Reads

Consider Cannabis for All, Y'all: A Guide for the Prohibition South a handbook for building an equitable cannabis future in the South. Brought to you by the Asheville, NC based non-profit Legalize Appalachia, the pages of this zine are filled with information and resources to bring awareness and advocacy to an overlooked region of our country that continues to be impacted by the harms of prohibition. 

Highlights of the zine include:

• 12-page zine and pull-out poster with illustrations by Julianna Chioma of Frooting Body Studio. Designed and written by Legalize Appalachia. Limited release risograph printing by Woolly Press on recycled pulp fiber paper blended with hemp.
• Informative, inspiring, and educational tool for advocating on behalf of the prohibition South and supporting your mental health and well-being while fighting cannabis criminalization. 
• Includes key research, Appalachian cannabis stories, equitable legalization demands, advocacy tools, a special section on Community Care by Charlene Izere of Wellness Delivered and more. 
• Free downloadable version of the zine.

100% of the proceeds of this zine will be donated to Legalize Appalachia to help fund the Prohibition Hurts Cash Aid and Free Therapy pilot programs.

In Broccoli Issue 14, a Zapotec community in Mexico fights for the right to grow, we remember unsung grunge pioneer Tina Bell, Crystal Quartez listens to the flowers, and stoners from Uruguay to Turkey to Switzerland tell us where they get their weed. Plus: the turn of the kaleidoscope, a few laughs with 70s weed cookbook author Evelyn Schmevelyn, answers to the question "WTF is Delta-8?", quasars as a model for living, vintage smoking essentials, and a mossy wonderland.

88 pages, perfect bound, printed on premium art paper.

From the most avant-garde jazz musicians, visual artists and poets to architects, philosophers and writers, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite and made it their own. It shows how a generation of men took the classic Ivy Look and made it cool, edgy and unpredictable in ways that continue to influence today's modern menswear.

Here you will see some famous, infamous and not so famous figures in Black culture such as Amiri Baraka, Charles White, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sidney Poitier, and how they reinvented Ivy and Prep fashion—the dominant looks of the time. The real stars of the book—the Oxford cloth button-down shirt, the hand-stitched loafer, the soft shoulder three-button jacket and the perennial repp tie—are all here. What Black Ivy explores is how these clothes are reframed and redefined by a stylish group of men from outside the mainstream, challenging the status quo, struggling for racial equality and civil rights.
Boasting the work of some of America's finest photographers and image-makers, this must-have tome is a celebration of how, regardless of the odds, great style always wins.

In 1979, JEB (Joan E. Biren) self-published her first book, Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians. In a work that was revolutionary for its era, JEB made photographs of lesbians from different ages and backgrounds in their everyday lives—working, playing, raising families, and striving to remake their worlds. The photographs were accompanied by writings from acclaimed authors including Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Joan Nestle, and others. Various women pictured in the book also shared their personal stories. Eye to Eye signaled a radical new way of seeing—moving lesbian lives from the margins to the center, and reversing a history of invisibility. More than just a book, it was an affirmation of the existence of lesbians that helped to propel a political movement. Reprinted for the first time in forty years, Eye to Eye is a faithful reproduction of a work that still resonates today. This edition features additional essays from artist and writer Tee Corinne, former World Cup soccer player Lori Lindsey, and photographer Lola Flash.

JEB (Joan E. Biren) is an internationally recognized documentary artist and activist. She began to chronicle the lives of LGBTQ+ people in 1971, publishing groundbreaking books and making award-winning films. JEB, now in her 70s, lives surrounded by chosen family and frequently tries to retire from photography and filmmaking. Her plan is never to retire from social justice activism.

In Broccoli Issue 13, Lido Pimienta sings for the angels, a rock collector holds infinity, Indigenous growers in Colombia fight the capitalist green rush, and we stroll through the extraordinary botanical garden, Lotusland. Plus: Nadine Smith on gateways, altered states, and homecomings, four artists render the zodiac in blacklight posters, Qiu Jin’s radical Chinese poetry, we get to the bottom of what “psychoactive” really means, and a mushroom shopping list (just for fungi).

88 pages, perfect bound, printed on premium coated paper. Free shipping to any location in the world.

Brian Blomerth first fused his singularly irreverent underground comix style with heavily-researched history in 2019’s Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day, a Technicolor retelling of the discovery of LSD. Now, the illustrator and graphic novelist continues his wild and woolly excursions into the history of mind expansion with Mycelium Wassonii, an account of the lives and trips of R. Gordon and Valentina Wasson, the pioneering scientist couple responsible for popularizing the use of psychedelic mushrooms in the United States. The Wassons’ journeys took them from Russian folk wisdom to midcentury Manhattan, from the indigenous traditions of the Mazatec people of Mexico to the mysteries of ancient Rome. A globetrotting vision of science and mysticism with appearances by J.P. Morgan, Robert Graves, Life Magazine, and the CIA, Mycelium Wassonii is a visual biography and a tragic love story as only Blomerth’s Isograph pen can render it.

