Art/Life 'more than a magazine'

LACMA staffer Maggie Hanson blogs that one of the best things about her job as stacks manager of the museum's research library is getting to share rarities like the complete print run of Art/Life magazine, "conceived, compiled, and edited for twenty-five years by Joe Cardella."

Hanson writes that "Art/Life truly must be seen to be believed."

Art/Life is so much more than your typical art magazine. Envisioned by Cardella to be a sharing mechanism for artists, Art/Life is exactly that. Artists and poets wanting to participate in this cultural exchange created multiples of their contributions, signed and numbered them, and sent them out to sunny California to be ordered and assembled. Each of the 276 monthly volumes—published from 1981 to 2005—is a unique work of art: hand-made, hand-numbered, hand-bound. I didn’t believe it at first, but every single edition of every single volume is an original.

Here's an earlier post in praise of LACMA's Balch Research Library.