indigo octagon is the collaborative 
arts group i’m involved with (along with artists shaun morris and andrew smith), and i am pleased to present our fourth publication to you here (it’s free to view on issuu). volume 4: the compulsive orgonists of west bromwich consists of several pieces of writing and poetry by andrew accompanied by some of his photographs and my illustrations.
the publication is the fourth in a series that we’ve worked on as part of our collective; the first accompanied our exhibition if a picture paints a thousand words then why can’t i paint, with the second and third being companion pieces to exhibitions of shaun’s artwork. the idea for this one came from one of our octagon meetings where we each bring things we’ve been working on and any other ideas to the table and discuss how we might put some of these together. the starting point for volume 4 was some pieces that andy had been writing and some drawings of victorian men with beards that i had been doing (i wrote a little about them in an earlier post). after our meeting, andy then wrote several more pieces (seemingly out of nowhere), to go with my beard illustrations. shaun suggested the styling of the cover to be reminiscent of an old penguin paperback after we’d both agreed we should use andy’s striking image for the front, but the bright pink was my idea. the design work for volume 4 came to me pretty quickly and after a couple of tweaks it was done.
as well as making it available online, for people who prefer their reading matter to be printed we also produced a limited, numbered edition of copies that come with some retro cigarette card-style cards of bearded gents. the intention is for us to continue producing and publishing different pieces and then sell them all together at an arts fair, book fair or zine fair.
indigo octagon volume 4: the compulsive orgonists of west bromwich can be read here, or if you’d like a real copy for £3, get in touch via our facebook page or contact me directly.
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