5x7 publishes limited edition, 5x7 inch artists' books and prints. We collaborate with artists from all over the world to challenge and enliven our format.

g 6, 1

Agitator Artist Collective is an artist-run space, founded in 2017. We mount monthly exhibitions, host weekly figure drawing sessions and monthly music jams, and provide studios for Artists in Residence. We have self-published a comics compilation since 2021. Agitator and its members have self-published several books, including comics and exhibition catalogs, many of which are designed and bound by our members. Our hardcover book, And Then: Stories About What Happens Next, is an Invited contribution to Documenting Contemporary Social Life Shaped by the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Justice Movements, an ongoing collections initiative of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

mg 24

Alex Belardo Kostiw's self-publishing practice abstracts moments from our everyday realities to explore their possibilities and the unknown. Rooted in visual communication design and printmedia, their work deals in poetic, adapted, and iterative elements, visual structures of comics, and conceptually driven forms. It invites intuitive reading, implying more than it reveals and resisting complete unravelling. Alex's work has delved into myth-making, in-betweenness, modes of inter/active reading, and books as installational projects.

mg 15

Almighty & Insane Books is a platform to examine/preserve history and culture from Chicagoland through printed publications. To date, this has included presenting archives of ephemeral material and working with artists to interpret history. Our books utilize both aspects of commercial production and hand-made print / binding techniques.

g 5, 5

ART WORKS Projects is a visual advocacy organization with a focus on producing documentary-photography based works. We support the production of high-quality visual storytelling projects initiated by emerging and international documentary photographers focused on telling stories from within their own communities.

mg 23

Bad at Sports is a Chicago-based art world media and event project.

g 4, 1

Lily (Basil) MacLachlan is an artist based in Chicago, IL. They work in fibers, comics, collage, printmedia, and more.

mg 23

bench press is a risograph press based on friendship, play & collaboration. books are remnants of generative conversations & mutual exchange between artist + publisher.

focusing on collaborative projects and interactive guides + workbooks, bench press often partners with artists & friends who are new to the book as form, utilizing the risograph as tool for skill sharing and creating publications as a way to connect directly with the reader while advocating for open access to knowledge & resources.

mg 4

Bert Green Fine Art is a fine art gallery and print publisher. Founded in 1999 in Los Angeles and moved to Chicago in 2012. Shows a variety of national and local artists, and publishes about 4-8 prints a year.

mg 34

Beth Hetland is cartoonist with an emphasis on self-published and hand made books. They frequently collaborate with Kyle O’Connell. Many of their mini comics are interactive and border on artist books. They have laser, riso, silk-screen, and cyanotype publications. The majority of the books are all ages appropriate.

mg 39

Buddy is a store in the Chicago Cultural Center in downtown Chicago with the mission of supporting and showcasing local artists, makers, and small businesses. Its nearly 2500 square foot retail space features 300+ artists at any moment including prints, photos, art objects, functional art, textile, publications, music, jewelry, care products, toys and much more. The space also features annual programs, including a rotating Art 4 Sale exhibition series, rotating Randolph St. display window installations, and monthly in-store events. Buddy is a program of Public Media Institute, a Bridgeport-based non-profit that has been supporting Chicago artists for over 30 years.

mg 25

Chicago Fine Art Salon is a contemporary local artists gallery for emerging and mid-career artists.

mg 22

Chicago Printers Guild was organized in 2009 to unite printmakers (and print lovers) across the Chicagoland area through lectures, workshops, artist talks, site visits, and exhibitions. We strive to bridge the gap between commercial and fine art printing by building on a shared appreciation of Chicago’s rich printmaking past, ensuring our city continues to be one of the most prolific and respected printmaking centers in the nation.
All for Print. Print for all.

