Nicole is the listowner/moderator for the micro-press list lofibooktrade on Onelist, featuring and trading books made with less-than-expensive materials. So I shouldn't have been surprised when this zine made its way into my hands looking like a piece of art rather than a photocopied homework assignment.

From the cover, which is done in an incredibly unusual binding using wooden skewers and what looks like FIMO clay, to the collage work inside that changes just slightly with each topic presented, to the writing itself -- this book is more like a sophisticated toy than anything else. She uses marbled papers and sewn tissue and trapped book pictures that move. The collages are made out of everything from jazz snippets to rubber stamps.

Of all the elements in Textwrap #3, I liked the writing the least. And that's not really a criticism of the quality of the words chosen as it is the lack of more of them. The font is really large (and thus, photocopied well), and the delineations between subjects is nonexistent.

Despite that, or maybe because of it, the topic du jour of "relationships" and "friends" is given a dreamlike quality. It's like an MTV-age survey of the important people in her life; it's like sound bytes of human touch.

Honestly, this zine would be worth the four bucks, just to see the binding. The rest is icing on the cake. And rich icing it is.

For copies send $4 ppd to Nicole, 980 Oakshade Drive, Gahanna, OH 43230.

[ by Elizabeth Badurina ]