October Mystic Multiples Dispatch
Friends, we've made it into October, and there's a chance that truly hot weather is banished for the rest of the year. It's fighting every inch of the way, but if you're up early enough you might chance across a pleasant breeze.
This cooling sometimes brings a frantic energy to Houston. Events that avoid the summer indoor season start to pile up onto one another. A desperate, building pressure to get-it-done-before-December accelerates calendars and to-do lists into a pace no human can endure. We're right there with you, and we're hoping that everyone can find a little time to breathe...
We've got our hopes prepared for nice weather this weekend for two events: Lone Star Zine Fest (LSZF), in Austin, and Rockin' and Rollin' Prints (RRP) here in Houston!
Austin area folks can find us at LSZF on Saturday, October 11th, from 12-6pm. The festival is at the Blue Genie Art Bazaar, and features over 100 vendors across two days. We'll only be there on Saturday, so come visit and peruse our newest zines and prints.
Houston folks can find us the following Sunday, October 12th, at RRP, from 10-4pm. It's going down at the Orange Show! This is the annual steamroller printing event, and James has prepared a woodblock inspired by Aesop's fable of the Frogs Who Desired A King. While the blocks are printed, you can also peruse some art prints from a variety of vendors at the From Press To Table print fair-- we'll have a Mystic Multiples table there as well!
On Saturday, November 1st, the exhibit Black Water, Green Fruit will open at Basket Books & Art! This exhibition by artists Natasha Bowdoin and Sarah Welch will feature original drawings and artworks made in conversation while viewing ecological horror movies. We're also proud to share that Mystic Multiples is publishing a zine, titled They're Out There, to accompany the show. We'll have more to share over the following weeks, but expect this zine to debut at the opening celebration, from 3pm - 5pm. We hope you can make it!
Did you see our ad in F Magazine? Things are getting serious with our Gulf Coast Tarot Deck. Originally, we were looking at opening up pre-orders this fall, but we think that there's about one more year of work due before we complete the project. So, rather than making everyone wait for fulfillment, we're going to move the pre-orders to next year and aim to ship orders three months after the sale.
In the meanwhile, we've created a command center for all things tarot on our website. In the months to follow, we'll add updates and information in this main location, and you'll get to see the project come to life as we prepare to launch. Thanks again for the patience and support as we work through this project!
Here's a special preview for you, our newsletter subscribers: we're opening up a presale for our 2026 wall calendar, which is all about night blooming plants and the moons that inspire them! Sometimes, things have to get done under the cover of darkness, and that's a theme we're leaning into for next year. We'll have 12 night blooming plants from all over the planet, featured in illustrations that play with the seasonal moons: the buck moon, harvest moon, strawberry moon... looking at these old paradigms really scratches the research part of our brains, and I think you'll enjoy seeing the creations Sarah comes up with! Click here to check out the presale in our store.
The stars have aligned and we suddenly have three new postcard projects to share with y'all.
Brazos Bend State Park and Fern Canyon are two color screen prints with one color back printing, and feature photographic imagery adapted into a chunky halftone screening. I really love using this kind of treatment on photos, especially in the current digital age. Halftone dots can be very adversarial to screens, because they can cause a lot of distortions (moiré) when viewed digitally, or when resized. But when you view them in person, your eye corrects for the missing information and creates a continuous tone. All this makes for an image that requires humans, and requires real life experience for maximum effect.
The Gulf of Mexico is a letterpress postcard, printed by Rising Tide Projects in Galveston, and features an original drawing by Sarah that was inspired by the pistol toting shrimp sign that originally graced a Guido's location in Houston (which later became a Christie's Seafood according to our research?). Our supply of these is limited, so pick one up while you can!
And lastly, here's a note from James: I recently had a short essay published in the Floral Observer, which is a risograph printed quarterly from Taxonomy Press. Rachel, the publisher and editor, did a great job with the piece, and even made some beautiful full color risograph prints from my provided photographs. Here's a short excerpt from the essay:
The days are long and unforgiving in the held breath of late summer. All that pressure is building up, and the city’s ready to burst. I try to regulate as best I can, but sometimes the best I can do is to scurry back and forth, looking for shelter wherever it may be. This morning’s respite is the familiar routine of packing orders and heading to the post office before the lunchtime rush. By 10am, the sun’s too high in the sky for a comfortable bike ride, and I head to the car in a hurry again.
Houston’s roads are rarely nice, but they can impress in spite of it all when you catch a view of nature; the palm trees lining petrochemical plants along the Gulf Freeway, the ivies that cling to US-59’s retaining wall, and the grackles that dive between cars during rush hour all testifying their continued existence within the city. Your continued existence is enough, reads the sticker at my desk.
Before I’ve even managed to leave the neighborhood, he’s climbed onto my windshield wiper. Brown anole! I can’t continue on. What if he fell? There’s no good place for him to hide on this trip, and I remember him from a few days ago. A premonition of what’s happening now, as I wondered if he was occupying my car while it sat in the driveway. If you don’t drive it everyday, nature tries to reclaim it. A safe space for them.
The fall issue of Floral Observer is currently available for purchase here, on the Taxonomy Press website. You can also subscribe to next year's issues as well!
Thanks for reading!
