Send Stuff Get Stuff Buy Stuff

The Swap Meat

Periodically, we receive unsolicited stuff in the mail. We love getting it, and most of the time we return the favor by sending back some of the stuff we've made. So we're trying to do the same thing on a slightly larger scale in an attempt to make lots of people as happy as we are when the FedEx guy shows up unannounced. Featured items are listed on these pages.

Read the four things that can happen when you send us something for swapping and learn how you can get involved. The Swap Meat has been extended through the summer, so keep 'em coming and help to keep Bryan busy.

Browse By Image
View Only Items That Are For Sale
View Your Shopping Cart

Kevin Cornell’s Peoplemals Set

ID SM0292 (photo)
Arrived 12.07.07 PM, FedEx
From Kevin Cornell
Description 4 Letterpressed Cards in Package
More info Bearskin Rug
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Evolution is a tricky thing. It's hard to depict since it moves very slowly and it's really better seen and appreciated after the fact. But that hasn't stopped Kevin Cornell who sees the future through his own unique Victorian lens and imagines a day when certain people and certain animals have merged. He call the combinations "Peoplemals" and he created a set of them for a small show in Philadelphia. We fell in love with them (as we usually do with with all of Kevin's illustrations) right from the start and we assembled a limited-edition print set featuring four species.

Penghim, Manther, Ladger and Eagirl are each depicted on their own 6" x 9" card. Dan Barron of Flywheel Letterpress took on the awesome responsibility of striking these prints into Classic Crest 130# Natural White stock and did an amazing job. The four prints are stamped with a Cornell-designed seal of authenticity on the reverse, and tied together with soutache, surrounded by velvet and packed into a jet-black, super-strong archival photo-print box.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited edition of 200 sets of 4 letterpress prints, 6 x 9" in two colors on 130# stock. Stamped seal of authenticity on the reverse of each print. Shipped flat in an archival photo box. $55.00 each.

Chicago Neighborhood Poster/Button Set

ID SM0291 (photo)
Arrived 12.07.07 PM, Hand-delivered
From Jennifer Beorkrem
Description 24" x 34" map of Chicago neighborhoods
More info Ork Posters
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

We got Ork Posters' original red and grey Chicago Neighborhoods poster in the mail a couple weeks ago, and instantly loved it for (among other things) its inclusion of BB's home neighborhood Galewood, which is NEVER on maps. Then we started seeing the poster popping up everywhere on the internet, and everyone loved it. While the regular version is available on Jenny's site, we've commissioned a 100-print edition of the new "blue" version (PMS 7474) signed and numbered. For even more local pride, we'll include El Boton's "El Series" buttons, featuring eight buttons color-coded to Chicago's CTA "El" lines. (We're still getting used to the "Pink" line too). Best yet, on top of our usual "Gifted" donation to the Greater Chicago Food Bank, Jenny has offered to donate an extra $5 per order, so not only are you showing your Chicago pride on your walls/jacket lapels, you're also helping Chicago's less fortunate citizens.

Let's be clear: No Chicagoan who's seen this poster doesn't love it. It's already incredibly popular, but it's still going places. In fifteen years, you'll see this poster hanging in every corner tavern and all-night italian beef joint, stained with years of grease and smoke, right between the photo of DItka flipping the bird and that Vienna Beef hot dog that's covering up Navy Pier with the fire boat shooting mustard at it. You know what I'm talking about. This poster is THAT Chicago. Buy this signed, high-quality limited-edition print now, or buy an inferior poorly-letterspaced sixth-generation knockoff (is that ARIAL CONDENSED!?) from the guy selling fake White Sox shirts outside Union Station in a few months. It's your choice.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited edition of 100 signed-and-numbered 24" x 36" posters, offset-printed in medium blue (Pantone 7474) on white New Leaf 100% recycled matte paper, with El Boton's 8-button "El Series" set. $50.

2008 Calendar

ID SM0230 (photo)
Arrived 10.30.07 PM, hand-delivered
From David R. Head, Jr.
Description Silkscreened calendar
More info davidrheadjr.com
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Let's face it, you've got a problem. If you're a typical Swap Meat fan, chances are you have at least 20 dustbunny-covered shipping tubes stacked under your bed, each containing one or more lovingly designed and screenprinted posters featuring your favorite bands, craft shows, book fairs, or roller derby events, and you'll never get them framed. You can't resist the lure of ink on paper, and somewhere in your head you've justified your addiction with the argument that "someday they'll be worth something." And they very likely will be. But they're not happy there, in their tubes. You want to hang them up, but you can't give them the lavish frame they deserve, and you wouldn't dare stick four pushpins through your "investments." Well, here's your chance to break the cycle. The price is right, and you have three hundred and sixty six days (it's a leap year! David seems to have forgotten the 29th, but March starts on a Friday so all is well) to hang this baby up before it's rendered obsolete. Or "even more collectible," if that's how you swing. The best part: You look at it and see "DIY Rock-show," your mother just sees "Victorian floral print." Everybody wins.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited edition of 50 hand-screenprinted calendars, 19x19" in two colors on 100# French Spearmint cover. Signed and numbered by the artist. Shipped in a tube. $30.00 each.

