In September 2005 my wife left me in a hurricane of deceit and after having been reduced to little more than a single raw emotional nerve I made a 100+ page book about it. I released it on my birthday in March of 2006, a few days before I left the pacific north-west for New York. I was trying to test the theory of time and geography healing all wounds, so I ran as far as I was able. Falling in love again helped to pull that matrimonious knife from my back, but at the time all I knew was I was in a place where I knew practically no one and all I had to show of my art was a pretty depressing little book. It wasn’t exactly the book you would want to show someone you just met when she asks to see an example of your artwork. But I met a woman that didn’t care. She saw my recovery as a strength and not as the weakness of being forgotten and left behind that I was sure everyone thought when they saw me. I think I view this book now in the same way, it’s funnier than I remembered when I made it and I’m surprised how many pieces have nothing at all to do with my failed marriage. It was my least favorite of the last few issues because it had no bells and whistles… none of the additional design goodies I had been adding to my books… but now I think it might just be my favorite. I have a handful of them still available, originally sold for $13.00, I figure I’m probably close to having made my costs back, so I’ll sell these for $10.00 while supplies last.

Order this for $10.00 ($3.00 off cover price) by going to the ordering page or sending cash to:
marc calvary 41-23 53rd ave. #1R woodside, ny 11377

I know I shouldn’t feel good about other people having misfortune, but I just can’t help it in this instance. Many years ago I received an awful review of my work, it was centered less around the content and more of a personal attack and a questioning of my artistic merit and reasoning behind why I create. I admit it affected me more than it should have. I know I need to have thicker skin, but to this day I still feel upset whenever I remember it. It made me so mad I even put the review on the back of issue 10 of the carbon based mistake, because in the past if I’ve gotten negative feedback I found it made me feel better to announce it to the world. It was very therapeutic. But this time it didn’t help very much. Especially because whenever I brought up the reviewer’s name in zine circles everyone told me what a great guy he was because he rides bikes and found a way to live on $2000 a year or some such nonsense, like that was an example of someone’s integrity. I know people with money who are kind and caring and genuinely good people. Being poor by choice isn’t a badge of anarchy/peace in and of itself.

Then the other day I’m surfing around the internet and I see a news item that was a few years old about this same guy and the words “ABUSE” and “SHITTY DUDE” and I find out that a lot of his friends kicked him out of his little cool kids club for being a dick. At first I hadn’t heard the whole story, so I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt even though I don’t like him, because really the ONLY reason I don’t like him is because he doesn’t like me… and that’s more petty than I want to be, even though I wanted to be a little bit petty. I’ve read more about him and the abuse since then and although I do not claim to have never “done a woman wrong” or of ever being a royal jackass in the past, I’m glad I do not fall into his category. But I have to admit, even though you never know what happens in a relationship unless you are in that relationship, I realize that if I didn’t research the story any further than just seeing his name and the word abuse in the same sentence I still would have been happy that someone beside myself thinks this guy is a jerk.

Go ahead and give me a bad review if you don’t like my stuff, but don’t assume you know what I’m thinking when I make it. I’m just trying to make something I haven’t seen before… for myself. My zines have been a little expensive in the past, but they cost a shit load to make even after the skimming off the top at Kinko’s. If I added a CD or a screw to my zine, I didn’t factor the cost in. I have lost money on everything I have ever done in the long run and I have given away more than I have ever sold. So being accused between the lines of overcharging made me sick. But worse was being accused of thinking I was clever. I’m not trying to be clever… I’m trying to have fun and try something new. It seems that if you try to do something new there’s always some idiot somewhere ready to call you a sell-out. To actually be a sell-out you really need to sell something. No one is buying what I’m selling, which isn’t to say they shouldn’t… hell, I think I make some cool shit. But if someday someone actually starts buying my stuff I’ll just use the money to make more stuff. I have a day job for a reason: so I can afford to do this. I have never been accepted by many people, I can count my friends on my hands and ignore the thumbs. But I have always been the type of person that cared more about doing something I enjoy than being popular. This guy might be popular (or used to be) but he seems to be morally bankrupt. I like it on my side of the fence better.

