simon Evans combine drawings with fragments of words and relate to diaries, automatic writing, collage, lists, inventories, encyclopedias, diagrams, cartography, cosmology... The exhibition at Mudam will involve the production of new pieces."
Mudam Luxembourg
Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean
3, Park Dräi Eechelen
L-1499 Luxembourg
t +352 45 37 85 1
Simon Evans: How To Be Alone When You Live With Someone
June 2 - September 23, 2012
Simon Evans : Vocabulary, 2011 © The Artist / Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York / Shanghai
]]>Our latest batch of ten new cards is just about ready to make its official entrance at our online shop and SF mini store, but we thought we'd make another introduction in the meantime. We loved working with UK artist Hannah Waldron on her Living Things installment and wanted to do more projects with her, but she was taking a break from print to focus on her weaving. The good news is that we got to collaborate on this wonderful new botanical garden-inspired card before she got accepted to Konstfack in Sweden for a textile masters program which she's now preparing for. The resulting work is a colorful scene full of plants and birds and greenhouses and gardens. We love how she breaks down forms into simple shapes that coalesce into complex wholes and can't wait for our next chance to work together!
]]>[caption id="attachment_3745" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="a page from "Wait, You're Not A Centaur" by Nate Denver"][/caption]
]]>Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Spring Sale
Saturday, May 12th, 11am-6pm
Oregon Convention Center Exhibit Hall D
777 NE MLK Jr. Blvd, Portland, OR
all ages, free admission, goodie bags for first 200 shoppers