Brian Blomerth is an illustrator, cartoonist and musician based in Brooklyn. His previous publications—released via Anthology Editions, Tan & Loose, and through his own Pupsintrouble Press—include the zines Xak’s Wax, iPhone 64: A User’s Guide, and Hypermaze. A veteran of the underground music and arts scene whose work has graced numerous album covers, Blomerth released his first full-length book, the acclaimed visual history Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day, in 2019.

Paul Stamets is a mycologist, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and leading voice in mushroom advocacy. His lectures and presentations have helped deepen the worldwide conversation around medicinal fungi, and his original research has led to discoveries in sustainability and immune enhancement. The author of six books (most recently Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness & Save the Planet), Stamets has discovered and named numerous new species of psilocybin mushrooms and is the founder and owner of Fungi Perfecti, LLC.

Artist Joe Roberts has spent more than a decade honing a deeply unique and unapologetically hallucinogenic style of art. Through paintings, drawings and mixed-media works, Roberts navigates a world of cosmic imagery, pop cultural detritus, and shifting geometric forms, bringing to life both the creeping unease and the uncanny humor of the psychedelic experience. Collecting over 100 new and recent works along with an introduction by Hamilton Morris (Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia), We Ate the Acid is the latest product of Roberts’ visionary journeys and a testament to his expansive, singular imagination.

Joe Roberts is an artist and illustrator. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, he later studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. Known for his work with found objects, Roberts creates mixed media pieces, collages, and paintings that create an ever-changing surreal world. His much sought-after work has been shown in notable galleries including Slow Culture in Los Angeles and Marlborough Gallery in New York. We Ate the Acid is the second publication from Roberts. He currently lives and works in San Francisco.

How can thoughtfully and intentionally listening to our world inspire our creative practices? What insights can we gain when we delve into the immersive world of sound, which permeates our every moment? In Transcendent Waves, sound healing practitioner, meditation teacher, and artist Lavender Suarez outlines how listening can unlock moments of creative spark, self-awareness, and mindfulness in a work that is equal parts how-to guide and contemplative artist’s workbook. Suarez’s illustrated meditations combine the open-ended freedom of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit with the profound psychological insights of Oliver Sacks to offer a modern take on the impact of listening in a world that gets louder every day. Featuring an introduction by Bibbe Hansen—artist, Warhol star, and daughter of Fluxus cofounder Al Hansen—Transcendent Waves compiles scientific evidence, anecdotes, and thoughtful prompts for readers to manifest a sense of wonderment and appreciation for the intricacies of listening and the new perspectives it can bring to our daily creative worlds.

Lavender Suarez is a sound healing practitioner, meditation teacher, musician, and artist. She has hosted workshops and performed at numerous museums and artistic institutes including MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Rubin Museum of Art, providing educational and meditative listening experiences. She performs and releases music under the name C. Lavender. Transcendent Waves is her first book.

Illustrator, musician and self-described “comic stripper” Brian Blomerth has spent years combining classic underground art styles with his bitingly irreverent visual wit in zines, comics, and album covers. With Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day, the artist has produced his most ambitious work to date: a historical account of the events of April 19, 1943, when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann ingested an experimental dose of a new compound known as lysergic acid diethylamide and embarked on the world’s first acid trip. Featuring an introduction from renowned ethnopharmacologist, Dennis McKenna, Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day combines an extraordinary true story told in journalistic detail with the artist’s gritty, timelessly Technicolor comix style that is a testament to mind expansion, and a stunningly original visual history.

Brian Blomerth is an illustrator, cartoonist and musician based in Brooklyn. His previous publications—released via Anthology Editions, Tan & Loose, and through his own Pupsintrouble Press—include the zines Xak’s Wax, iPhone 64: A User’s Guide, and Hypermaze. A veteran of the underground music and arts scene whose work has graced numerous album covers, Blomerth also produces comics which appear in Vice and Merry Jane.

What is a mushroom? What do mushrooms mean? What do mushrooms do? What do we want from mushrooms? What do the mushrooms want?

These are the questions the makers of Broccoli ask and answer in Mushroom People, their special edition, single-issue magazine for mycophiles. They have called on artists, writers, and fungi enthusiasts from around the world to explore mushroom fact and fantasy, collecting specimens of all kinds: the strange and familiar, beautiful and ugly, toxic and healing, ephemeral and enduring.