Years ago I actually stopped saying I made zines and started to say I made books because this guy soured my opinion of the zine culture so much. No one asshole should wield so much power, but I’m a fragile guy. I try so hard that when I realize that people still don’t get what I’m doing I get frustrated. But now I’ve grown up enough to not really give a shit about fitting into any “scene”, I make zines because I love them and I accept I will most likely never be accepted by my peers. I like clean design and I make zines like someone with OCD. Sometimes I’ll use a barcode for fun and I like getting into the library of congress and submitting to design competitions. I read physical books as well as digital books, because I love reading so much I want it all! I love animals but I also eat meat. I do not fit into any of your clubs or categories, I am an island.

I always thought the bad review said more about the reviewer than it did me. I hope that people continue to associate this guy with an anagram of his name that means a “bitter-tasting, dark green to yellowish brown fluid, produced by the liver of most vertebrates, that aids the process of digestion of lipids in the small intestine”.

In 2001 I made these little prayer cards. I had a friends mother who spoke spanish translate them for me, so there is both an english and spanish translation on the back of each. It’s not something I’ll ever reprint, but I found a few hiding away and so I’m making them available here until they are gone. Included in little zip locked baggy contains 1 of each of the 5 cards: the prayer for suicidal chain smokers, the prayer for forgotten dreams, the prayer for unaccomplished goals, the prayer for thieves and liars, and the prayer for mistakes. Black and white on colored card stock it’s perfect for absolutely nothing besides being blashpamous and adding to your collection of odd collectables.

order this for $3.00 by going to the ordering page or send cash to:
marc calvary 41-23 53rd ave. #1R woodside, ny 11377

Its been several years since I’ve submitted anything to Print Magazine’s Regional Design Annual. Starting in 2003 I submited 4 years in a row and was among the chosen artists each time. It was a big deal to me. It’s always been my favorite design magazine and just to be within its pages was exciting. It never got me any work, but I rarely do outside work anyways. To be honest I really don’t even like doing outside work very much. If it was something that excited me? Hell yes! But just as a hired designer? A monkey with a computer? No thanks, I’d rather make another zine. So Print Magazine hasn’t seen me in a long time, then 2011 came around and I got back to work. Since October I’ve done 6 new zines that I’m very proud of and that almost no one has even read. Good thing art is it’s own reward, if I did this for praise I’d be depressed. But goddamn it, I put a lot of work into this, shouldn’t I get a little outside praise once in awhile? So I submitted to this years contest to see if I could get a little recognition, even thought it’s much harder to get selected in the New York catagory than it is when submitting from Eugene, Oregon. If I keep yelling out a window from my bubble as a form of self promotion the only ones who will ever hear me are the bums and alley cats. I submitted the last 6 zines as my campaign entry, titled “the carbon based mistake (5×5′s / 1-6)”. I won’t know if I was selected until late this year and the issue won’t hit the stands until December, but the Fed-Ex package left NYC today and I’ll just have to forget about it until I hear back from them. Hopefully someone will give me a little pat on the back so I can get back to being cool and not caring.

Ok, so this zine is a little silly and not usually the type of thing I make, but it was fun and hopefully someone besides me will like it. What happened was this: For the last five years that I’ve been at my current job I’ve overheard a co-worker Paul constantly annoy another co-worker John with crazy statements (usually involving food) all starting with Hey, John Boy! It’s constant. Hey, John Boy! Hey, John Boy! Hey, John Boy! Hey, John Boy! Hey, John Boy! John gets annoyed, but really doesn’t do anything. He usually laughs, but it’s clear some days he’s just not in the mood, and Paul doesn’t seem to ever really care. He just keeps it going. So over the course of about a year I started to write them down and post them to a twitter account I made just for these utterances, @HeyHeyJohnBoy (HeyJohnBoy with one “Hey” was already taken…), however just as I started to collect the sayings, Paul and John moved to a different side of the department and I rarely heard any Hey, John Boys! I still tweeted them whenever I heard them, and I wanted to enlist the help of someone on that side of the department, but I really wanted it to be a secret until I had a bunch of tweets and then I’d announce it to the whole department… So this holiday season I decided to make the tweets into a zine as a office x-mas gift, and since I liked making it so much thought it would be fun to make it available here as well.

