The Constructed Book: Filter: Volume 3

Filter, not to be confused with the ultra-popular music magazine, is a prestigious, hand-crafted literary journal based out of Seattle. Jennifer Borges Foster is the driving force behind its existence. Her efforts should be praised. Volume 3, just released via a party at the Fremont Abbey two weeks ago, is big, beautiful and worth every cent.

Taking Volume 3 out of its plastic wrapper and setting aside the brown-paper color-by-numbers cover insert is like opening a present, like being young and spontaneous. There is a certain weight to this book, a certain heaviness, which demands and depends on the reader’s curiosity. The container, if you will, that is about to be opened, is a box with a magnetic lid. The “cover art” on this box is a seven-plate letterpress depicting a horseback rider leading a bountiful pack mule through rough and pastoral back-country wilderness (the letterpress having been put into reality by Kate Fernandez).

On the edge of this box the colors of the letterpress plates are listed, from light pink to dark blue. This nonchalant “extra” is representative of the whole book. Extras form the whole is the statement. What is about to be opened will remain an important regional collection of artwork, literary and visual, that is filled, as a book should be, with anecdotal evidence of care and precision. Every time this box, this chest, this book is opened, new things are destined to spill out of it.

It’s hard enough just opening it, just taking that magnetic strip and pulling it up ever-so-slightly, but seeing what’s on the outside ultimately makes you want to find out what’s on the inside. It’s the story of Pandora all over again, and this time chaos is in creativity. This time opening the box is worth all the risk.

Before continuing, let’s just understand one thing: this book is gorgeous. To make the comparison to the visually renowned McSweeney’s literary magazine is necessary, but with caution, as there are obvious similarities in innovation and bedazzlement and but not really that many similarities at all. As much as I was inspired and motivated and intimidated by Dave Eggers’s long-running magazine, something seems a lot more wholesome with Filter. Something seems grassroots and independent about it. Maybe it’s the hand-crafted history of the journal as a whole, with every copy being stitched by hands of people living in this area, or maybe it’s the insane amount of volunteer help that went into the entire production of every single copy. Filter is not found at bookstores all over the country. It’s to be found purchased directly from the owner. It probably won’t ever get the coverage or readership of McSweeney’s, but that’s why it’s so valuable, with this volume in particular a true artifact only nearing a month old.

The most noticeable quality about the contents of Filter 3 is the format. Instead of an individually bound tome, the journal’s casing contains a massive quantity of mini-books. Pamphlets, broadsides and inserts all make up the whole. Each individual item or component is slightly different from the rest, but they all feature bio notes on their respective reverse sides. The visual art is printed on light-weight paper, glossed to perfection, in deep color. Gala Bent, the first contributor in the magazine (is the order the same for all copies?) has crystalized graphite and gouache abstractions. Somewhat later, the haunting graphite erasures of Amanda Manitach appear in their hollow, heavily-contrasted darkness. Other surprises include the mini-graphic novel/cartoon insert of David Lasky, and the highlighted mathematically-dense found art of Sharon Arnold. There are countless other encounters with visual brilliance, but sharing them all would take away that incessant element of surprise.

The visual pieces serve as dividers amongst the denser material: the written word. Filter is composed of so many regional writers it’s nearly uncanny. From the academic to the experimental, from the professional to the blue collar, so many circles of creative writers are represented that it would be impossible to recite them all. But here are a few: the glyph-like environ-poems of nationally-acclaimed mover and shaker poet Zachary Schomburg, of Portland, make their own steady appearance. A slightly confessional flash fiction story about a volcano and a dishwasher is an impenetrable introduction to the work of Belltown’s Chris Dusterhoff. University of Washington MFA-candidate Erika Wilder, who was recently published by PageBoy (which I reviewed recently), has a stunning experimental memoir on "Lolita."

Every piece to the Filter puzzle offers something new, fresh and rewarding. Themes are explosive, hesitant, controversial or beloved. Characters and voices and personas are pronounced, difficulty, welcoming and indefinable. There’s honestly something for everyone in this magazine, which is a goal that many experienced magazines try to reach, but few actually do. And at only Volume 3, this success of rich material should be noted well. The journal itself is all about process, sharing creative integrities through a group vision and bringing the artistic entities, the individuals, toward one another, for through the magnetism and into the combination there is a certain reverence, a glow that does not superimpose itself over the world outside of the magazine, but instead turns to represent that world as acutely as possible.

Jennifer Borges Foster and the entourage of editors—Emily Kendal Frey, Kate Lebo, Tonaya Thompson and Emmy Burns—managed to capture the macrocosmic lit-verse of the Pacific Northwest within the bounds of a single work of art. This book, this created grouping of text and images, is a landmark, a historic event. It is an artifact already aged, and yet still so fresh. It’s a house of pieces, to borrow a line from one of the readers at the release party, a book that you will want to take off the shelf and share with someone you want to impress. But let us also not forget that it’s not over. This is just the next step for the literary realms in this area to fixate and explode.

Filter is available here for purchase. You can buy the latest volume at four different price brackets: $350.00 (the Art Hero tier), $100.00 (the Art Patron tier), $75.00 (the Art Supporter tier) and $50.00 (the Student, Artist and Poor Art Supporter tier). There are limited copies available (300 to be exact). At the main blog-site you can also find a list of all the contributors and see videos of it (and the previous two volumes) being created in real time.

Greg Bem just finished a three year stint at Borders Books. In his free time he co-curates the Breadline series at Vermillion Wine Bar. His blog is the Stale. He is currently learning how to play tennis on the courts at Oregon and Rainier.

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