Turning the page with ESOPUS
We are huge fans of the inventive, intelligent, awe inspiring magazine that is ESOPUS. The brainchild of delightful human Tod Lippy who single handedly, sourced, created and nurtured this magazine for fifteen years. This is the magazine that fuels us! ESOPUS has inspired the makers of THE LAB MAG to reach higher, to take more risks, and most importantly, to never give up and never sell out.
Image: “Mark Hogancamp: Women of Marwencol” limited-edition artwork for Premium subscribers (Fall 2014)
We have a deep admiration for the inventiveness and uncompromising nature of this rare publication. Sadly for us, the last issue published in 2018.
Image: Spread from Chuck Kelton’s artist’s project “Views, Not from a Window” in Esopus 23 (2016)
Lippy created an insert for the Lab Mag’s FUTURO edition that represents some of his favourite spreads and in a meta moment, he published images of all the Esopus inserts in an insert!
The Lab Mag, FUTURO Vol 1 issue and insert featuring all the ESOPUS inserts
Here’s a snippet of what Lippy had to say about publishing.
LAB What do you think is the future for printed publications?
TL There will always be a future for print, as there will always be a future for painting, or sculpture, or anything else in the analogue realm. When I first decided to do Esopus in 2003, a fair number of colleagues looked at me like I was crazy: “Why would you do something in print now? Everybody’s going digital!” And funnily enough, about five years into our run, small-press magazines were suddenly all the rage, and people started congratulating me on my great foresight to have started something in print. I think it’s fair to say that more recently, some of that enthusiasm about printed periodicals has waned a bit again, but these things are all cyclical. And younger generations who have grown up with iPhones all seem to crave the tactility and materiality that print provides.
LAB Why is print important?
TL Printed publications provide a tactile, material presence. Weight. They are objects that are fixed
in time. You can’t update the information contained in them, or fix typos,
or delete them if they end up displeasing someone, even if that someone is yourself. I cherish that sense of permanence, and I feel it makes the people responsible for creating these objects more careful and conscientious when it comes to creating content.
LAB How do you feel about the digital and the analogue worlds?
TL The digital world has revolutionised how we access and absorb content, for better and worse. A great example of the better: despite the fact that I bought physical copies of every one of those Knausgård novels, I read all six on my iPhone, mostly while commuting on the subway between Brooklyn and Manhattan. And for the worse: social media.
For all those of you who would like to get your hands on these highly collectable magazines, we recommend the library:
OR PREORDER
A LOT MORE INSIDE: ESOPUS MAGAZINE
SHIPS IN FEBRUARY
The 150-page volume, which serves as the catalog for "A Lot More Inside: Esopus Magazine," the Colby College Museum of Art exhibition devoted to the Esopus archive opening on February 15, 2024, consists of four separate books along with removable inserts and other components collected into a custom slipcase.
But hey, don’t take our word for it. This is what artist Kerry James Marshall had to say about ESOPUS on the Colby Art Museum website:
The celebrated alternative arts magazine Esopus remains “a thing of lavish, eccentric beauty.” Artist and Esopus contributor Kerry James Marshall heralded the periodical as “the best and most extravagant platform for artists’ projects that I knew of. There seemed to be no restrictions on what it was willing to do, and the results were of the highest quality.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Thank you Tod and all the artists who believed in this madcap printed adventure!
February 15–May 12, 2024
very laboratory