Moveable Type letterpress van stops in MPLS tonight; afterparty at the Zine Apothecary

Moveable Type — a 1982 Chevy van loaded with letterpress equipment — makes a pit stop in Minneapolis tonight with a workshop and talk at the Minneapolis Center for Book Arts, followed by a potluck after-party in South Minneapolis at the Zine Apothecary, a resource center for zine makers near Powderhorn Park.

Moveable Type founder Kyle Durrie, fresh off a stop in Iowa (which is neither Idaho nor Ohio) brings her mobile letterpress studio to MCBA (1011 Washington Ave S) from 4 to 7 as she gives visitors a chance to try out a press and hear about her itinerant printing practice (a slideshow’s part of the deal). Then the festivities move to the Apothecary (3310 15th Ave S.), a zine library created by artist/photographer Lacey Prpić Hedtke, where zine makers and fans can share a dish and their work.

“I’d been admiring the Moveable Type truck from afar and was sad it wasn’t coming to Minneapolis,” Hedtke explains via email. “I must have sent out an Aquarius brain wave, because MCBA asked if I’d want to do an afterparty at the Zine Apothecary if they could get the Type Truck to do an event at MCBA.”

She says that following the MCBA event, the type truck along along with the Fly Away Zine Mobile will head to her place, where zine fans can peruse and check out zines (three-week limit). A sister project of the Zine Apothecary, the Fly Away Zine Mobile will be open as a reading loung, she adds, “complete with a stripy orange cat.”

Opened this May, the Zine Apothecary combines the zine libraries from the Belfry Center for Social and Cultural Activities and the Stevens Square Center for the Arts, offering some 2,000 zines on topics ranging from politics and health and wellness to food and photography.

“I’m really excited about our large how-to section, and would like to build the collection so that’s one of our main focuses,” she notes. “We also have a ‘Weird’ section, and a ‘Little of Everything’ section.”

With the surge in food-truck culture of late, the project seems to fit into the zeitgeist. But Hedtke points out Minneapolis’ unique culture as more of a factor.

 

“It embodies a lot about what I love about Minneapolis — it’s sort of private, sort of public. It’s sort of underground, but enough people know about it that it’s not unapproachable. The Zine Apothecary is a little old fashioned in its content, a little new-fangled in its approach, and has something for almost everyone.”