Container

04/03/2024

It wouldn't hurt to look, would it?

https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

01/04/2024

Get a DEEPER LOOK at our LOOK BOOKS series, shipping March 2024 (JOSHUA ROTHES' reel ships as the fifth installment in November).

Writer, designer, and chef of Sublunary Editions Joshua Rothes' TOMB OF THE ECSTATIC POET lives "between feuilleton and footnote" in a series of compressed, abstracted histories.

Find out more and subscribe today at our site! Use code NEWLOOK at checkout to save 10% off a subscription during the month of January.

https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

01/03/2024

One more LOOK BOOK contributor to tell you about tomorrow.

IYKYK

You been following along? Catch up at:

language in novel forms

01/01/2024

Get a DEEPER LOOK at our LOOK BOOKS series, shipping March 2024 (RÉMI FORTE's reel ships as the fourth installment in September).

Typographer, designer, and poet Rémi Forte presents patterns typeset from emotive content that readers discover by looking beyond the visual forms that first present themselves.

Find out more and subscribe today at our site! Use code NEWLOOK at checkout to save 10% off a subscription during the month of January.

https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

12/29/2023

New year, new look.

Subscribe today with code NEWLOOK to get 10% off the price of a subscription.

The discount is only good until the end of January 2024!

https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

12/28/2023

Get a DEEPER LOOK at our LOOK BOOKS series, shipping March 2024 (GEOF HUTH's reel ships as the third installation in July).

Visual poet GEOF HUTH's "Illuminated Words" introduces the story of "a knight who has killed his own king and, haunted by his life, traverses the Earth while trying and failing to forgive himself."

These works, coming from the union of the asemic and illuminated manuscript traditions explores narrative at a slant through glyphs, color, and space.

Find out more and subscribe today at our site:

https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

12/23/2023

Get a DEEPER LOOK at our LOOK BOOKS series, shipping March 2024 (Njaimeh Njie's reel ships as the second installation in May).

Pittsburgh artist Njaimeh Njie's collage work engages with Black lives, narratives, and landscapes. In A SERIES OF NOTES TO SELF (AM TO PM), Njie creates a sequence that reflects on community, time, and the forces that shape daily experience through empowerment, embodiment, and perspective.

Find out more and subscribe today at our site:

https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

12/14/2023

Get a DEEPER LOOK at our LOOK BOOKS series, shipping March 2024.

In this edition, we look at Eric Pankey's OCCULT NOIR, a work that he writes,

"riffs upon, and ... troubles various film noir conventions."

This work -- a double reel -- is composed of movies, television, public service films, film strips, and print advertising in a collage format giving us a narrative that demonstrates that there's certainly something troubling beneath the surface of the story we're presented.

Find out more and order today at our site:

https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

12/13/2023

We're excited to be at Mission Creek Festival's book fair this year! Come chat with us in Iowa City in April!

Mission Creek Bucketlist: Come get to know your local Lit community! (We ARE the City of Literature for a reason… Duh 👀)

12/03/2023

Posting about our upcoming and newer projects has been great! But. we don't want to forget where we came from; TEM and SAW PALMETTOS are some of our first objects, and we only have ONE OF EACH LEFT!

Check out some of our more "deep cut" photos from the various shoots we've done.

Could you provide the final home for these projects? For more about these objects and everything else we're up to head to our site: https://acontainer.co

11/27/2023

The LOOK BOOK is back in a new edition with new friends we'll tell you more about over the coming weeks.

■ Njaimeh Njie
■ Rémi Forte
■ Geof Huth
■ Eric Pankey
■ Joshua Rothes

Subscribe from now until February 2024 to receive a new reel every two months starting in March 2024.

Prices are inclusive of shipping and, if you have a compatible ViewMaster device or one of our previous viewers, we're including the Reels Only subscription!

Learn more, have a look at some previews, and subscribe: https://acontainer.co/projects/look-book-2024/

11/24/2023

"At home I searched for jobs, and then I returned to the library to answer everyone’s questions. The crush of requests delivered me from myself, but also became a deep realization of how much need is public."

