Send Stuff Get Stuff Buy Stuff

The Swap Meat

Read the four things that can happen when you send us something for swapping and learn how you can get involved. Selected items are featured here and the deadline for swapping has been extended through the summer. Yay! Keep 'em coming.

View Your Shopping Cart
View All Swapped Items

Candykiller Screen Print

ID SM0219 (photo)
Arrived 7.06.07
From Brian Taylor, Dundee Scotland
Description 22" x 30" Screen Print
More info Candykiller
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Longtime readers will recognize our little oxidized friend, Rustboy. He's how we first got acquainted with Brian Taylor. While continuing to work on that one-man animated film, Brian began to develop Candykiller, a series of characters, illustrations, books and toys. We initially offered a small letterpress Candykillers print that sold out very quickly and now we have this big beautiful Smokin' screen print ready to go. Brian designed it in Scotland and we oversaw the screening process here in Chicago.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited-edition of only 150 prints, hand-screened exclusively for The Swap Meat. 4-colors on bright-white French Paper Company stock. The large, 22" x 30" prints are accompanied by a certificate, designed, numbered, dated and signed by the artist for mounting on the reverse after framing. Shipped in tubes, rolled with craft paper. $75 each.

“Anti-Landmark” Screen Print

ID SM0233 (photo)
Arrived 7.18.07
From Dan MacAdam, Chicago, IL
Description 23.5" x 17.5" screen print
More info Crosshair Screenprint
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Crosshair Silkscreen Printing and Design sits just down Lake Street from the CP office, and proprietor Dan MacAdam's recent work centers around the distinctive landscape of the industrial neighborhood we share. We instantly recognized this scene from our commute, proof that even the most unassuming brick warehouse can leave as strong an impression as Chicago's more famous buildings. Dan's craftsmanship is remarkable. Printing seven colors is rather difficult and tedious at best, but his attention to transparency and registration gives his prints a nearly photographic detail that is rather mindblowing, especially when seen close-up.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
50 prints available from an edition of 100. 7-color silkscreen print on 23.5" x 17.5" 100# bright-white Cougar cover. Prints are signed and numbered by the artist, and shipped in tubes in a protective plastic sheath. $60 each.

Obsessive Consumption Print Edition

ID SM0202 (photo)
Arrived 6.26.07, PM, FedEx
From Kate Bingaman-Burt, Starkville, MS
Description 6" x 9" Handmade Compendium
More info Obsessive Consumption
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

We know Kate Bingaman-Burt better than we know a lot of people that we have actually met. We have seen most of the things Kate has purchased over the past few years and that can tell you a lot about a person. Kate's practice of drawing a picture of something she buys every day has been well documented, in the New York Times Magazine and lots of other places and we're proud to say we have an original drawing of Kate's September 2004 Chase credit card statement framed in our studio (she owed $7039.24 at that time). For this Swap Meat Exclusive Kate has a handcrafted a book of all her daily drawings between February 5th 2006 (gas at BP) and June 20th 2007 (a bingo card). Click the thumbnail above and here to see some additional details.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
A one-time, limited-edition of only 75. Gocco-printed covers with xerography guts. Two Gocco prints. Hand-colored pencil with sewn inside enclosures. Numbered and signed by the artist. $68.19 each.

“The Conquerer Worm” Letterpressed Print

ID SM0105 (photo)
Arrived 4.15.07, PM (delivery)
From Jason Santa Maria, Rob Weychert, Philly, PA
Description Hand Typeset and Struck Print, 10" x 24"
More info jasonsantamaria.com
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

We had seen Jason's post and photos, documenting the process of making this print but that didn't really prepare us for the actual object. In many ways The Swap Meat is about things made by hand in an age full of things made by mouse. The texture of the blood-red and black letterforms, forced into the page by physical pressure is beautiful and fits Poe's fantastical poem perfectly. It's as if this was not printed on a vintage letterpress at all but instead was output from a time machine.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited-edition of only 20. Set By Hand with Vintage Metal Type and Printed via Letterpress on 100% Cotton Rives Off-White Paper, Water-Marked with a Deckled Bottom Edge 10" x 24" Signed and numbered by the artists. $65 each.

