Social Documentary photography by inner city youth in Chicago. Urban subsidized housing areas offer little to no arts education, Inner City Light teaches kids to use photography and digital media in special classes. This book is a visual presentation with amazing design about the reality of living in the city.

Inner City Light

Arts & Photography

Front Forty Press

Photography & Video

Front Forty Press teamed up with Matt Volla to produce his first book entitled Unruly Drawings. Unlike the established mode of blind collaborations between artists, Front Forty Press has been working closely with Volla to develop this visually rich feature. Matt Volla’s Unruly Drawings were initially received as thousands of digital files as well as in various densely packed notebooks. The digital files were organized and named by Mr. Volla in a range of categories from his Lexicon. Designer Dan De Los Monteros and art director Doug Fogelson adapted the story of the drawings into this book’s visual depiction of their progression. In illustrating the book, De Los Monteros was faced with the challenge of balancing multiple individual characters and groupings through many stages of development and evolutionary flux. Oakland based artist, musician, teacher, and surfer Matt Volla has been obsessively drawing amorphous kinetic creatures for years. These creatures were born into small-enclosed room like spaces where they bounced and slithered off the walls. They began to move faster and faster, growing and changing as they morphed and expanded beyond the walled boundaries. In our collaborative book, FFP has created a universe in which the drawings can evolve, flourish, have rave parties and battles, find solace, have existential crisis, animate, and become self-aware in the many ways they like. Volla received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Studio Art with an emphasis in Sound Art and Sculpture. He received an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College in Oakland, CA. He has shown throughout America in solo and group shows including White Columns in New York City, Tangent Gallery in Detroit and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His film soundtracks have screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in the Netherlands, Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Matt teaches film studies and sound art and drives to the beach in his vegetable oil-powered vehicle. Unruly Drawings was concieved and produced by Doug Fogelson and Matt Volla. Designed by Dan De Los Monteros with an essay written by Yerba Buena Center Associate Curator Berin Golonu. Berin Golonu has been the Associate Curator of Visual Art at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco since 2003. She first encountered Volla’s work in 1997 when she received an assignment to review a solo show of his “Knotology” work in Artweek Magazine. Golonu recently curated Volla’s project “Bartology” into a group exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts titled Sampling Oakland.

Matt Volla's Unruly Drawings

Drawing

The Hole: Consumer Culture is a science fiction horror story about the buying and selling of race in America, the simultaneous worship and degradation of African Americans in popular culture, and the tearing down of physical and psychological boundaries. CEO Carla Bonte’ wants voodoo to be a national religion—a hyperbolic “hyper voodoo” that uses an advanced technology marketed through a multinational corporation. Papa Legba, voodoo spirit of the crossroads, stands in opposition to “hyper voodoo” and the consumer culture that propels it. Complete with biting postmodern satire, a visual hip-hop aesthetic, an annotated bibliography, and essays on the academic theory behind the story, The Hole stands at the crossroads of interdisciplinary education—fearlessly combining African American studies, media and comparative scholarship, horror, science fiction, comedy, and iconic teaching tools.