Colette LaBouff's HOLDINGS: a 7-foot, case-bound double-sided accordion book about personal and public need situated in the context of the library is back on sale. We have only 9 copies of the closed run left!

Find out more at: https://acontainer.co/projects/holdings/

11/22/2023

How are we implicated in one another? What do we do about it?

Charles Theonia's 2018 work Saw Palmettos explores hormones, community, and the brain-time continuum in the form of a tincture bottle display, each containing obscured messages.

In the lead up to new projects, we're listing the final copies of some of our book works to home them in collections. Is this your opportunity to own this Container object?

Find out more about the project here: https://acontainer.co/projects/saw-palmettos/

11/20/2023

tem: to finish, to complete. A story part history, part make-believe published as a gem collection tray featuring the text and 21 papercraft gems with plaster containers.

The book that we started with back in the fall of 2017 is back on sale in the form of its last available copy at the original price.

Leading up to announcing our newest work, we're going back to the archive and posting some final copies of work to get them in the hands of collections and collectors. Here's your chance to own the project that started it all.

Read more: https://acontainer.co/projects/tem/

09/10/2023

Announcing Catherine Chen's OTHER MONSTERS OF LOVE, a textile engagement in the form of a 包袱 (baofu), investigating the materiality of diaspora and grief.

Publishing December 2023.

09/10/2023

Second and final day of the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair at the Carnegie Museum of Art; can you spot the different friend that we brought along for today?

Yesterday, we chatted with someone who owned a copy of Saw Palmettos and it made our day! We love chatting with people who have engaged with the works.

Drop by and spend some time with the books if you're in town!

09/09/2023

We've been sharing this with our new friends at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair today, and wouldn't want all of you to miss out on the news:

Look Book Series 3 rolls out March 2024.

Follow us or subscribe to our mailing list for updates on preorder:

http://eepurl.com/izecnU

09/09/2023

We're about an hour away from opening at the Carnegie Museum of Art for the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair. Come see some familiar friends and make new ones!

10-5 today and tomorrow in the Hall of Sculpture.

09/07/2023

In only a few days (9-10 September) come find us at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair (https://pabf.cargo.site) with our remaining copies of Terri Witek's cross-stitch kit: in the crossed world of animals!

09/02/2023

Next weekend (Sept. 9 -10) at Pittsburgh Art Book Fair come see Colette LaBouff's Holdings, a book about relationships, needs, desires, and (of course) the library.

Learn more at:

https://acontainer.co/projects/holdings/

08/11/2023

Container returns to the fold September 9-10, 2023 at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair.

More details to follow; we'll see you in Pittsburgh!

https://pabf.cargo.site/

02/15/2023

Of Sawako Nakayasu’s many literary endeavors—poetry, translation, performance art—it is hard to know where one begins and another ends. They each seem to not only be talking to each other but Sawako’s work also blurs the boundaries between them, nesting each within the next in a way that ill...

04/22/2021

An opportunity to revisit our first editioned artist book, Tem! We were beside ourselves when the UA Poetry Center reached out to us to purchase it. These kinds of moments are the unexpected joy of watching work live out in the world.

https://arizonaalumni.com/article/rare-gems-poetry-center

11/06/2020

Dear Container family,

(This message is written by Doug, one of the two co-founders of Container.)

(Please visit the memorial listing here for more regarding memorial donations: https://www.dalessandroltd.com/obituaries/Jenni-Baker/)

I write to you tonight to share the sad news of my partner and press co-founder Jenni B. Baker’s passing on Wednesday night (4 November). She was surrounded by her family at our home in Pittsburgh, PA.

For the last 19 months, Jenni journeyed through the diagnosis of Glioblastoma, a rare, untreatable brain cancer. Many of you who have followed our work will recall Jenni’s bold decision to share this news with you in February 2019.

Following this diagnosis, Jenni and I powered through finishing our last outstanding projects, ultimately deciding that we needed to put Container on hold. Sustaining the energy of fully realizing one of our projects under normal circumstances required a lot of effort and under these new conditions, we realized that we needed to rest for a while. We appreciate everyone who has followed or joined us through our silence.

