Pied-à-terre is a space run by McIntyre Parker from 2009 – ongoing. This publication gathers texts and contributions by artists, curators, and writers who visited or worked with Pied, forming a subtle portrait of the project.

With contributions from Benjamin Ashlock, Kim Bennett, Amanda Gracia Blanco, Juliette Blightman, Alice Channer, Shannon Ebner, Anthony Huberman, Blueberry Elizabeth Morningsnow, Kim Nguyen, Josh Minkus, K.R.M. Mooney, McIntyre Parker, Scott Ponik, Lisa Radon, Nick Raffel, Sophia Rhee, Michael Snow, Jordan Stein, Diego Villalobos, Hazel White.

Offset printing by Gary Robbins, sewing and letterpress by Aaron Flint Jamison.

A project by Will Brown. Text by Jean Conner. Photographs by Jason Fulford.

Artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner’s (1933–2008) mobility was severely limited for the last five years of his life, when he rarely left the San Francisco home he shared with his wife, Jean. To aid in his physical navigation of its spaces, he worked with assistants to install a succession of solid brass handles in each and every room—surrounding the stove, down the boat-like stairwell, inside the recesses of the bedroom closet. At last count, the handles, a labyrinth of critical support, numbered 163. Still in situ after his death in 2008, the handles are arguably Conner’s last great work—at once physical and metaphysical, fragmentary and elusive, elegant and anonymous.

Will Brown is a collaborative project founded by Lindsey White, Jordan Stein and David Kasprzak.

In 1965, Jay DeFeo (1929–89) was evicted from her San Francisco apartment, along with The Rose, the two-thousand-pound painting that would make her legendary. The morning after her front window was sawed open to make way for the colossus, DeFeo attempted to salvage Estocada, a large-scale painting on paper stapled directly to her hallway wall. Unfinished and never documented, the little-known piece was ripped down in chunks, saved, and reanimated years later in the studio through photography, photocopy, collage, and relief.

Rip Tales traces Estocada’s material history, woven into this narrative are other Bay Area stories that likewise privilege transformation, multiplicity, intuition, and absence. Drawing on interviews and personal experience, curator Jordan Stein explores these themes in the work and lives of artists Zarouhie Abdalian, April Dawn Alison, Ruth Asawa, Lutz Bacher, Bruce Conner, Dewey Crumpler, Trisha Donnelly, and Vincent Fecteau.

A talk with Jordan Stein and Hilton Als about the book here.