mg 29

The Chicago Reader has been a fearless, innovative, and nationally respected media voice in Chicago for more than 50 years. In print every week and daily online, we are tastemakers, incisive critics, and agenda-setters. Our readers look to us for what’s new, what’s now, what’s next, and depend on us to hold local government and other public authorities accountable—not to take sides. We’ve got fresh talent and fresh energy, and we’re thrilled to continue to deliver our unflagging, unfiltered take on Chicago.

mg 1

Colleen Plumb makes photographs, videos, books, and installations that engage with more-than-human worlds and that consider the interconnectedness of all living beings upon Earth. Her work has explored the industrial food system, ways animals in captivity function as symbols of persistent colonial thinking, how striving for human domination over nature has been normalized, and that consumption masks as curiosity. Plumb's first photography monograph, Animals Are Outside Today (Radius Books, 2011) critically documents our ambivalent dispositions towards animals, and her more recent photography book, Thirty Times a Minute (Radius Books, 2020), examines the plight of captive elephants. Through partnering with nonprofit organizations advocating for nonhuman animals, she seeks to shift dialog around what is humane. A third-generation Chicagoan, Plumb grew up in Rogers Park neighborhood, on the stolen land of the Potawatomi. As an adult she now consider it a blessing to have the chance to honor and develop attunement to the land on which she lives, the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: The Odawa, Ojibwe and Potawatomi Nations. Currently, she serves as faculty at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

mg 32

Emma Bergman is an interdisciplinary artist and abolitionist organizer. They make films, performances, installations, and archives, with a focus on relationship-based practices. Their current projects (Department of Eschatology, If It’s Not A Dream, [    ] Protection) address speculative futures— how real and fictional bureaucracies respond to apocalyptic times. What alternative life structures can emerge as governments fail us? 

g 4, 2

Over the course of a year,f22 features 22 contemporary photographers. Every other week, one limited edition fine art print is released and is only print available for that time frame. After all 22 prints are released, a pop-up exhibition is held showcase all the photographs.

Our limited-edition prints are museum-quality, printed with archival pigment inks on 100% cotton photo rag paper. Each print is numbered and hand-signed by the artist on a certificate of authenticity. Beginning April 2024, the prints are now signed on the back by the artists.

Based in Chicago, IL.

g 5, 3

General Things Press is an assemblage of various people coming together to collaborate on producing works in the world. Underneath its umbrella it contains a publishing effort, a latent radio show, a reading series, and whatever else it may need to do one day. There is nothing specific in its interests and the press so far has published a collection of dreams and their interpretations, a lecture performance as a book, a tiny book of poetry, and a poster and is looking towards printing collections of postcards, a book of visual sound scores, a photo book of a place, and a poetic short story. All of these are in various stages of conversation, collaboration, and production. General Things Press makes as it can and with vigor and excitement when it can. All works as of right now are printed locally and bound by hand by the editor.

mg 14

Photographers Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman self publish, small edition books under the banner of Grand Climacteric Press.

mg 33

Hallagan Business Machines supply and service Risograph machines.

mg 18

Founded by Lele Buonerba and Laurel Hauge in 2019, Have a Nice Day Press develops and publishes books, editions, and ephemera by artists whose work is informed by Internet culture and digital life. Currently based in Chicago, IL, the press was founded in Brooklyn, NY in 2019, coinciding with the publication of our co-authored artist book, "Attenti al Cane: Twentysix Dogs Found on Street View." After relocating to Milan, we conceived and developed a project with Berlin-based, American artist Riley Cavanaugh during the recent global pandemic. Released in 2022, "Poems Sneaking Through a Sieve" is Cavanaugh’s first publication which bridges gaps between artist book, monograph, sketchbook, and collection of materials gathered from the Internet. Our most recent release (2023) is Laurel Hauge's book "No More Than 10%," a collection of photographs of phones, laptops, and chargers seen in the corners and on floors of contemporary art fair booths.

mg 12

Hive Center for the Book Arts was founded in 2023, after much encouragement, dreaming, and community support.

