September 30, 2004

{ The Drama - Issue Three }

It's all about the love, or in the case of The Drama's Issue Three, it's all about the True Love. That vaunted concept, oft discussed and rarely discovered, finds form here in the collaborative interviews and artwork of ten artist/designer "couples". The print-equivalent of your favorite make-out mix-tape, Issue Three delivers the goods in a slick perfect-bound format with a wraparound cover by Salt Tooth Press. The toile-esque French Provincial-style cover design is reason enough to pick this up, but it's the content that keeps you reading, staring, gawking and gaping. The Drama has distinguished itself from the rest of the supreme-zine crop by offering a nearly unapproachable level of quality, a clean and minimal layout, and none of the pretention that is usually associated with the art-magazine medium. It retains a hand-crafted feel, and a very organic personality. This is no slap-dash mish-mash of Today's Hottest Emerging Artists, but rather a very thoughtful and considerate presentation of images, words and styles meant to compliment one another and gel into something a bit more profound. Issue Three improves upon the nearly flawless design of Issue Two, and if the exponential increase in quality witnessed here is any indication of what will happen with subsequent issues, The Drama will soon reach a kind of critical-mass of cool- resulting in a gravitational worm-hole that will swallow all art-mags of lesser-quality and vomit them out into an irrelevant and redundant pocket universe. One look at the roster of assembled artists/couples had me drooling. Another look at the actual collaborative fruit of their labors had me gushing and blushing. When collaboration doesn't work it can feel awkward and disjointed- a Frankensteinian mess that refuses to come alive. When collaboration goes well, as it does here in Issue Three, you get something that's equal parts of the contributors, but also something new entirely. Here's a list of folks involved- Ben & Renee Loiz (Typevsm), Brian Roettinger & Anna Simonse (Handheldheart), Andy Mueller & Jennifer Pitt (The Quiet Life), Dustin Amery Hostetler & Jemma Gura (Purpastoe), John Orth & Alan Calpe, Stephanie Hutin & Florencio Zavala (Big Skills), Jim Houser & Rebecca Westcott, Michael & Laura Leon (Commonwealth Stacks), Jeremy Taylor & Allyson Mellberg, and Scott Herskovitz & Grace Hsiu (First-Grade). $7 never spent so well. While you're picking up Issue Three from The Drama Online Store, I must insist that you take a moment to peruse a few other items. As Crown Dozen has recently been dubbed The Drama's "favorite materialists", I offer these favored material items for consideration- Lemme See Your Check Stub - A 'zine fronted by Stephanie Hutin of Big Skills, offering careful instruction and detailed diagramming of Miami-style booty-shaking, along with a 74 min soundtrack. Hand Drawn Stickers by Jeremy - Jeremy Taylor offers a variety of acheingly beautiful stickers, priced to move. D4D Postcard Set - The Downtown for Democracy committee presents a series of politically charged postcards that could not be any more relevant than they are right now. You also owe it to yourself to browse the art and poster series offered by The Drama Online Store- incredible prints and posters selling for ridiculously small sums. Fine art, fine prices. Get some before it's all gone.

» Issue Three of The Drama
» The Drama Online Store

By Adam in Reading