Wow.
We haven’t written a newsletter in a while because we’ve been really busy **OPENING A STORE**
This is probably not news for many of you because we’ve been shouting it from the digital rooftops but it feels weird not to mention it. Our last newsletter feels like 100 years ago. We’ll be more active in our newsletters from here on out but every day that passes it feels harder to write a newsletter about the exciting things that have already come and gone!
Our shop is located at 3225 SE Division Street in Portland, Oregon and it’s called Secret Room.
New subscribers? Welcome! Thanks for following us, hopefully you like this newsletter, we’re pretty casual about it.
😵💫 HOW DID WE GET HERE? 😵💫
We ask ourselves this every day. The cascading events that lead from Secret Room as a lil shared cartoonist studio space with friends to opening a shop highlighting risograph art and independently produced art & toys & stuff is a long, winding, years-long road filled with a lot of circumstance. Let’s just jump way, way forward.
After the Lloyd Center Mall pop up we realized we wanted to do this all the time if we could. Until late last year, all of us (Cielle, John James, Ross) have always done Secret Room’s printing & publishing in our free time between full-time jobs and freelance contracts. Sometimes that was fun, sometimes it was brutal — it always felt like the biggest, most complicated print jobs and publishing projects happened at the same time that “real work” was stifling.
At just the right time, Little Otsu reached out to us as they planned to close their physical store and move online. Cielle had worked with them in the past and done their branding and they felt like we’d be a good spiritual successor to the space they’d been the stewards of for the past 9-ish years. It all felt very serendipitous. Life moves fast!
There were two weeks between their last day and our first day. We opened Secret Room on March 15th.
Now we’re here with a full-time store! It’s only been a few weeks but it feels right. It’s fun! It’s exciting to work directly with new artists and publishers, pull in unique RISO work and bootleg VHS and cartooning tools and sketchbooks and notebooks and other weird stuff. It’s fun to highlight art objects and things that otherwise are only available at tabling events.
And there’s much, much more on the way! This is iteration 1. A gallery and RISO shop, independent books and weird media, all the stuff we like that we think other people will like as well. Plus, a rotating gallery where we can curate new art and highlight folks doing amazing work.
The other exciting thing? We’re still publishing and have more in our publishing slate than ever before! We’re still a RISO print shop — you can hire us to print RISO stuff!
Come say hello, we’re here all the time now. 👋
Wanna help us without a monetary transaction??
If you’ve been in the shop or the pop up or appreciate what we’re doing in any capacity, please find Secret Room on Google Maps and give us some stars. Preferably five of ‘em.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ← that’s what we like!
I don’t mind begging for it, it helps us battle the algorithm and win so we can make more real physical objects. Thanks in advance!
🌀 CREATURE COMFORTS: A RISO ART SHOW 🌀
The opening art show for the new space is CREATURE COMFORTS, a RISO-printed exhibition featuring 14 artists from around the world. The show will be on display until June 15th — come see these pieces framed in gorgeous frames handmade by woodworker & designer Taka Moriki.
Sometimes the world is cold and dark. Shadows may descend and obscure our paths, but there are remedies. Fellow travelers will know corners of warmth and brightness — and there lie the creature comforts.
These are the cozy, cuddly things that curve the hard lines of life. They are sources of both meditative exploration and comforting familiarity. They lift the world’s shadowy veil to reveal unobstructed visions of our sense of place. Our creature comforts are tangible and intangible, composing our well-being.
These prints will be available in the online shop after the exhibition has ended but are available in the shop!
Who’s in this art show?
EVENTS
Yes, we will be doing events! Yes, we will be doing workshops!
More info on both of these things in the near future, we’ve got so many plans in the works. We’re installing our projector this week and figuring out how to get some chairs.
We have upcoming comics readings and movie screenings, starting with a Comics Club event hosted by Liz Yerby, with readings by Emily Moroz, Kelly Thomas, Lars Estrellas, and Lemon Honey!
We’ve got a new comic releasing next month by Ross Jackson, too… more info on that soon!
OKAY GOODBYE FOR NOW
Opening and running any business is a community effort. There’s honestly nothing we do that isn’t supported, encouraged, inspired, or influenced by the people around us who we look up to. There is no path fully unexplored, only new ways of thinking and expanding our understanding sense of place and community in our time.
Have you ever said anything nice to us? Bought a book? Offered to help move a RISO? Chatted with us at a comics event? THANK YOU! You’re the best.
<3
John James, Cielle, Ross
&
Pit Pat