Half Letter Press selling booklets about art in Chicago

Based in Chicago Half Letter Press publishes and distributes booklets about collaborative and experimental artwork. I recently discovered their shop at halfletterpress.com and ordered a bunch of books--for cheap!

Here's the message I wrote in part of my online order:

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I'm so excited about my order. I did a search on Chicago and then sorted by price. What a great deal on these fun booklets! btw, i found out about you through AREA Chicago. I was asking them if I could buy some of their issues and they said that soon they will be available on your site. So i went to see what your site was about, and it's very cool! You have a very happy customer! Sincerely, matt maldre of spudart.org
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My order:


Why The Exhibit Was Canceled: $2.00
This booklet presents actual 'behind the scenes' correspondence between an artist and a curator (both made anonymous) as they attempt to negotiate the details of the artist's upcoming exhibition. The institution raises late concerns about the artist's work a month before the show is to open. The artist is asked to change his work and make unusual concessions so that the institution can cover its ass and this leads to the artist canceling the show.

This booklet salvages a difficult experience and makes public the kind of internal dialog between artists and institutions that is extremely hard to access. A booklet that has been much loved, debated and discussed by teachers, students and arts administrators. So heavily read and downloaded that it has surely been seen by more people than would have attended the exhibit had it not been canceled!


Drawn Out: $2.00
This booklet (#19)accompanied the exhibition Drawn Out and documents some of the work from the show. A drawn out project is one that persists with little regard for those who stopped paying attention ages ago. For the people who were in this show, there is always something more to be said, always another idea to share, always another angle to consider, always another example to archive, and always another question to ask. But to draw something out is not only to prolong it, but to induce a person to speak freely.

Speaking freely is the critical component that binds all of the work in this show. Included in Drawn Out were over 40 anonymous street flyers by "The Ancient Order Guy," soap products and labels by Dr. Bronner's, collected booklets of letters to corporations by Rich Mackin, blueprint drawings by Krista Peel and Tim Donahue, 200 drawings and doodles left behind by hotel guests from the collection of Chris Ritter, and over 200 public stickers by graffiti artist Shy Girl.


Business Replies: $1.50
This booklet culls together various strategies for using business reply cards to minimize junk mail, entertain yourself at a boring job, creatively protest the very companies that over produce these things, and more. This is booklet #18. Still a relevant way to address this problem after all these years!


11 People 16 Spaces / How-To Guerilla Art: $4.50
Temporary Services booklet #73, This double-booklet was made in a two-day workshop with students from Columbia College in Chicago. 11 People 16 Spaces shows a variety of configurations of people bodily occupying urban spaces.

How to Guerilla Art presents 16 pages of illustrated tactics for presenting art and ideas in publicly trafficked space.


Public Phenomena - Informal Modifications of Shared Spaces: $4.75
Booklet #68. This booklet was our first publication focusing on documentation of Public Phenomena. It includes 44 color photos, none of which were repeated in our later book, that go right to the edge of the page.

For our later book we wrote: "From roadside memorials to makeshift barriers, people consistently alter shared common spaces to suit their needs, or let both man-made and natural aberrations run wild. The result is a new kind of public space – with creative and inspiring moments that push past the original planned design of cities." All of these photos were taken in Chicago and the Midwest. The themes this time around are: roadside memorials, parking place savers, block club signs, homemade basketball hoops, and an anomalous image of a truck rebuilt inside a tree. The variety of photos of the myriad amusing ways that Chicagoans block off space for their car in the winter after a snowstorm is particularly rich in this booklet.

This publication was created in conjunction with the project "Construction Site" that we executed in Los Angeles at the invitation of Outpost for Contemporary Art. These are the very last copies of this popular booklet that we have to sell so don't delay if you want one!