We hold up community as one of our core values, and, hand in hand with that, are centering equity and diversity from the start, in all that we do.

Hive Center for the Book Arts is a place for people to gather, share ideas, and create. We believe that when humans tell their stories, it deepens and enhances community.

The five components of the book arts (writing, paper making, printmaking, book binding, and reading) can be expanded, exploded, and exponentially experimented with to connect humans through learning, making, and sharing.

Hive is the place where that happens.

g 5, 7

Homie House Press is a sisterhood, an evolving plan, and a sci-fi sequence where historically underrepresented folx are equipped with the tools to create + publish in the foto book medium. We are visual recorders navigating the current moment with a wolfpack mentality. Community over everything means that we confront with care. We are color-nerd, glitter-obsessed, sticker collectors. Call us book fairies. We are a playground where joy is big and pleasure is major. Safe spaces aren’t always accessible, but we do our best to be the big spoon. We reemerge secret stories with gentle wonder and welcome close examination. The result is always honest, sometimes playful allegory, and other times irreverent fables. Find us in the nuance between cuddling and mycelium.

Created by Brooklyn artist J. Morrison in 2010, HOMOCATS is an annual zine publication connecting the modern popularity of the feline with social politics.

Our mission aims to fight phobias, propose equal rights, combat cultural stereotypes, question social norms, resist Trumpism, and make the world a better place.

HOMOCATS publish zines, artist books, and prints, along with a line of screenprinted apparel all handmade in Brooklyn.

Organizations we support and donate to:

- Black Lives Matter
- Doctors Without Borders
- Visual AIDS
- Wires Wildlife Rescue, Australia
- ACLU
- Give India
- Planned Parenthood
- Housing Works
- Local animal shelters and rescues

con 3

Hoofprint are collaborative printers based in Chicago. Through the processes we use—lithography, relief, intaglio, screenprinting, and graphic ceramics— we present artists with new creative tools that transform and expand their art practice. Creating work with a printer in an editionable medium opens many new avenues of artistic expression. Working in multiples, artists can explore nearly infinite permutations within a single image.

Our invitational publishing project creates equity by sharing ownership of the finished editions equally with the artist, eschewing the exclusivity of the gallery model. Creating multiples allows us to sell the original work we produce at an affordable price, providing an entry point for new collectors.

mg 38

Based in Champaign, Illinois, Immaterial Books is an independent publisher of contemporary art and literature on photo media and its practice. We seek to cultivate an editorial perspective that challenges us to think critically – and in parallel – about subject matter, medium, and the book form.

g 6, 2

inner loop press is a small risograph press located in Philadelphia. Operated by designer and software engineer, Tanya Brassie (me), its main objective is to produce well-researched, educational zines and pamphlets on timely (and interesting!) topics, such as infrastructure, pollution and technology, that examine the often overlooked costs of societal progress and innovation. Using the power of print and playful design, I aim to present these topics in a new context, making them accessible to a wider audience.

mg 30

is PRESS is a Denver publishing press and art studio. is PRESS publishes short run art books and zines that deploy a sophisticated design aesthetic and high quality printing, often featuring letterpress, and hand sewn binding. is PRESS publications document conceptual time-based, and graphic art that explores the nexus of art and everyday life.

mg 6

Kait Rairden is a photographer by trader and a writer by soul. They often combine the two in order to illustrate the human experience in an intimate and gentle way.

mg 2

Kaitlin Kostus is an artist and self-publisher from Chicago, IL. She received her BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 2006, and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Art at Columbia College Chicago in 2012. Her work has been shown previously at ARC Gallery Chicago, Woman Made Gallery, and at the 1st Printmaking Triennial of ULUS in Belgrade, Serbia. Her publications are featured in the libraries of the University of Chicago, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, St. Ambrose University, and The Marguerite Duras Public Library in Paris.