Foodie Greeting Cards

ID SM0279 (photo)
Arrived 9.24.07 PM, hand-delivered
From Julie Morelli, Chicago IL
Description 8 Nourishing Cards
More info letterform.net
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Julie wants to make sure that all of your correspondence is well nourished. It's always handy to have some general purpose cards on hand, but these may be hard to part with. Perhaps the only way to avoid that situation is to give the set of cards as a gift to a friend and hope she sends them back to you, one by one. Anyone who likes food, or puns, or cheesecloth bags, or tastefully letterpress-printed cards, will love these, and will be well prepared for three birthday, three thank-yous, a congratulation, and a love note. These 40 sets of letterpress-printed cards were made by hand and packaged beautifully. You can view her process here.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Eight different 4"x5.5" greeting cards with matching color envelopes, hand letterpress-printed in two colors, packaged in a silkscreen-printed cheesecloth bag. $28.00 per set.

Moon Monster Print

ID SM0286 (photo)
Arrived 11.9.07 PM, Picked up at Screwball Press
From Sam Brown
Description Five color silkscreen print
More info explodingdog.com
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

We're longtime fans of Sam Brown's site, Exploding Dog, where, daily, he posts a few illustrations based on a titles submitted by readers. Not a bad way to build up your portfolio quickly, Sam has published thousands of drawings in his signature style featuring stick figures, monsters, dogs, robots, robot dogs, and clouds. This limited-edition silkscreen print was created especially for the Swap Meat, and was screenprinted in Chicago at Screwball Press. Its five panels depict a series of moon expeditions gone awry. Just 100 are available.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
14x24 five-color silkscreen print on 100# French Construction white paper, with a signed and numbered statement of authenticity. $40 each.

Vintage Projector T-shirts

ID SM0231 (photo)
Arrived 00.00.07 PM, Carrier
From Rod Hunting, Chicago IL
Description Screenprinted T-shirts
More info The Post Family
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Allow us to get a little mushy here. Rod Hunting is the Swap Meat personified. Rod built this city. His vintage camera print was the very first item we received in the mail, two days after announcing the idea, and it inspired up to commission Swap Meat Exclusives. It sold out quickly and Rod became our first repeat-swapper with his vintage reel-to-reel print set. Around that time, Rod left his advertising day job to pursue his illustration and printmaking at The Post Family, and he tells us he's happy and busy, but he found time to become our first "three-timer" and contribute these great shirts to the Holiday Swap. Following the AV-club/retro-tech theme of his other work, these shirts feature detailed, line art vintage film projector illustrations on "ladies" and "gents" shirts. We're glad we were able to help spark Rod's creative endeavors, but we can't take much credit, he's a great guy who does fantastic work, and he helped make the Swap Meat what it is.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited edition t-shirts. 50 shirts each in six sizes (women's S/M/L, men's M,L,XL) "Gents" is printed in brown ink on natural American Apparel Organic fine jersey short sleeve t-shirts. "Ladies" is printed in red ink on light pink American Apparel Unisex fine fersey short sleeve t-shirts. $28.00 each.

Select A Size Women's S Women's M Women's L Men's M Men's L Men's XL

Butter/Concrete prints

ID SM0278 (photo)
Arrived 10.09.07 PM, USPS Priority
From Jay Bryant, Seattle, WA
Description Three 18"x 24" 3-color prints
More info Aesthetic Interlude
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Jay Bryant was inspired to send us some prints after seeing Rod Hunting's work in the Swap Meat. These were produced for the "A Muse to You?" poster show organized by Kristien Ziska and Laurie Kearney in Seattle, and feature two sticks of butter ("Sweet Cream" and "Unsalted") and a "Concrete Masonry Unit," known by the colloquial name "Cinder Block." Apparently Disney owns the trademark to Cinder Block or something. Anyway, it's hard to explain the satisfying symmetry of two sticks of butter and a slab of concrete, but it's palpable and the prints were an instant hit around the studio. We got in touch with Jay, who offered up the remaining thirty prints as a Swap Meat Exclusive. We've sort of fallen back on the phrase "These would look perfect in your..." in many of these descriptions, but isometric-dairy-products-and-construction-materials placement, well, that's a decision you're going to have to make on your own.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
$80.00 per Butter Print Set.
$50.00 for the Concrete Block Print.