During our tenure as an active press, we met so many of you whose work we admired; we created projects that tested and grew our abilities as artists; we made many new friends through invitations to collaborate. Jenni’s fearless energy always asked “why not?” rather than waiting for artistic permission. Our projects showed that fierce commitment and you -- the community -- responded to us with unbelievable trust and support.

Jenni’s artistic practice was always one of community-building. To watch her personal work flourish while we grew the Container project remains one of the highest joys of my life. Jenni is responsible for the amazing list of artists who worked with us to produce book objects or the multi-artist Look Book series. She had amazing ability to gather people to work toward a common goal, especially when that goal was so forward-looking that the end was just out of sight.

This press strengthened our relationship as we argued over the correct kinds of glue to use or how to fold thousands of small paper objects. This was the work that Jenni always wanted to do, and I take joy from the fact that we found it together. We thank you for being a part of it and watching us grow in all of the ways we have.

Jenni requested a small, family-only viewing, but asked that folks send memorial donations to a couple of places located at the end of the obituary included at the included link.

For now, Container goes back to sleep, perhaps to re-emerge again some time in the future in some alternate form. In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and each other.

Doug Luman
Production Director, Co-founder
Container
https://www.dalessandroltd.com/obituaries/Jenni-Baker/

09/02/2019

Time is winding down to take advantage of our $15 discount off of poet Terri Witek's cross-stitch series. Here's our remaining inventory:

#1: & & & & (remaining: 1)
#2: anchor the animal (remaining: 3)
#3: missing: flowers in a gold vase (remaining: 1)
#4: missing: lamp in the shape of a crocodile (remaining: 2)
#5: siege then sing (remaining: 5)
#6: this is a hunting scene (remaining: 4)

See one you've had your eye on? Secure your copy before someone does first!

http://shop.acontainer.co/category/in-the-crossed-world-of-animals-terri-witek

09/02/2019

It's the final day to secure one of Terri Witek's cross-stitch kits from "in the crossed world of animals" for a discount of $30. Learn more about Witek's work below, and get your copy (of which a few designs are down to two copies remaining) and http://shop.acontainer.co/category/in-the-crossed-world-of-animals-terri-witek

From Artist and Poet Terri Witek:

"For the past several years I have been collecting / mistranslating signage from antiquities museums then reinstalling it elsewhere. These phrases, translated through Container’s signature style into cross-stitched pillow kits, now read suggestively in our domestic scenes, I think. To pair fragments displaced from mysterious thousands-years-old objects onto the everyday textiles we lay our heads on implies we gather centuries of broken, forgetful thought in our rooms. And that we can still name/misname our dreams as arriving from an ancient, unknown world to both comfort and disturb our bodies.

Cross-stitch kits were the inexpensive gifts / time-users grandmothers once thrust into children’s hands as a way to keep them still. The act of cross-stitching is easy, then, but also profound–x marks each spot. I like to picture the phrases randomly and multiply thrown onto furniture and beds. To me they combine Container’s signature witty elegance with the tug of something dream/dark."

More: http://shop.acontainer.co/category/in-the-crossed-world-of-animals-terri-witek

09/01/2019

Our Container pop-up sale continues through Labor Day with Terri Witek's cross-stitch collection, "in the crossed world of animals."

Just two copies remain in limited edition patter #4, "missing: lamp in the shape of a crocodile," featuring a vibrant green pillow. More at http://shop.acontainer.co/product/in-the-crossed-world-of-animals-4

09/01/2019

This extended weekend only: get Terri Witex's "anchor the animal" – and five other phrases – for just $30.

The kits provide the materials to cross-stitch your own 16"x10" pillow, and created as a personal project or purchased as a gift. More at http://shop.acontainer.co/category/in-the-crossed-world-of-animals-terri-witek

08/31/2019

Just two copies remain from "missing: flowers in a gold vase" from poet Terri Witek's limited "in the crossed world of animals" cross-stitch kit. Get your kit for just $30 + shipping: http://shop.acontainer.co/product/in-the-crossed-world-of-animals-3