20 Years Later, Journal’s Pages Remain Works of Art

Joe Cardella of Ventura publishes one of the most exclusive art journals in the country. Problem is, most folks have never heard of it.

One reason is that so few copies of the hand-crafted collection of original artwork and poetry are distributed--no more than 100 a month. Despite that limited number, the names on the ARTLIFE circulation list are impressive--they include Yale University and the Getty Trust in Santa Monica.

Getting out each issue of the Ventura County-based publication could charitably be described as a publishing nightmare.

Days after mailing off the May issue, Cardella said he was ready to call it quits. He had had enough of late submissions, grueling deadlines and hand-collating the 40-page journal that includes original, hand-signed artwork.

But Cardella admits he is ready to quit after every issue.

Two decades of pulling off the nearly impossible month after month can do that. But then he takes a deep breath, beats on his conga drum and starts again.

“A lot of it has been sheer will and pure doggedness on my part,” he said. “It’s incomprehensible for most people to think this happens each month.”

ARTLIFE, which sells for $50 per copy, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The journal will be honored Saturday during a panel discussion and reception at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum during this weekend’s Santa Barbara Poetry Festival.

“It is very unusual for something like that to survive that long,” said Charles Summa, manager of the Arts Library at Yale University. “A lot of experimental art journals don’t last very long at all.”

Summa attributed ARTLIFE’s longevity to the fact that there isn’t anything quite like it, with its hand-prepared pages, original art and limited production. Contributors are not paid for their work.

Entries Come From Around World

Although ARTLIFE is produced at Cardella’s home in Ventura, only 5% of the journal’s contributors live in Ventura County. Entries come from across the United States and as far away as Germany and Spain. A Macedonian artist frequently submits cartoon-style sketches about war.

Only 100 copies are produced each month, but with several of those going to archives at such places as Yale and the New York Public Library, they are assured a long life.

That makes ARTLIFE a valuable time capsule for the art world, said Phil Taggart, the journal’s poetry editor.

“You have a big chunk of what would be considered edgy art in America, probably in the world, right there. I don’t think you could find a publication that has that anywhere,” said Taggart, also of Ventura.

It’s also a good representation of the poetry scene. Yusef Komunyakaa, who won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, had submitted a series of poems to ARTLIFE in the late 1980s, Taggart said.

Artists send in 100 signed copies of their work--all on 8 1/2 by 11-inch paper--and the more each page is handmade, rather than created by computer or copier, the better, Cardella said.

Artists have glued a variety of objects to their pages. The list includes dominoes, artificial turf, paint brushes, compact discs, melted cassette tapes, tiny paper parasols, sheet music, red pepper packets, rubber gloves and dirt. One artist’s submission was a full page of ceramic tiles.

For the cover of the 200th issue back in spring 1999, Mel Zaid of Santa Barbara created a text-covered profile of a face made of concrete.

This is a journal that invites people not only to read, see and think about its pages, but also to touch and smell them.

Cardella said his strangest submission featured dried seaweed and herring.

“Seeing a dried herring on a page startled some people,” he said. “The archivists cringe when they see something like that show up, because they don’t know how it’s going to hold up.”

Cardella, 55, draws the line at pornography and strongly religious material, but he is open to just about everything else. He started ARTLIFE as a way for artists to exchange ideas, “a conversation among creative people” he explained in the first, four-page issue, which has since expanded tenfold and publishes 11 times a year--with a combined December-January issue.

Journal Seen as an Outlet

He was living in Santa Barbara at the time and felt the arts community there was conservative and closed to outsiders. The journal gave him and other artists an outlet.

Cardella, a self-described pack rat who likes to turn society’s discards into art, has contributed a page to nearly every issue and one cover annually until two years ago when he cut back his personal production. His 1995 cover featured Scrabble tiles, Bingo markers and black lace in a piece he called “Fax This.”

In recent years, there are fewer examples of such labor-intensive collages and more copier- and computer-generated pages in ARTLIFE. Artists these days are more reluctant to spend the time to create 100 original pieces for a single edition, Cardella said.

Although artwork constituted most of the journal’s pages during its first 10 years, poetry now accounts for about three-quarters of the publication.

ARTLIFE prides itself on its hand-made touches, but it too has embraced technology. Cardella started a cyber-museum, ARTLIFE MOCA (Museum of Conceptual Art), two years ago. Visitors to the Web site choose an exhibit and find themselves looking at three walls full of paintings or collages that can be examined more closely with a click of the mouse.

A more subtle change in the journal speaks to the profound impact ARTLIFE has had on Cardella, a divorced father of a 25-year-old son.

Cardella originally named the publication ART/LIFE, a reflection of his premise that art equals life and life equals art.

But Cardella said the two were separate entities for him at the time.

Two years ago, he deleted the slash from the journal’s title.

“Over the years [art and life] have merged and become the same thing” for me, said Cardella, who also designs books and magazines for a museum in Houston. “As it did in reality, it did on the page as well--art and life became one thing, with no distinction.”

In its two decades, ARTLIFE has provided much more than the creative outlet Cardella was originally looking for.

“It gave me a career, a life’s work, a livelihood, an identity,” he said. “It has given me everything.”