Public Collectors is founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible. Public Collectors asks individuals that have had the luxury to amass, organize, and inventory these materials to help reverse this lack by making their collections public. Public Collectors organizes exhibitions and events, participates in exhibitions organized by others, creates…
Not one, not two, but THREE records with slaughtered pigs on the cover that I passed up at a thrift store in Chicago today. Outside of the band Pig Destroyer, I had no idea this was a genre.
Chicago! Today is the last day to see my show in Bridgeport. My Public Collectors exhibit “Publication Survey / Life Savings” at Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), 1010 W 35th Street, Suite 697, continues today, Sun., Jan. 26, 2025 from 12-5 PM. Look for the CubeSmart sign on the side of the building and then ride the elevator on up. Thanks to those who came yesterday.…
PUBLIC COLLECTORS exhibition in Chicago! Two days only: January 25-26. 12-5 PM. On January 25-26, 2025, I will have a 2 day/10 hour Public Collectors exhibit at Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) , 1010 W 35th Street, Suite 697. For this show, titled Publication Survey / Life Savings , I will show most of the 90 Public Collectors publications I have made since 2007, and hundreds of…
Public Collectors Instant Library: 2024 Edition (good through 12/31/24) About once a year I pull together a selection of Public Collectors publications that I sell as a set for a nice discount. This year, you get these 12 publications plus some extra printed ephemera, including a few things not shown. You can see details of many of the publications here . Just $55.00 post paid in the US. I want to…
FOTOmercado this Saturday in Chicago, November 9, 2024, 11 AM to 6 pm at Chicago Art Department, 1926 S. Halsted. I am gearing up for the event FOTOmercado by going through my couple thousand press photos. I will be bringing about 50 of these to sell, including the ones shown here, in addition to Public Collectors publications that are photo-focused. Most of the photos are protest-related around a…
Yesterday was my 54th birthday. I had a lovely afternoon gathering with friends and family at house where I tasked everyone with participating in a Public Collectors project: 54 YEARS / 56 CENTS / LIFE SAVINGS. It was a total joy to work on together. Below are the instructions I wrote out. If you would like a postcard, message me your address. - Marc Fischer / Public Collectors November 2, 2024 54…
CB Radio Postcard People . New Public Collectors publication available here . $7.00 People that talked to each other over CB radio (a particularly popular form of communication in the 1970s) made printed calling cards that they exchanged with others. They are called QSL cards. In CB radio speak, “QSL” means “I confirm receipt of your transmission.” These postcard-size printed cards were traded…
Johnnie Anderson’s Botany & Zoology Drawings . New Public Collectors publication available here ($13). Johnnie Anderson was the father of a late relative of my spouse Jen Blair. I believe that he made these drawings as a student in 1931. He would have been 19 or 20 years old at the time, and was taking Botany and Zoology classes at University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. I uncovered these…
Happy Halloween from the latest addition to my collection of press photos of Protest Grim Reapers, or just death figures telling us what’s up. This photo of a protester at Exxon’s headquarters was taken by Michael Dinneen on July 26, 1989. If you still don’t have a copy of the Public Collectors book Protest Grim Reapers , you can pick one up here .
I continue to help my wife’s family with the storage units of her late aunt and uncle. Yesterday I dug through boxes of paperbacks and found a whole summer reading list of SHOCKING books about juvenile delinquency.
The front page of a June 5, 1987 newsletter from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago with information about a series of lectures and films on AIDS. For context in terms of the time line here, the group ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) formed on March 24, 1987.
A graphic from Mad magazine #182 from April 1976. The larger piece this comes from is “A Mad Portfolio of Some Idealists’ Dreams” by Arnoldo Franchioni. I have been starting to visit and revisit Mad following the discovery of a huge box of old issues in the storage unit of my wife’s late uncle. Some of this stuff has aged in rather interesting ways.
A 1979 brochure (reprinted in 1980) for a Song of Norway Festival event in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, held on the grounds of Cave of the Mounds.
A membership renewal letter from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, sent to my wife’s late uncle in 1991.
An ad for Foto Folks, from the back of a photo processing envelope from 1990. I’ve been helping my wife’s family deal with the estate of her late uncle, who saved a lot of paper. This is a good thing and a bad thing. I’ve been saving little bits of this and that, and hope to share more of them as we continue to excavate his condo and storage units.
[Apologies to On Kawara] Sometime yesterday, March 17, 2024, someone hacked my Facebook account, connected it to their Instagram account, and was promptly caught by Mark Zuckerberg himself probably (such a hero) and my account was disabled. Thus far I have not been able to re-able my account and it is locked. There is nothing to see here (there). Facebook’s instructions don’t work and they haven’t…
Horror Decor New Public Collectors publication! Available for $9.00 here . Public Collectors publication #82 is a photo booklet surveying five years of Halloween decoration documentation in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood area. From the back cover: Every year I watch as my neighbors in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood add gruesome details to their homes for Halloween. Some people are…
Today’s reward for helping my wife’s family with her late uncle’s estate: a solid chunk of the AC/DC discography - Columbia House cassette editions. There’s no way her uncle listened to AC/DC. Maybe her late aunt? Either way, these deserve a good home, and that home will be our home.
I donated some books to the Unique thrift in my neighborhood in Chicago recently and discovered that the record section was hosting Floating Heads Day. Whoever painted or otherwise crafted the appearance of the skin on that Horowitz record, truly understands what it takes to cause nightmares.
Wurstelprater in October New Public Collectors publication! Available for $9.00 here . Public Collectors publication #81 takes a trip to an amusement park in Vienna just days before many of the attractions closed for the season. From the back cover: When the Vienna Art Book Fair’s Director Marlene Obermayer invited the publishing imprint I co-run, Half Letter Press, to participate in the 2023…