The works of our cover stars, Paper Rad should be familiar to anyone who follows contemporary art, comic books or experimental or independent music, but that’s not to say that any of their admirers would even know anything about the individual artists who form the group. Coming out of the same American North East that spawned Forcefield and Lightning Bolt and the Fort Thunder art scene as a whole, Paper Rad are fans of a little unforced mystery as much as they are fans of working in every medium they humanly can while sticking to their ideals like glue. How do they do it? We are proud to say that we have examples and answers! Sister Corita Kent is someone we have been hoping to do a story on for a few issues now. Her work is probably going to be making a major public comeback soon and that is truly for the good of all people on this earth. For those of you who don’t know, Corita was a catholic nun/artist/teacher/mentor person in Los Angeles in the 1960’s. Her colorful, politically charged images from that period are seriously some of the coolest things you’re going to see this year (for real!) so get ready. In our story here, maybe for the first time since the 1960’s, we present to you pages and pages of her awesome works, but also a bit about her personal story. In a short span of time, due to her inspiring art and teaching methods, Corita went from being an anonymous art teacher at an all girls Catholic school to a minor celebrity in art circles. Her freedom (both in art and life), however, didn’t always fit in with the official church doctrine and in the interest of freedom of expression; she fought against the church tooth and nail. We present it all here along with a short article by Amber Abramson about her teaching techniques that should really get your fires burning. (Check out her rules for students and teachers seriously words to live by!).

For about a year now our good friend (and practically staff photographer) Cheryl Dunn has been telling us about her adventures at Creative Growth (a center for artists with developmental disabilities in Oakland, California). We were fans of the work that the artists from the center produced well before, so when Cheryl started going there regularly to work on a feature documentary about said work , we started grilling her for details. She offered to share her very personal story in words and images along with an amazing interview she conducted with the Center’s director, Tom di Maria. Some of the Creative Growth artists have been gaining some pretty heavy success recently and it’s interesting to hear how this is being handled. Not only by the artists themselves, but as they run up against prejudices that exist within the art world. The article provides living proof that the creative spirit can overcome almost any difficulties life can throw at you. Suffice to say we are honored and ecstatic to present this message here. You may know of frequent ANPQ contributing photographer David Horvitz from his photos of Los Angeles all ages experimental punk scene in issue one, but did you know about his sort of regular side job as merch person and in-house photo-documenter, for the band Xiu Xiu? He stepped it up their last US tour by offering to shoot and return a package of Polaroid film of the band on tour for any person that gave him one along with return postage at any point before the tour was over. After mailing all 1200 photos to their rightful owners, The David Horvitz Xiu Xiu Tour Polaroid project 2 was complete. A book collecting the entire project is due next year, but in the meantime we have a heavy sampling of this project that had so many obsessive indie kids checking their mailboxes this fall.

But that’s not all!! We’ve included little features on some of the little (but important) things around the world that get us amped on living and on general scene building as a whole. Australia’s own Monster Children Magazine recently opened a cool little gallery down under, that’s making some nice things happen for the Sydney scene that we thought worthy to bring to your attention. Treat Street Secret Bakery is a full-on guerilla baking operation that shows up randomly on street corners and in driveways brought to you by visual artist (and the chief leader of the clever and fun baking world’s resistance movement), Clare Crespo. Our friend Mike Burnett brings us a piece about Bean Gilsdorf, a punk rock quilter from Portland, Oregon, and last (but definitely not least), Nate Harrington writes a story about Family, a brand new book/music/stuff store in LA.