Peeling off the stickers in Grøss magazine

This might be the most sensuous blog post we’ve ever published. But to show you Grøss magazine, the cool, irreverent contemporary art title from San Francisco, with a novel way of including stickers in their pages, static images just won’t do.

Dotted throughout their issues are custom-designed stickers you can peel away. But instead of leaving a gaping hole in the page and a heartbreakingly incomplete magazine, they’ve put hidden graphics, quotes and more underneath each sticker. This is done by printing a spot varnish onto the page and painstakingly placing each sticker by hand, and we love the way it adds an extra layer of surprise and interactivity to the reading experience.

For their second issue, themed ‘Sink or Swim’, Grøss explored those nerve-wracking decisions commonly referred to as “going all in” — pivotal moments that required people to take a deep breath and a leap of faith. That is exactly what the guys at record label Innovative Leisure (above) did. Artists on their roster now include BadBadNotGood, Tijuana Panthers (below), and Hanni El Khatib.

Artist Elizabeth Waggett left an uninspiring graphic design job and relocated to Abu Dhabi to become an art teacher. But the move resulted in her first solo exhibition, a pivotal move to NYC, and the launch of her artist career. Below is a quote from her first solo show.

“I was getting so many rejections and things felt really pointless,” weaver Erin M. Riley (below) said in her interview with Grøss. But she knew that her large scale weaves, threaded with erotic imagery and explicit content, was different than what was already out there.

Ben Venom first started making quilts using his old band t-shirts that were so worn that they were too embarrassing to wear in public. But the unique wear and tear of his materials is what makes his heavy metal quilts so interesting — personal identities woven into a larger history.

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