mg 9

Kris Graves Projects collaborates with artists to create limited edition publications and archival prints, focusing on contemporary photography and works on paper that address issues of race, identity, equity, gender, sexuality, and class.

g 6, 5

Kristin Anahit Cass, Hellen Colman, Michael Prais, and Larry Wolf are four Chicago-based artists who make books, prints and other objects.

con 7

Le Panther is a Chicago-based artist working with screen printed artwork.

con 4

Magdalene Ma's work mainly consists of comics, illustrations and prints. They enjoy exploring immersive narratives as well as incorporating elements of nature in their work.

mg 8

Maggie Umber paints, prints, and programs graphic novels and zines. She's published three graphic novels — Sound of Snow Falling, Time Capsule, and 270° — and her work has been widely anthologized. Her new graphic novel, Chrysanthemum Under the Waves, will be out in the fall of 2024.

mg 10

Matthew David Crowther is a photographer, designer, and book artist based in Chicago. Working primarily in handmade books and zines his work takes an experimental approach to landscape photography as well as investigations of the book form with a focus on issues of climate, ecology, and the relationship between the human and non-human worlds.

mg 19

Matiz Press is a Chicago-based arts initiative founded by visual artist Miguel Limon, focused on making printmaking accessible through risograph printing. Supported by the West Town Chamber of Commerce's incubator program, Matiz Press launched a three-month pop-up storefront. This pop-up features a shop offering unique prints, zines, and DIY art kits, and a workshop space hosting engaging sessions.

Additionally, it provides a consignment platform for Chicago artists, promoting the local artist economy and enhancing community engagement.

mg 17

Meekling Press is a small “boundary defying” publishing collective based in Chicago, founded in 2012. We are a low- scale and DIT (Do It Together!) press. Many of our editions have been printed and bound in-house on our collection of old-fangled printing presses, and we have also started to expand into producing perfect-bound books. In terms of aesthetics, what matters is language, playfulness, openness to encounter, a work with a unique voice that creates a space that’s very much its own. Collaboration is central to our process and has been since we first started publishing. We work with authors to conceive of the physical / digital / conceptual framework that best suits the book or project. We are opposed to a way of bookmaking where success is measured by maximizing profit and output. We want our books to be read and shared widely, but we see the process of bookmaking and growing the press as an organic one. There’s so much strange, interesting, visionary work that’s unable to find a home because it has no precedent. We want to create a home for this work, for unique voices and messages.

g 5, 1

Nathan Pearce is a photographer who works primarily in zines and photobooks.

mg 20

NIGHTED (est. 2012) is a photo zine and book publishing house based in the Bay Area. We showcase the things that happen when the world’s not watching.

g 5, 4

Paula McCartney makes photo-based artist books that illustrate her collaborations with the natural world and consider ways that light activates both objects and environments. Her books push the possibilities of the spread and experiment with books as installation.

History-Papers publishes paper products for shelf and wall inspired by historical texts and narratives deserving of greater recognition. Our books re-present texts in a newly designed format that is grounded in the period of the writing, but invested with contemporary design and materiality.

mg 36

Pigeon Hole Press is a fine art etching studio and publishing project located in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. We collaborate with invited artists and select clients to develop and publish original limited edition etchings. Our process is motivated by a commitment to the work of emerging artists, the advancement of the intaglio medium, and a passion for the dynamic relationship between artist and printer.

mg 21

The Center for Mad Culture is a cultural organization focused on creating mad historical awareness, building personal advocacy, expanding cultural expression, and engaging in community activism. We use this mission in an effort to change the paradigms of mental health, a model solely focused on medical identities, and changing it to one of madness, a rich and diverse identity which combats societal stigma.

To do all this we host visual art exhibitions, film screenings, poetry readings, and unique events centered around the discussion of madness' role in culture.

mg 35

From a Chicago-based studio, Process/Process invites artists to make new artworks that adapt the material, aesthetic, and critical possibilities of printmaking. By moving the ideas and processes that drive an artist's practice into the realm of the printed edition, Process/Process enables artists to develop and bring to market exploratory new print-based works. All projects are close collaborations between the artist, Angee Lennard, printer, and Jessica Cochran, partner.