Comic Book Store Poster

ID SM0263 (photo)
Arrived 6.20.07, PM, Hand-Delivered
From Nick Campbell, Chicago, IL
Description 28" x 18" Digital Poster Print
More info Greyscale Gorilla
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

It's funny how thing work out sometimes. Nick Campbell (aka Greyscale Gorilla) entered one of our subscriber-only photo contests. In fact, he won it with this submission in answer to an asssignment to make a picture in which the foregound and the background had some sort of narrative connection. While we were looking through his portfolio we were stopped dead in our tracks by this beautiful shot of the racks at a local comic book store. So, when we sent Nick his big prize package we said, "Let's make a poster." Ours is going home with Jim for the wall in his boy Spencer's room. Where's yours going? Just for fun, here's Nick signing them all.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
A one-time limited-edition of only 248 (we kept one for swapping and one for ourselves). 28" x 18" digitally printed on semi-matte poster stock. Signed and numbered by the artist. $20 each.

Click Me Art Print by Marian Bantjes

ID SM0262 (photo)
Arrived 6.20.07, PM, UPS
From Marian Bantjes, Vancouver, Canada
Description 20" x 20" Fine Art Print
More info bantjes.com
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

You have to go way back to a medieval term to properly describe the craft of Marian Bantjes. If such a organization existed today, we might expect to find her as Master of the Guild of Illuminated Typographers. Created specifically for The Swap Meat, this piece places a thoroughly modern, digital message in a beautiful, hand-drawn, analog context. "Click me. Read me. Open me. Buy me. Love me." Indeed. In some ways it's the perfect Swap. To borrow a phrase from the NYT Magazine, it completes the "virtuous circle of artful swag."

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
A one-time, limited-edition of only sixty. 20" x 20" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% acid free cotton archival paper. Individually Proofed. Numbered, signed and dated by the artist on an accompanying sheet for mounting on the reverse after framing. Shipped flat. $90 each.

15 Blind Boxes Sold Out

ID SM0192 (photo)
Arrived 6.9.07 PM, USPS
From Douglas Wilson, Springfield, MO
Description 4.5" x 4.5" x 8" box of ephemera
More info On Paper Wings
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Remember as a kid when you'd find a box of miscellaneous stuff at your grandparent's house? You didn't know what any of it was and nothing seemed to have any specific connection to your life that you were aware of at the time, but it was still somehow fascinating to sit there and leaf through the yellowed scraps of paper, photographs and clippings from the newspaper. That's a lot like what Douglas Wilson sent us for Swapping. It's a wooden cigar box filled to the brim with everything from a bridge point calculator by Charles H. Goren, the 'World's No. 1 Ranking Bridge Player,' a 1946 postcard from River Gorge, Colorado, an educational film strip about Mark Twain and countless aged pieces of paper. As a whole, there's no cohesive purpose for them to all be packaged together. But we defy you not to open the box and instantly find yourself slowly handling each and every piece with a delicate, quiet reverence.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase Sold Out
Limited-edition of only 15. Hand-selected ephemera, assembled in a beautiful wooden box exclusively for The Swap Meat. There's no telling what you'll get but judging by the one we received there's no chance you'll be disappointed either. Signed, numbered and custom-shipped by the artist.

Vintage Reel-to-Reel Prints

ID SM0087 (photo)
Arrived 4.17.07, AM (delivery)
From Rod Hunting, Chicago, IL
Description Vintage Tape Deck Posters, 19" x 25"
More info rodhunting.com
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Rod Hunting's Vintage Camera Poster was the very first item we received for the Swap Meat, the first item we agreed to commission as a Swap Meat Exclusive (actually inspiring the idea), and as of this afternoon, the first item to sell out. We knew Swap fans would be hungry for more, so we asked Rod to come up with a new poster. Exceeding our expectations again, he printed a pair of posters featuring vintage reel-to-reel decks. We absolutely guarantee hanging either of these posters over your stereo will make your system sound better, and both of them will make it possible to hear notes you never heard before.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited-edition of only 100 (each design). 19"" x 25" Hand-Screened in dark blue on French Construction Steel Blue 100lb cover, signed and numbered by the artist. If you order both, you'll get matching-numbered prints and save $15!
Print 1 (no reels): $40
Print 2 (with reels): Sold Out
Both prints (save $15): Sold Out

