Geraniums, a Blue Glass Cat, and Weather Exchanged in the Frontyard
On February 24 2025, Frontyard Projects, an artist-led centre in the Marrickville neighbourhood of Sydney, was the site of a single-table “Mini Zine Social” presented by the makers (and swimmers) behind “Small Press Swim Club”. They also hosted a presentation by me about mail art and exchange economies in the projects Renegade Library, bosque brotante…
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Migration Storytelling (Research and Art)
L to R – Christina Clark-Kazak, Lois Klassen, Soodi Joolaee, Anniya Asrani, Erin Goheen Glanville, Francisco Fernando Granados Reading the Migration Library is a project that takes an unbounded approach to migration as well as creative methods. Aside from the method of making a book-like publication that is constrained to the size of a quarter-letter…
Keep this: making mail art
Five years ago we were trying to get our heads around the horrors of a pandemic that was overwhelming cities’ capacities to bury victims, caused health officers to weep in press conferences, and saw hospitals expanding emergency departments into tent-covered parking lots. We wondered how long seniors and teens could endure “social distancing.” What would…
Alternate Exposures
“A calendar you are not allowed to keep” seems the perfect exchange for Reading the Migration Library publications, which you are not allowed to buy. The calendar, An Invitation to Notice, is an innovative desk calendar that artist Brenna Maag has just produced and released in an edition of 400. That is a big number…
Zine Exchange at SAFE
During our artists-in-residence at the McLoughlin Gardens cottage in the Comox Valley, we (Deanne Achong and Lois Klassen) had a chance to attend the “Art Opening + Artist Talks” for the exhibition SAFE at the Comox Valley Art gallery (CVAG). The title for the exhibition and its accompanying zine includes this byline, Holding space for…
Books Exchanged for Reading at McLoughlin Gardens
Deanne Achong and Lois Klassen were hosted as artists-in-residence at the McLoughlin Gardens cottage for a wonderful week at the beginning of October (September 29 to October 6). The week involved luxurious cabin time filled with long-gazing at the north Salish Sea, long-wandering on fern-lined forest trails and empty dirt roads, folding accordion pages and…
RML3: Undercurrents and Folds Events
Reading the Migration Library, a long-running artist project that has produced events and publications in the theme of migration and displacement, has just released its third and final series called RML3: Undercurrents and Folds.
Words exchanged at Word Vancouver
The official launch of the series RML3: Undercurrents and Folds took place at Word Vancouver Festival on September 28 at UBC Robson Square in downtown Vancouver. WV has been around for years as a free destination for those with book and comic passions, including writers and publishers who can find each other there to talk…
Artist Book Reading and Talk at CVAG
The Comox Valley Art Gallery will be hosting a reading on Thursday, October 3rd, with artists Lois Klassen and Deanne Achong. The artists are conducting creative research and development during an artist-in-residency at the McLoughin Gardens. Lois and Deanne will be at CVAG at 6:30pm on Thursday, October 3, to read from RML3: Undercurrents and…
Announcing, RML3: Undercurrents and Folds
We are excited to announce the upcoming release of RML3: Undercurrents and Folds. Lois Klassen and Deanne Achong are excited to announce that they have begun work on phase three of Reading the Migration Library, or RML3: Undercurrents and Folds. This phase will result in publications produced collaboratively together with six artists.
Mail Art Report: 3 books
So far in 2024 three publications have landed in my hands. Fawn Daphne Plessner recently left a copy of the exhibition brochure Near Dwellers as Legal Beings in my work mail box. It is from a 2023 exhibition at The Tree Museum & Street Road Artists Space (Cochranville, PA) that is part of a year-long…
The Legacy of British Home Children
The 2023 production and release of Ginger Mason’s Henry Frederick Terry (1907-1980) ~ I Remember is linked to Franci Louann’s Charlie Henry Workman (1897-1976) ~The Unspoken (2017). Both publications recount the impact of the British Home Children program on the families of the authors. For Ginger Mason working on the RML publication offered her an…
Happy Exchanges from 37 Looe Street
In September, 2023 the RML project was featured in a week-long artist residency and artist talk and book exchange event at 37 Looe Street, Plymouth, UK. 37 Looe Street is a wonderful small-scale arts centre in an historic site that once held a larger regional art centre and vegan restaurant. Angela Piccini and Sef Penrose…
Presenting on Labour Day : Henry Frederick Terry (1907-1980) ~ I Remember by Ginger Mason
On Labour Day, Canada’s complicity with child immigrant labour is the theme at Reading the Migration Library headquarters. We are busy assembling the latest community publication, “Henry Frederick Terry (1907-1980) ~ I Remember” by Ginger Mason (Victoria). Here’s how it starts: “From the 1860s to the late 1930s the Government of Canada as well as…
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BP 2022 Zine Award – Best Political Zine
Reading the Migration Library is proud: Notas sobre un recorrido: el Centro de Procesamiento de El Paso / Notes on a Tour: the El Paso Processing Center by Gabriela Galíndez has been awarded the 2022 Broken Pencil Award for Best Political Zine! Also involved in this ‘zine are Victoria Lum and Ruby Lewis who worked…
Mail art from The Poem Factory (Ed Varney)
This nice packet of paper goods came in the mail from Ed Varney’s “The Poem Factory” in Courtney, BC (on Vancouver Island). I initiated the exchange by sending the DADA of mail art 2 full sets of RML books (with a few more poetry chapbooks, added in). I asked him if he would, after keeping…
Reading Diaspora / Reading Migration
Reading Diaspora / Reading Migration – is an interactive web project that responds to the voices of poets from Ghana and the Ghanaian Diaspora. The project was created by Catherine Pearce (concept and project director) and Rose Rouhani (interaction design), graduate students from School of Interactive Art and Technology (SIAT), Simon Fraser University Surrey Campus.…
Reading Migration / Reading Diaspora Launch – October 30, 2022
Sunday, October 20, 202210am (Pacific Time) Vancouver Black Library (268 Keefer Street, Basement Floor) and on-line Light Factory Publications (LFP) is excited to partner with Vancouver Black Library (VBL) to launch “Reading Migration / Reading Diaspora” an interactive website promoting contemporary Ghanaian writing by Catherine Pearce and Rose Rouhani. Reading Migration / Reading Diaspora features…
Read More Reading Migration / Reading Diaspora Launch – October 30, 2022