Earlier last month I put out a call on Tumblr, asking if a creative person out there would like to generate a graphic to replace the front page image on the main Public Collectors website. One fine person came forward and I’m happy to announce that the front page image has been redesigned by Rogelio Rosiles. He has drawn from many areas of the site and blog to create some very subtle arrangements of objects.

Big thanks to Rogelio! He’ll be getting a nice package of publications in the mail from me. Check out Rogelio’s Tumblr and his Flickr gallery to see a lot of his art. Also, links are embedded in nearly every part of that image, so click around and see if you can find all sixteen linked areas in Rogelio’s collage. 

Public Collectors is a big fan of guerrilla libraries and the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street in particular. To encourage and support this work, I’ve reprinted Mandy Henk’s excellent essay “Occupy Libraries: Guerrilla Librarianship for the People” as a big, color offset, double-sided postcard. This is the front side of the postcard. You can read the full essay here.

2,500 copies were printed and a thousand of these cards will travel with People’s Library librarians to be given away when they speak at the American Library Association Midwinter conference in Dallas on Saturday, January 21st. More details on that presentation and their work here.

If you’d like to support this project and receive a couple copies in the mail, please consider making a donation of $1.00 or more to my Paypal email address. If you donate more than a couple dollars, I’ll throw in a free Public Collectors booklet and additional ephemera. Thanks.

Contest: Help Me Replace This Image!

I’ve had this collage image on the front page of the Public Collectors website forever and I’m tired of it. I’d like to replace it with a new graphic that draws from various images from all over the website (including the Public Collectors Flickr collections). Ideally your creation should be about 650 pixels wide and 500 pixels high - or something larger that would still look good when reduced to this size). Your graphic can be a photocollage that grabs material from the website, or you can do something new like a drawn illustration. Basically, I’m looking for something that captures the spirit of Public Collectors. Use your imagination! Entries are due by January 31, 2012.

Email your submission to: marc@publiccollectors.org

Be sure to include your name and postal mailing address. I will pick a winner at the beginning of February, 2012. Everyone who submits an entry will get a Public Collectors booklet and some ephemera. The winner will have their graphic used on the front page (I’ll credit you) and will get a much bigger package of Public Collectors booklets, as well as other printed materials from projects I have worked on. Trust me - it will be a nice haul of stuff!

I hope you’ll participate. Reblog widely!

Documentation of Ricki Hill’s Public Collectors Show and Tell event at Gallery 400 in Chicago from Saturday, November 19, 2011. Photo by Allison Michelle Moore.

Documentation of Ricki Hill’s Public Collectors Show and Tell event at Gallery 400 in Chicago from Saturday, November 19, 2011. Photo by Allison Michelle Moore.

Documentation of Ricki Hill’s Public Collectors Show and Tell event at Gallery 400 in Chicago from Saturday, November 19, 2011. Photo by Allison Michelle Moore.

A new publication from Public Collectors: Fashion Illustrations by D. ‘Jame

Featuring eleven color illustrations. These drawings by a fashion illustrator or designer named D. ‘Jame come from the collection of Michael Thomas, an artist based in Chicago. Thomas found the drawings at a thrift store in Chicago, located on Broadway Avenue near Devon. He writes: “They were priced at $5 per drawing. I could only afford one and was unable to decide. The owner of the store said he was tired of having them around and I could buy them all for $20. There are thirty-three drawings. He said there had been more, but they had been sold.” The drawings are dated from 1970-77. No other information about D. ‘Jame is known.

This booklet is free at the exhibit Archival Impulse. Otherwise copies of this and other Public Collectors booklets can be purchased through Half Letter Press.

A detail of the Public Collectors displays in the exhibit Archival Impulseat Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago. The show is up through December 17, 2011. Check it out!

Opening tonight in Chicago at Gallery 400 on 400 S. Peoria from 5-8 PM. Public Collectors will be presenting 1970s fashion illustrations by D. ‘Jame from the collection of Michael Thomas, scraps of metal found while bicycling along Hubbard Street from the collection of Ricki Hill, CTA passes from the 1980s from the collection of Katrina Petrauskas, and original copies of many of the books that are available as PDF downloads from Public Collectors. I hope to see you!

Just printed: a new postcard version of the Public Collectors mission statement. Do you like receiving mail? Email your postal mailing address to the email on the bottom of this postcard and I’ll send you a postcard - anywhere in the world, with a stamp and a note, just like people did in the 1930s! No expiration date on this offer.

On Saturday, August 13th from 5:00-9:00 PM, Public Collectors is back with another event at The Storefront on 2606 N. California Avenue in Chicago. This time the event will focus on Bridgette Buckley’s collection of at least a couple hundred party, club and rave flyers from Chicago and Boulder, such as the example shown here. Bridgette also has plenty of music from this period - a lot of it on cassette, and she’ll be sharing that as well. The event is on Facebook here. Bridgette also wrote a short essay that’s printed on the back of a color party invite she designed. You can pick one up at the event.

The Public Collectors Underground Music ‘Zines event at The Storefront this weekend was really fun; both days were well-attended by a steady stream of gracious and interested visitors that stayed and read for hours. Thanks to all who came out! The event fully reignited my belief that sharing personal collections is vital and necessary - for bringing people together to learn from and discuss hard to see cultural materials, and as a means of providing direct tactile experiences with original artifacts. Here’s one photo from the event. You can see many more here.

Special thanks to Brandon Alvendia who runs The Storefront (2606 N. California) for allowing me to have these events at his space. There will be another Public Collectors event next week when Bridgette Buckley shares her 1990s rave and club flyer collection on Saturday, August 13th from 5:00-9:00 PM. She’ll be playing music from this period as well. The address is 2606 N. California Ave. in Chicago and you can see the Facebook event listing here.

Okay folks, if you are in Chicago today or tomorrow (August 6 & 7), I’d love to meet you at this event at The Storefront (2606 N. California). And in addition to piles of ‘zines, I pulled out over 200 cassettes for us to blast while we read, including some super rare demos that bands sent me for review twenty years ago. Thanks to everyone who spread the word about this event. And if you can’t make it, you can get the ‘zine I made, along with other Public Collectors publications, here.