It’s important that the book is not a rarefied object; it can be, but I think sometimes people think of book arts, bookmaking, and the artists' book as being something that needs to be in a case and locked up and not touched. The down and dirty side of it is really still alive and well.

Art Practical leans so much on print culture in that way, just like SFAQ, because there’s something about an issue that invites you to draw connections and comparisons between different topics and artists and subjects in a way that the endless, flowing stream of online content just flooding in from one day to the next doesn’t really encourage.

The main attraction of the artist-made zine, however, seems to be the form itself—an object made more desirable by its limited run and collectability. Such an impulse to collect ultimately runs counter to the notion of accessibility, often pushing the publications into relative obscurity.

“I couldn’t be on the page any more. Language took me out onto the street. I was moving on the page, now I wanted to move on the sidewalk, on the street. I was more thinking of the street as a field of activity rather than the page.”

If there is a San Francisco state of mind—calm, unburdened with practical worries, nostalgic, slightly mawkish, indulgent of beauty—Paul Madonna proves that this can exist anywhere, just as any San Franciscan knows that it cannot always exist in this city.