ARP! says farewell with a funeral this Saturday

The final issue of ARP!

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About two and a half years ago I came across ARP!, or Art Review and Preview, at a café and was immediately rapt; heady and sharp pieces from smart people on the macrocosm and minutiae of capital-a Art, playful and focused design, regular printings...an experiment in quality, intelligence, and not-exactly-thankless hard work that the curious and the pensive looked forward to each new season.

"It was started by Ariel [Pate] and myself. We had some grand idea about art, and art criticism, and community...so the paper was originally funded, you could say, by naïveté and enthusiasm!" says editor Tiffany Hockin, who with Ariel Pate and Troy Pieper oversaw the conceptualizing, design, printing, and distribution of (almost, Troy joined in on the third issue) every issue and associated event. And now it is time to say good-bye.

They will be ushering ARP! into de andere wereld this Saturday with a celebration at Art of This in South Minneapolis. A kazoo funeral will be held -- "a mix of different funerary traditions...no real research involved. Think 'parody'" --  with the gallery dressed to the nines in past issues of ARP!, and food, and music, and most importantly, the final "issue" available to buy, a bound paperback book of new and collected writing from the life of the paper.

But, as always, there's no rest for the wicked. "While it is an ending of ARP!, it is also the beginning of something else," Tiffany says. Along with Ariel and Troy, she is planning a month-long project later this summer in association with the Soap Factory called Hot Off The. The pitch: "Small paperback books containing whatever people choose to submit. This is inevitably an annoying conversation for people as we attempt to be as vague as possible...the more we define, the more we exclude. But, in vast terms, it's a month-long publishing project housed in the Soap Factory. We hope people will submit a wide variety of things. We've committed to printing 40 different publications." You can find out more about Hot Off The here.

And to Tiffany, Ariel, Troy, and all contributors and helping hands from the life of ARP!: Thank you.


The ARP! Funeral, 7PM, May 22
Music by DJ DIARRHEA
Drinks by Zipp's
Food from Chow Girls

Art of This Gallery
3506 Nicolett Ave. So, Minneapolis

Visit the ARP! website for more information.