The Hole: Consumer Culture, Volume 1

Comics & Graphic Novels

Jennings, John

Duffy, Damian

Graphic Novels

Short Stories Illustrated by Artists continues the Front Forty Press tradition of double blind collaboration. Front Forty Press paired writers and visual artists together on this project without ever having the artists interact with one another at all. The broad range of talent and the freedom of this collaborative process make Front Forty Press’ fourth title something to be enjoyed by everyone. Front Forty Press sent out a ‘call for entries’ to writers of short stories. Seven short stories were then selected and paired with seven talented painters. The painters were supplied with paper and asked to create visual interpretations of the stories at their own discretion (but without the aid of photographs or computers). Esteemed writer Robert McGee is paired with Cuban born Chicago painter/multidisciplinary artist Eduardo De Soignie for the books opening short, “Brokenheart”. The protagonist tells of an unfortunate date with a girl who just can’t figure out why her heart is always breaking. Sasha Earle delicately illustrates the words of Dave Follman in his story of infantile curiosity at its most grotesque in “The Eyeball”. Artist, writer, and teacher Dan Rybicky narrates a story of obsession entitled “Picky”. Donald Jackson supplies the visuals with bold splashes of color juxtaposed with line drawings of Picky Becky, the story’s olfactory obsessed heroine. Novelist Corey Mesler is paired with artist Dennis Callahan to produce “Killer”, a story of a dog walk gone terribly awry. Heather Malloy recreates the thrill and isolation that coexist in a one-night stand encounter in her short “Untitled #6”. Painter Kimberly Thurston’s images are abstractions of recognizable forms that have a sense of anonymity that are the perfect accompaniment to Malloy’s story. The illustrious pair, Dario Stipisic and Renata Stojkowski compose the visual treat that is “A Hint of Light”. The book closes with “October”, written by Treavor Doherty. Dream-like landscapes of the people and events that make the season is beautifully constructed by artist Jenine Clevenger. The resulting compilation is designed by David Castillo. Short Stories Illustrated by Artists is a color hardcover, 100 pages.

Short Stories Illustrated by Artists

Decorative Arts & Design

Front Forty Press enlisted nine notable graphic designers to reinterpret the sonnet form through the language of design and photography. A sonnet is a dialectical construct that usually explores two contrastive ideas, events, emotions, etc. by juxtaposing carefully patterned rhyme schemes. Sonnets are fourteen lines long and come out in a variety of forms and variations. Each designer was provided a suite of photographic images from a category within the ‘built environment’. In fourteen pages (or seven spreads) each designers was then free to explore and meditate on their own relationship with this part of the landscape as they wished. The book opens with New York based art director, designer, and new media artist Sebatien Derenoncourt’s vividly colorful and deeply personal response to the built environment in “Infrastructure”. Jennifer Brunner’s “Apertures” is a soft poetic exploration of light. She, like many artists in the book, utilizes imagery instead of written words to create her sonnet. “Construction” is a visually jarring concrete landscape littered with symbols of human greed and hints at the destruction that it brings. Nate Euhus cleverly simulates the vibration of new construction for the viewer through his bold designs. Bob Faust’s take on “Roads” is more of a fantastical optical illusion than a clear route. A dizzying journey through the art of Dominy Edwards depicts “Pathways” in their many forms. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXVII provides the base to her piece. Russell Lord’s graphic approach to “Sprawl” reads like a mock propaganda piece for expansion. A variety of “Fences” are arranged by Max Havlicek in a fashion that conveys a wide range of response, from nostalgia to suffocation. Esteemed designer Ann Smolucha captivates the viewer with her visual dissertation on “Electricity”. Beth Johnson delivers the last suite in her interpretation of “Restitution”. She vandalizes the built world with seemingly simple images that suggest a more complex need for atonement. Sonneteer was conceived and produced by Doug Fogelson and designed by Russell Lord. The resulting collaboration is a 9” x 14” full color, perfect bound, 140-page book with essays by Russell Lord and Ingrid Rojas.

Sonneteer: A visual composition on selected components of our built environment.

Graphic Design

The first in a series of accessible and affordable art books from Front Forty Press, Front Forty Profiles No. 1 features the designs/illustrations of artist Mark McGinnis—whose work has appeared in solo exhibitions in both Chicago and Los Angeles and has been featured in the New York Times and Business Week. McGinnis uses icons, drawing, and printmaking processes to captivate and to communicate to his audience, his poignant, simplified images often skewing preconceptions of popular issues in political and social spheres while instigating reflection on a given topic. Accompanying McGinnis’s work is an interview with the artist conducted by art writer and critic Victor Cassidy and an essay on McGinnis’s technique and inspiration by Carlo Vinti. Also included with the first volume of the Profiles series is a limited edition icon sticker by the artist.

Mark McGinnis (Front Forty Profiles)

Vinti, Carlo

History & Criticism

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