Inside Mushroom People, Bethany van Rijswijk delves into the folklore of the magic mushroom, arrangements by Leslie Kirchhoff and Yasmine Khatib prove that mushrooms are the new flowers, Claire L. Evans goes inside the trip report forum Erowid, Zoe Gong heals what ails us, Adrienne Kammerer paints a slug’s-eye-view, William Padilla-Brown talks citizen mycology, Shruti Ravindran breaks down the neuroscience of tripping, and Lio Min searches for counter-culture on the forest floor. Plus: MycoAstrology, Mushroom Fashion Week, the search for a lost perfume, hacking a chat-shroom in the Wood Wide Web, glowing mushroom lamps, Mixtec transcendental gastronomy, a mushroom burial suit, and much more.

192 pages, perfect bound. Features three premium paper stocks. Measures 8.25” x 11.25”.

This issue is an ode to our most tactile sense, and the one we missed the most this past year. 

Touch, as you’ll see in these pages, takes many forms, from the constrictive pleasure of shibari, to the proper way to give (and receive) a hug, to the chemical reaction of static shock. It’s also a measure of skill and a mode of communication—both in this world and beyond. 

Naturally, the experience of touch can be heightened. (If you’ve ever hotboxed a shower or felt the rays of the sun after an edible, you know what we’re talking about.) The physical components of this issue and products recommended in it are our best attempt to offer the same intensity of sensation. (Just wait until you see—and feel it.)

Pot leaves dance with zebra grass, lady slipper orchids, baby’s breath, and other compelling blooms through the pages of A Weed is a Flower, a new 168-page hardcover photo book showcasing the natural beauty of cannabis in magical floral arrangements.

The title of Broccoli’s latest imprint is taken from a 1911 quote by poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox: “A weed is but an unloved flower.” Through favorite shoots gathered from the pages of Broccoli and freshly picked from more than 25 innovative photographers and floral artists from around the world, this splendid coffee table book treats weed with the aesthetic respect that cannabis lovers know it deserves.

These captivating photographs express weed’s allure and multiplicity, speaking to all the reasons we love it: beauty, peace, pleasure, play, and escapism. A Weed is a Flower reminds us that cannabis is just a plant—but what a special plant it is.

Feline architectures: a fun and affordable picture-book of cats with their cat trees

Every cat owner knows the frustration of shelling out a considerable amount of money for a cat tree or scratching post only to find that their feline family member prefers to sleep in the box the item came in. Some lucky cat owners also know the unexpected delight that comes from seeing cats use the accessories made just for them, the strange satisfaction of catching their kitty relaxing on their kitty-sized furniture.

Against stylish pastel backdrops, Swiss photographer Pascale Weber poses her feline subjects on a variety of different cat-specific pieces, lounging on the roof of a fuzzy ice cream truck and balancing atop a three-pronged scratching post that resembles a cactus. Her photography series captures the undeniable charm of cats on their best behavior while also providing a tongue-in-check echo of more serious forms of design. The artfulness of each cat tree mirrors the contemporary aesthetic trends of human-sized architecture and sculpture: multifaceted, functional and ultimately representative of those who utilize such structures. Each cat presents their home just as proudly as a person might in this surprising combination of art and animal photography, perfect for cat lovers and art enthusiasts alike.

Adventures in abstract ceramics, from George E. Ohr and Ken Price to Kathy Butterly

A comprehensive overview of 20th-century non-representational ceramics from the earliest years of the modernist revolution to the postwar period through to the present, Shapes From Out of Nowhere features an unparalleled gathering of over 150 works from New York City-based collector Robert Ellison. It explores the featured artists’ rejection of symmetrical, utilitarian forms in clay in favor of the sculptural and abstract, and challenges the boundaries between function, non-function, design, drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture. Built over a period of 40 years, this singular collection reflects the personal and discerning eye of a collector focused on the exploration of shape and form.

Ellison’s introduction to abstraction in clay was the work of George E. Ohr, whose late 19th-century creations represent the first seismic shift in a challenge to form itself. Ohr was the catalyst for this new direction in clay, and his vision foreshadows 20th-century postwar experimentation in fine art. The book showcases the sculptures by Ohr along with artists from the second half of the 20th century to the present, including seminal works by Axel Salto, Ken Price and Peter Voulkos, the progenitor of the American studio movement.

Shapes From Out of Nowhere tells this important story through the work of these key figures, but also introduces lesser known artists who transformed—and continue to push—the possibilities of the medium, including Kathy Butterly, Elisa D’Arrigo, Anne Marie Laureys and Aneta Regel.

