Hot Iron Press Past Projects

The New Orleans Bookfair

An annual celebration of independent publishing and alternative media featuring small presses, self-publishers, zinesters, anarchists, and various other troublemakers selling and promoting their books, zines, comics, pamphlets, and similar independently produced projects. Started in 2001 by GK Darby from Garrett County Press, we took over organizing the bookfair in 2005, just before Katrina hit. We still managed to pull off an incredible and inspiring bookfair a mere 2 months after the storm, and continued organizing it for the following 2 years. Though we're no longer in charge, the bookfair is still going strong, thanks to the ever-capable hands of the amazing Robin from the zine The Nose Knows. For more info on the NOLA Bookfair click here.

The Annual Babylon Lexicon Book Arts Show

Occurring in conjunction with the New Orleans Bookfair, we organized the Babylon Lexicon book arts shows from 2005 - 2007. The shows featured work by local, national, and international artists who use the form of the book as a medium of visual expression. For pictures and more info click here.

The Rebuild Fund

After Katrina, we collected donations to help support and rebuild grassroots arts organizations in New Orleans in order to help our city continue to be a culturally and subculturally thriving bohemian mecca. With the support of the many wonderful people listed below we were able to donate money to The Iron Rail Book Collective, Nowe Miasto, The Spellcaster Lodge, The Neighborhood Story Project, Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments, Plan B Community Bike Project, Press Street Literary and Visual Art Collective, Ashe Cultural Arts Center, Constance, 3 Ring Circus Productions, The Big Top Gallery, and The Aboveground Zine Library. Many thanks to all the donors: Our families, Wendy and George Rodrigue, Booklyn, Claire Rau, Holy Molly, Jefferson Baptist Church, Willie and Natalia Jones, Rebekah Tolley, Lydia Moyer, Richmond ReCycles, Irregular Rhythm Asylum, Jonah Livingston at TDB Records, Martina Batan, Marcy Freedman, Nic and Anna Guest-Jelley, John at Shooting Star Press, Maria Albani, Jerstin Crosby, Pascal Fouche, Zack Soto, Chris Staros at Top Shelf Publishing, Felicia Rice at Moving Parts Press, Chris C. at Pin Monkey Press, Talice Lee, Kate Amdall, Randall W. Lester, Maurice and Steven Carmichael, Nicole Wolfersberger, Mike Houston at Cannonball Press, Wred Fright, Gary Kachadourian, Colby Sawyer College, Kylie Lewis, Delaine Derry Green, Lany Devening, Nicole J. Hill, John Dancy-Jones, Evelyn in New London, and of course everyone in Denton, TX who put up with us and supported us for 9 months: Don and Pam Schol, Millie Giles, Rob Erdle, Cindy Mohr and Patches, Andy Holtin, Jennifer Gooch, Catherine Chauvin and Bardo, Justin Quinn, George and Rhonda, Brian Spolans, Icy Iles, Laura Hanel, James Stidham, Myra Walker, Annette, Jill Vandercolk, June Impson, Michael Gibson, Victoria, Beau Coumeau, and probably many others.

For this project we put out a call for submissions for artists to send us proposals for postcards they would like to create. We picked 15 artists out of the multitude of entries we received. Each artist was responsible for creating an edition of 100 postcards. Their work ranged in media from letterpress to silkscreen to painting to photography and more. Once we received their postcards we letterpressed the backs, bound them all into book form, perforated the edges so the postcards could be torn from the book, and printed the covers (seen in the image above). Each participating artist received a copy of the finished book. The remaining books from the edition were sold through our catalog, and are now sold out. CLICK TO VIEW IMAGES OF POSTCARDS FROM HOT IRON EXPRESS

Organized in conjunction with Mitten Gallery, we put out a call for submissions for art videos and animations. We juried the entries and chose 20 videos from 18 different artists. We then arranged a screening of these videos at the Hanes Art Center in Chapel Hill, NC in the Spring of 2004. The purpose of this project was both to encourage the creation of DIY videos and animations, and also to create a venue for their display. We specifically chose videos which were raw, lo-fi, and decidely not overproduced. This screening in effect was a snubbing of the nose at the gargantuan Hollywood film industry in favor, instead, of the creativity and possibility to be found in the "regular guy's" films on small or nonexistant budgets.