Both meeting and building the market for contemporary prints, Process/Process occupies a strong legacy of print-publishing in Chicago.

g 5, 6

Rascally Sophist Press is a writer and letterpress printer whose work focuses on the generative space of collaboration and passion-led practice. I believe in the power of lowering the barrier of entry to art both as a creator and an audience so I have been pursuing projects that make me happy unburdened by the concern of making something that "counts as" art. I strive to make my work accessible to a diverse public while still respecting the techniques and heritage of fine press book arts.

con 1

TheDepartment of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the students of book structures and photographic books in particular.

mg 31

Sandra Binion is an interdisciplinary artist with a 50-year history of presenting work internationally.

My practice includes video, photography, painting, installation and performance, often collaborating with artists and musicians. In 2008 I began making artist books based on the multidisciplinary work that I was producing, the first being "Ennesbo" designed by Jason Pickelman. Subsequently I have produced 16 books in collaboration with graphic designer Sam Silvio, ranging from small formats to a 312-page retrospective book.

con 6

The School of Visual Arts at Columbia College Chicago fosters a dynamic environment where artists, illustrators, and photographers are encouraged to develop their unique creative visions. Through close collaboration with art historians, students engage deeply with modern and contemporary art, blending hands-on practice with critical exploration to shape the future of visual culture.

con 8

Shira Neiss's zines and comics are self printed using a Risograph, and usually contain an interactive component which encourages the reader to participate. Her work explores what it means to exist in multiple worlds, but not belonging to any. She also explores the idiosyncrasies of growing up in a religious Jewish community in Brooklyn. And of course, good food.

mg 28

SKYLARK Editions is a non-profit publishing project based in Chicago that provides a platform for the creation and distribution photo books and art objects by emerging and established artists. Established in 2016, we have created a diverse catalog of over 16 projects.

g 6, 3

Sonnenzimmer is Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi who explore and investigate graphic expression as a means to understand humanity's ongoing evolution. They delve into the impact of visualization across various mediums like image-making, sculpture, writing, music, and more. Their focus on the ”Graphic Arts Future”, a term they coined, involves blending different media beyond conventional boundaries to investigate the “Graphic Impulse". Through an experimental and collaborative approach, they aim to spark metaphysical curiosity and contribute to a larger collective understanding of human-made and witnessed media.

mg 26

Spudnik Press is a nonprofit arts organization that provide accessible printmaking facilities and affordable printmaking classes to both beginners and experienced artists.

mg 37

super professional press is an artist collective based in Brooklyn, NY. We specialize in oddities, humor, and the absurd tied to social justice, commentary, and pop culture. Founded and managed by Naomi Desai, Amber Duan, Sarah Schneider, and Avery Slezak.

mg 13

Teddie Bernard is a queer cartoonist and zinester who is deeply interested in queer history and its relationship to the present. This has taken form in different ways: through queer-noir mystery comics, autobiofiction stories about saving old queer photographs, more experimental photo-based zines, and short fiction stories that follow genderqueer narratives. I am interested in how our relationships form and how they fall apart, explorations of both artistic and personal identity, and how the past ripples through to the present.

Most recently, I have been working to refurbish two kinds of obsolete printers: a spirit duplicator press and a gocco printer. The spirit duplicator in particular has a relationship to both print and zine history in a way I find really compelling. I am working on a comic series tentatively called Undertow that follows queer friendship in which the method of spirit duplication printing speaks to the content of the comics.