Four Ghost Prints

ID SM0234 (photo)
Arrived 7.27.07, AM (FedEx)
From Billy Davis, Orlando, FL
Description Four 12x16" silkscreen prints
More info One Swell Illustrator
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

You may remember Billy Davis' original "Judgment" glicee prints, they were posted here a couple months ago. In his note, Billy suggested they'd look good as silkscreen prints, and we agreed, and along the way someone had the idea to print the ghost in glow-in-the-dark ink. This set of four prints was hand-screened at Crosshair Press in Chicago, and each features a glowing ghost in various ill-advised endeavours. (click on the thumbnail to see all four prints). All four would look great framed together in your kitchen or study, or split them up to use them as actual warning posters next to your gun range or bear habitat.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited edition of 100 sets of four glow-in-the-dark 12x16" 5-color silkscreen prints on 100# French Smart White. Shipped in a tube. Each print is signed by the artist with matching numbers across the set. $90/set.

Stencil on vinyl

ID SM0268 (photo)
Arrived 9/24/07, PM (USPS)
From Ranbir Bains, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Description Stenciled 12" vinyl record
More info email Ranbir
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Ranbir's note says "I recycle damaged or crappy records and reuse them as canvasses for my stencils, screenprints, paintings and doodles." Neat idea, and this looks pretty sweet, especially since motorcycles rule, but let's look at Ranbir's assessment of this LP. No obvious scratches or cracks are visible on either side, so we must assume that Ranbir felt that "Midnight Blue," a 1983 album by British vocalist Louise Tucker was, in his words, "crappy." Louise's site asserts that Midnight Blue is "now regarded as the first combination of classical melody in a popular idiom to have enjoyed world-wide success." It sold 3 million copies and reached #1 in France, but is currently out-of-print. Amazon customer reviews award it five stars and gushing praise: "I get chills every time I hear Midnight Blue," "I practically wore through the grooves on two albums." The album is selling from three Amazon vendors at $115, $149, and $199. MusicStack vendors list it at slightly more modest prices, but it does seem to be in demand. Crappy? I have no doubt I'd retch at the very sound of "classical melody in a popular idiom" but let this be your lesson, Ranbir, there are plenty of rich people out there hungry for crappy music. You are the new Robert Rauschenberg, erasing Tucker's DeKooning. Bravo!

Monster

ID SM0265 (photo)
Arrived 8/10/07, PM (USPS)
From Tyson Bodnarchuk, Montreal, Canada
Description Monster, 7 x 8.5" including frame.
More info Pass the Pepper
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Taylor is an artist from Montreal who also runs a gallery and boutique. He's obsessed with sci-fi, monsters, EC Comics, and all that good stuff, and he's recently made the switch from acrylics to "watercolors, inks, and coffee." This little guy is named "Stripe" but we've started calling him "Mike," short for "Michael Stripe." He looks like a combination between a coffee stain and Brobee, and we love him dearly. (Yes, it's a "him," don't ask us how we know.) he looks a little tough, sure, but he's only a couple inches tall, and all he really wants is one of your malted milk balls, then he'll do some sort of crazy dance or grant you a wish or something cool.

Frivolité

ID SM0282 (photo)
Arrived 9/04/07, PM (USPS)
From Bridget Snedden, Deland, FL
Description 2 lacework chokers
More info
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

We've received hundreds of items here at the Swap Meat and even a fair amount of jewelry, but I believe this is the first hand-made lace to arrive in our mailbox. Bridget at Lost Arts specializes in Frivolité, a 16th-century lacework technique usually used for the edge of cuffs, collars, or doilies. Bridget uses the technique to make necklaces of her own design, of cotton or cotton/silk-blend thread and natural-material beads such as glass, stone, or precious metals. She sent us two necklaces in a handmade gift box. It's mindblowing that such simple, old-fashioned materials plus a lot of hard work can create such a modern, distinctive piece of jewelry.

Origami Rosette

ID SM0258 (photo)
Arrived 8/18/07, PM (USPS)
From Christine Edison, Chicago, IL
Description 2 origami rosettes
More info blog, photos
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Origami and its many variants have been popular at the Swap Meat, partially thanks to Jeff Rutzky's early entry, and we've also had a few really interesting pieces from schoolteachers, so Christine is a Swap Meat kinda girl, a Chicago Public Schools teacher who's into origami. I'm not sure where this lacey rosette (for lack of better words to describe it) fits in the classification of the paperfolding arts (Cue an email from Mr. Rutzky) but it's intricate, beautiful, surely time-consuming, and it looks amazing with light shining through it, proving again that origami is so much more than little animals folded out of paper.

Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

What We're Up To

Check the Museum of Online Museums (MoOM) or our summer reading feature, Field-Tested Books. Or you can read a mostly unsuccessful attempt at explaining ourselves or just start on the Cover Page.

Trading Information

Stay up to date on new Swap Meat items and other news. Grab our blended RSS feed here.

Once each month we send out an Infrequent Mailing that includes the latest news, a subscriber-only contest or giveaway and various other nonsense. Enter your email address here to subscribe. We won't ever abuse the privilege.