[samples can be viewed here]

It’s (as always) sized 5″ H X 5″W and includes:
20 black and white pages with color covers

order this for $1.00 by going to the ordering page or send cash to:
marc calvary 41-23 53rd ave. #1R woodside, ny

The first was offered last week, it’s the Heaven Smells sticker which I used to photocopy and put in public restrooms all over town about 10 years ago. It has been gathering dust in a box since then, some may say it was better to leave it in that box but when I came across it I knew I had to make it into a vinyl sticker. The art is taken out of context from an old Dennis the Menace strip by Henry King “Hank” Ketcham (March 14, 1920 – June 1, 2001) and although I have repurposed it and altered the artwork… I decided I didn’t feel right making a profit off ol’ Hank. So this one I sell at cost, or give away free. Get 5 for a dollar on the ordering page. [samples can be viewed here]

The second sticker was strangely enough, another bathroom sticker… I’m not even a fan of scat humor. But this was another sticker I used to photocopy and place in bathrooms years ago, the original was more to the point, it didn’t have the lengthy text, but I thought it would be fun to do this version. The Attention Ass Wipe stickers are supposed to be used to shame people into washing their hands, but it probably won’t work. Get 2 for a dollar on the ordering page. [samples can be viewed here]

The third is my favorite, once again another sticker I made that I used to plaster the town with way back in the days. I used to call it the Lies Fish, but the more accurate name would be ichthys, greek for fish (ΙΧΘΥΣ) and also the acronym for “Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ”, (Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr), which translates into English as “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”. I’ve been putting these in the bibles I find in hotel rooms. Get 2 for a dollar and go to hell on the ordering page. [samples can be viewed here]

Enjoy!

[samples can be viewed here]

It’s sized 5″ H X 5″W and includes:
32 full color pages

order this for $1.00 by going to the ordering page or send cash to:
marc calvary 41-23 53rd ave. #1R woodside, ny

[samples can be viewed here]

5″ H X 5″W
28 full color pages

order this for $1.00 by going to the ordering page or send cash to:
marc calvary 41-23 53rd ave. #1R woodside, ny

“… if you really want to devote yourself to [enter artistic endeavor here], or at least to [making] something others will read, you’re going to have to get used to sometimes being ignored, insulted, and despised and to almost always being considered with indifference. It’s an occupational hazard.”

Earlier this year I made a fake MTA subway sign for a project hosted by my friend David Brandt, called the gift basket art project. I liked it but never offered it on this site. I wanted to package them the right way and have at least 4 more before I did anything with them, until now I hadn’t been sure how to. The set includes 5 different handouts with loose themes like: Don’t Be An Asshole When Using This Map, Twice The Price For Half The Service, No I Do Not Want To Buy Candy From You, Take A Shower Before You Ride, and Close Your Legs So I Can Sit Down. The titles have almost nothing to do with the contents, but all of them are rants against the MTA and rude subway riders in general. They are a small part of a larger project to be released soon, in zine form, called The Straphanger’s Noose. It will incorporate these handouts with photographs I took of people on the subway. These handouts are however intended to be passed out in subways, hopefully bringing a smile to a frustrated traveler, but more hopefully shaming someone into not being a fucking asshole.

You can get set of 3 of each of the 5 double sided color handouts (15 total) for $1.00
by going to the ordering page or sending cash to:
marc calvary 41-23 53rd ave. #1R woodside, ny 11377