This transformative collection will be given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2021 in honor of the museum’s 150th anniversary, and this lavishly illustrated book will serve as both an exhibition catalog and as a document of the gift to the museum.

B>Artists include: Robert Arneson, Rudy Autio, F. Carlton Ball, Lynda Benglis, Kate Blacklock, Nina Borgia-Aberle, Alison Britton, Kathy Butterly, Peter Callas, Syd Carpenter, Christina Carver, Katherine Choy, Dieter Crumbiegel, Elisa D’Arrigo, Harris Deller, Richard DeVore, Kim Dickey, Gary DiPasquale, Ruth Duckworth, Raymon Elozua, Gary Erickson, Ken Ferguson, Amara Geffen, John Gill, Chris Gustin, Babs Haenen, Ewen Henderson, Wayne Higby, Margaret Israel, Howard Kottler, Anne Marie Laureys, Gareth Mason, John Mason, Leza McVey, Jim Melchert, Ursula Morley Price, Gertrud Natzler, Otto Natzler, Win Ng, William Parry, Ken Price, Aneta Regel, Mary Rogers, Stanley Rosen, Axel Salto, Paul Soldner, Rudofl Staffel, Chris Staley, Susanna Stephenson, Toshiko Takaezu, Kyoto Tonegawa, Robert Turner, Peter Voulkos, Frans Wildenhain, Marguerite Wildenhain, Betty Woodman, William Wyman and Arnold Zimmerman.

Abstract painting meets theosophical spirituality in 1930s New Mexico: the first book on a radical, astonishingly prescient episode in American modernism

Founded in Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, in 1938, at a time when social realism reigned in American art, the Transcendental Painting Group (TPG) sought to promote abstract art that pursued enlightenment and spiritual illumination. The nine original members of the Transcendental Painting Group were Emil Bisttram, Robert Gribbroek, Lawren Harris, Raymond Jonson, William Lumpkins, Florence Miller Pierce, Agnes Pelton, Horace Towner Pierce and Stuart Walker. They were later joined by Ed Garman. Despite the quality of their works, these Southwest artists have been neglected in most surveys of American art, their paintings rarely exhibited outside of New Mexico. Faced with the double disadvantage of being an openly spiritual movement from the wrong side of the Mississippi, the TPG has remained a secret mostly known only to cognoscenti.

Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group aims to address this slight, claiming the group’s artists as crucial contributors to an alternative through-line in 20th-century abstraction, one with renewed relevance today. This volume provides a broad perspective on the group’s work, positioning it within the history of modern painting and 20th-century American art. Essays examine the TPG in light of their international artistic peers; their involvement with esoteric thought and Theosophy; the group’s sources in the culture and landscape of the American Southwest; and the experience of its two female members.

From perfect pink ladies to rough-skinned russets: a gorgeous study of the wondrous variety of apples

William Mullan’s obsession with apples began when he saw his first Egremont Russet at a Waitrose grocery store outside of London. Fascinated by its gnarled, potato-like appearance and shockingly fresh, nutty flavor, Mullan began searching for, and photographing, rare apple varieties. In Odd Apples, each apple is lovingly rendered and styled according to its individual “personality”—a combination of its looks and its flavors. The apples are set against complementary brightly colored backdrops; they are peeled or unpeeled, cut or whole, skin shriveled or perfectly smooth and shiny.
It is precisely this odd charm combined with the hitherto unknown that makes these photographs fascinating studies of a supposedly commonplace fruit. Mullan embraces its idiosyncratic aesthetic qualities completely, and invites us, in this attractive gift book, to embark on a visual expedition into the world of the apple.
By day, William Mullan (born 1989) works at an artisanal chocolate factory in Brooklyn, and by night, he photographs fruit. British-born, New York–based Mullan came to photography as an autodidact and his talent was quickly recognized. His Odd Apple project developed into an influential and much talked-about series, reviewed by the New Yorker, the New York Times and i-D Magazine, and released as a sold-out run of prints on his website.

Cannabis for Curing Justice is a zine made by Ami Worthen which details how cannabis can be a tool for healing and wellbeing through the lens of equity and justice. This zine was created for an event we hosted in January 2020 called Cannabis Culture. 

This zine is an invitation to the owners and employees of CBD stores, and the users of any product derived from cannabis, to participate in a paradigm-shifting culture of equity and justice. We all will benefit from the collective vitality that can come from an equitable ecosystem, and this zine is a helpful guide for where to get started. 

100% of the proceeds from the sale of this zine will be donated to National Bailout (https://www.nationalbailout.org/)