I am inspired by not just individual zinesters and their history but also the history of the gay press and how small, queer publications helped bring a community of disparate people and thoughts together. While comics are my "main medium" I am interested in photography, poetry, writing, and the different ways these mediums can reach people.

mg 3

Half Letter Press is a publishing imprint and online store initiated by Temporary Services. Temporary Services is Brett Bloom & Marc Fischer. We are based in Chicago and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Temporary Services has published over 125 booklets, books, and newspapers as an element of our collaborative work since 1998. We also publish as Public Collectors (Marc's press) and Breakdown Break Down Press (Brett) and bring these publications to fairs that we participate in.

mg 27

The Renaissance Society is at its core a space of possibility. For artists, we offer an unfettered platform for bold experimentation. Our work with artists frequently results in newly commissioned art, and these presentations in our gallery at the University of Chicago spur further scholarly and creative reflections in our publications and public programs. For visitors, we offer opportunities to engage deeply with art and artists who provide critical responses to our present moment. All exhibitions and events are free to attend.

con 9

bex ya yolk is the founder of an artists’ book bindery + publishing initiative––THUNGRY which focuses on disrupting what we’ve come to understand qualifies a Book, complicating traditional ways of book building + semantics through experimentation and queering praxis.

THUNGRY explores historical research, sociology, and speculative theory into 'the Maternal Complex' made up of subgenres like care work, reproductive design, rematriation, container technologies, abortion access activism, reproductive justice and health care disparity in the U.S, the maternal identity, matrescence, and the gestational state especially in queer folx exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + this kind of body.

con 9

TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO is a collaborative publishing practice between Izze Norman and Emma Dwyer. TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO claims to publish books, but can’t agree on what counts as a “book”. We think “books” can be bodies and space for feeling and words printed on paper. Form and narrative are of equal importance. Language has many holes. If you want to know what our books are about, read them.

mg 5

Too Blue Press is a hand papermaking project operated by me, Molly Berkson. The goal of Too Blue Press is to share unique handmade paper with my larger artistic and creative community, and also to create an outlet for me to experiment and play within the medium of papermaking. Overall, I see Too Blue Press as a project to explore the formal, material, and conceptual properties within a sheet of handmade paper.

Too Blue Press releases a new, limited edition handmade paper pack on a quarterly basis. The materials for each release are variable and experimental, and accumulated from my life, work, and habits. Discarded landscaping plants, food scraps, damaged clothes, dollar bin ephemera and more undergo processing to become paper, each sheet embedded with the colors, textures, and histories of each material.

Each pack is made with artists and creators in mind, which is reflected in the thickness and size, as well as treatment of the fiber during processing and sheet formation. Each sheet is internally sized so that water- and oil-based ink does not feather or separate. Each sheet is 11”x14” in order to allow for many possibilities and creative uses for a single sheet. I hope to see this paper transform into new projects, and I think of this project as a way to invite collaboration within my artist communities.

con 2

Ulterior Press isn't your ordinary print studio. I use centuries old letterpress printing technology in new & unexpected ways to create custom works of art.

mg 16

UPONis a New York-based art and publishing studio founded by Ivy Zheyu Chen, with only one brief — Upon Anything for Fun and Experience. With appearances at various art book fairs, our work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum Library, Yale University Library, Whitney Museum, Jameel Arts Centre, and many more.

con 5

Western Exhibitions is a contemporary art gallery that shows thought-provoking, and visually innovative artists who work across most media, with an emphasis on personal narratives and cosmologies; LGBTQ and feminist artists and issues; pattern, decoration and surface concerns; works on paper; and artist books. Western Exhibitions presents unique artist projects, curated group shows and maintains a specific inventory of artist books and multiples, gathered together as a sister entity and store, WesternXeditions.

g 5, 2

Zatara Press is an independent small press photobook imprint based around the medium of “Uniquely Designed and Collaboratively Crafted Artist’s Styled Photobooks”. Our photobooks are poetic art objects as well as statements or narratives designed around the minimalist Japanese aesthetic view of Wabi-Sabi.

g 6, 4