Curious Publishing was invited to exhibit at the Wignall Museum at Chaffey Community College this past Summer. The curator, Rebecca Trawick met with me and my husband at Art & Bodega when we were still located in the Claremont Packing House earlier this year to discuss the possibility of doing an installation in the form of a pop-up looking like our shop (irl). Since we knew we’d be closing the shop soon, we decided that we’d go with our classic “curious pink” as the foreground of our show and build from there. The installation ended up being a library of our greatest hits or past published works, along with three unique art pieces created for the show. My good friend, Nicholas Aceves created an XL zine highlighting some of my cross-industry work and how that ties in the Curious mission. I opted to create three CURIOUS Mag covers, one each depicting a portrait of the “founders” of Curious. Another work I created was a zine/sculpture featuring quick doodles of my recent experiences traveling.

Curious has been in a sort of flux state for the past couple of years, and much of my time has been spent traveling for freelance work or exhibiting at art book fairs around the west coast. I think it’s important that I start to blend together my life’s experiences with the work I do with curious in an intentional way. It’s not something that’s been easy for me in the past but I’m starting to learn that I seriously dig being transparent with my audience. The more I am able to share about my life, the stronger my endeavors in publishing and art will become.

It was exciting to see this installation come to fruition. My sincerest thanks go out to Rebecca Trawick, Roman Stollenwerk and Andrew Hadle who were so helpful designing the layout for our installation. Thanks for letting me go pink from floor to ceiling!

Rebecca Ustrell, *Memory Chime*, 2024, Recycled paper, brass rings, bells, vintage fasteners

September 3 – November 16, 2024
Reading Room: Zines, Comix & Other Radical Texts presents a loud and proud exhibition that celebrates the contemporary relevance and impacts of zines and comics on culture today, on the visual and literary arts, and in the Inland Empire region of Southern California.