We’re Art Now
Greetings after a long hiatus, Four Hundos. Your editor has been busy busy on personal stuff, working an internship and looking for a real job to follow it up with, moving, schlepping back and forth on beneath the San Francisco Bay on transit.
Which is not to say that 400 Words has been dormant. We’re just over the 100 mark on submissions for the Compulsions issue. There will be a call for submissions appearing in print in Poets & Writers Magazine this winter. As of now, we’re accepting submissions through the end of January. The Compulsions issue will come out in the spring.
400 Words is available, most recently, at Rare Device, a new store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Rare Device stocks printed matter, gift and stationery items—a great collection overseen by its dynamic owner, Rena Tom. Well worth a visit, especially now that it’s gifting season.
But the biggest news of all is that just days ago, 400 Words made its debut as fine art. That’s right—we’re appearing in a real, live gallery show in Philadelphia, at NEXUS: Foundation for Today’s Art. The show, entitled “Benjamin Franklin: An American Idol,” runs from December 2 to January 22. What, you may ask, does Four Hundred Words have to do with Benjamin Franklin? Plenty. The curators at NEXUS intend the show to celebrate Franklin’s 300th anniversary by exploring “three interrelated areas of [Franklin’s] wide-ranging interests: technology, mass communication and civic engagement.” And what is Four Hundred Words, if not a use of technology to leverage mass communication and, in so doing, generate civic involvement? Exactly.
The magazine will be displayed as an interactive installation; participants can browse Issue One, then have a seat at a desk and use paper, pens, markers, and pre-addressed stamped envelopes provided to compose their own 400-word missive/submission, and send it off to perpetuate the project.
Benjamin Franklin: An American Idol includes works by over a dozen artists, and rumor has it there will be a functioning letterpress on hand as well. If you’re in the Philly area, do check it out: NEXUS, 137 North Second Street; (215) 629-1103.
I’m out for now. Keep the compulsions rollin’, and don’t forget that copies of 400 Words make a perfect stocking stuffer for readers!
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