Last year, the St. Louis Small Press Expo, or SPEx for short, packed 400 people into Old North’s Central Print and UrbArts. There were 44 projects, running a long gamut: litmags like december and River Styx; fort gondo’s beautiful art books; zines, comics, and graphic novels by folks such as Curtis Tinsley and Dan Zettwoch; and hybrid projects such as PIECRUST magazine. It was so crowded, you sometimes had to wait in line to get to the tables. And, amazingly, it was SPEx’s first year—for its second year, SPEx will be even bigger, taking over the Central Library for the day with (at press time) 60 projects and counting.
Its immediate success is due to the hardworking SPEx collective, which counts a number of creative dynamos among its ranks: Nicky Rainey, poet and co-host of KDHX’s Literature for the Halibut; Jen Tappenden of Architrave Press, publisher of poetry broadsides; Lauren Cardenas of PIECRUST; Jared Rourke of Queer Young Cowboys; Nick Kuntz, creator of Any Other Time and Underworld Adventure Comics; and Christopher Chablé, founder of Somnadrome Press.
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Tappenden says the big news this year is the collective’s successful Kickstarter campaign. “One of the things that we wanted to do with the money was to invite projects from other cities that we admire,” she says, “so we’ve invited them not just to exhibit but also to give talks and workshops. In keeping with the spirit of the show, we want to have a wide variety, so we’ll have people who do literary stuff, art books, obviously some zine makers and comics artists—a little bit of everything.”
The expo will be spread across the library’s ornate marble-floored Grand Hall, as well as the auditorium and some smaller education rooms. (There was no word at press time on where the kick-off party will happen the night before, but there will be one.)
The tables will be arranged in the same mixy-matchy manner as last year, which, Tappenden says, worked fantastically well. “One of my favorite feedback quotes from last year is ‘No B.S. distinctions between high and low art,’” she says. “We wanted different types of projects to sit together—we didn’t want a section of comics people, a section of literary journals, or art books and hybrid projects. We wanted everybody to be interspersed so you just never knew what the next table was going to be. You’re just continually surprised by all of these projects that people have mostly done in their spare time with bare resources because they love it.”
The St. Louis Small Press Expo takes place 11 a.m.–5 p.m. September 26 at the Central Library, 1301 Olive. For more info, go to stlouissmallpressexpo.com.
Three Artists to Check Out at SPEx
Julia Arredondo: Recently relocated to St. Louis, Arredondo set up her Vice Versa Press table at the River Des Press Expo at the Skatium in May. Or you may have seen her bold black-and-white band flyers wheat-pasted on poles around town. She does everything: prints, cards, buttons, novena candles, zines…even pop-up zines. Baltimore Breakups borrows what’s normally a kids’ book art technique and uses it to illustrate stories of relationship meltdown, making them that much more intense and immediate.
Hillary-Anne Crosby: Austin, Texas–based Crosby is the creator of the biannual VAGINA :: THE ZINE, which publishes work by women, including transgender women, exclusively. She makes every issue by hand. As she told The Austin Chronicle, sometimes a tear or a bead of sweat will fall on a page, or she’ll be sewing the binding at her kitchen table and accidentally get her finger under the needle: “It’s really blood, sweat, and tears that go into it.”
John Porcellino: His beloved King-Cat mini-comic has been published since 1989. The Chicago native visited Enamel last fall for a screening of Root Hog or Die, a documentary about his work, and a signing of his new graphic memoir, The Hospital Suite. It was right around the time that windows were breaking on South Grand, and he wondered out loud on Twitter whether he should cancel the trip out of respect—but St. Louis was glad that he didn’t. If you missed his visit last fall, catch him at SPEx.