Sokoloff Photo Print

ID SM0121 (photo)
Arrived 5.1.07, AM, FedEx
From Marshall Sokoloff, Vancouver, BC
Description Limited-edition photo print
More info Blurbism
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Marshall Sokoloff is based in Vancouver but spends a good deal of his time on the road, in pursuit of images. His latest group of photographs, to be featured shortly in a Gallery Series for The Morning News, were made in and around the bleak, arid region known as The Salton Sea near Desert Shores California. Marshall's best-known work is abstract and elegiac. Highly structured, full-frame details and textures are dominant. His Salt and Sugar series are good examples. The image featured here applies a similar rigorous attention to the geometry of decay, but applies it to a sun-baked landscape. One of these prints will be swapped and 25 others are offered as a special limited-edition.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited-edition of 25. Marshall Sokoloff 'Salton Sea' Photo Print, 14" x 21" image on 17" x 22" Premium Lustre Archival Paper, Giclee Print, signed and numbered on the reverse by the artist. $90 each.

MetaFilter Shirt

ID SM0139 (photo)
Arrived 5.7.07, PM, Via Truck
From Matt Haughey, McMinnville, OR
Description MeFi Blue Tee with Logotype
More info MetaFilter
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

OK, we searched through all the archives and we're confident this is not a repost. We are however aware that it is a self-link, but frankly given the nature of the Swap Meat, what isn't? As with our sold-out Daring Fireball tee, we're trying to open up the swapping to writers and communities, as well as artists. The next item in that effort is the first-ever MetaFilter tee shirt. It's done up simply and we matched the blue as closely as we could to the official #006699 MeFi hexadecimal color. We'll swap one of each size and are offering for purchase the rest of this one-time edition. When they're gone, they're gone.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase
Limited-edition of 360. 119 each (after swapping) of Medium, Large and XL. Fruit of the Loom Pacific Blue BestT with White and MeFi Yellow logo on the front. $19 each.
Medium.
Large.
XL.

Bearskinrug Sketchbook Sold Out

ID SM0121 (photo)
Arrived 4.26.07, PM, FedEx
From Kevin Cornell, Philadelphia, PA
Description 60-page scrapbook compiled from sketches
More info Bearskinrug
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

Kevin Cornell is one of our very favorite illustrator/cartoonists working anywhere, and not nearly as famous as he should (and will) be. After sending us his original illustrations for December's Fresh Signals, he told us about his piles of unpublished drawings and sketchbooks and we thought "We'd love to see them." Then, after seeing them, we though, "Man, EVERYONE would love to see these." So we asked Kevin to compile a book of some of his favorite sketches, outtakes, and notes. The final result exceeded even our high expectations. When Kevin's $150 Rizzoli coffee-table book comes out, you'll be proud to say you were "into" him back in '07 and own a signed copy of his first published sketchbook. See more of the book here.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase Sold Out
Limited-edition of 200. Kevin Cornell Swap Meat Scrapbook, 60pp, 6" x 9" perfect-bound, signed and numbered by the artist. Wrapped in kraft paper with red twine. $25 each.

Candykiller Print Sold Out

ID SM0277 (photo)
Arrived 5.22.07, AM (USPS Global)
From Brian Taylor, Dundee, Scotland
Description 2-color letterpress print, 8" x 10"
More info Candykiller
Swapped for TBD
Status at CP

It must have been preordained that we offer a Swap Meat exclusive from Brian Taylor. We've been following his work forever, since XL5 Design and Rustboy, and the other day, while browsing at Rotofugi, the Chicago designer toy store, we came across one of Brian's Candykiller books. We wrote to tell him and he responded that on the very same day he had packed up some stuff and sent it to us. This print is punched into the yellow/olive-ish paper via traditional letterpress in two colors. There are only twenty available. We'll include a bit of other Candykiller swag in the package and purchasers of this will get the first shot at an oversized, sure-to-sell-out screen print we're producing for Brian from this fabulous illustration.

Swap Meat Exclusive: Available For Purchase Sold Out
Limited-edition of 20 from an original run of 200, 8" x 10" in two colors, signed and numbered by the artist. Purchasers of this print earn the right of first refusal on another Brian Taylor print that's currently in production.

Page | 1 | 2 |

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.