The Carbon Based Mistake
the carbon based mistake is zine publishing venture started in 1998 by Marc Calvary after a series of other randomly titled zines that begun in 1993.
It currently takes the form of zines & books & photography & writing & blasphemy & art & design.
Location of operations began in Los Angeles, California, migrated to Eugene, Oregon and now eternally resides in New York.
Besides the main project, a series of books and zines under the umbrella name of the carbon based mistake, side projects include: The Art Exchange Program: an annual zine contest awarding grant money and prizes in an attempt to encourage others to continue to make art, and cherrypepper: a pin-up style adults-only photography and design project.
the carbon based mistake has won the Writers Digest award for Best Art Design, has been featured in Print Magazine's Regional Design Annual from 2003-2006, How Magazine International Design Awards – 2012/2013, as well as issues 5, 6, and 7 of the Austrian design journal +rosebud.
Marc Calvary went into a hibernation during an extended spiral of depression. He finally decided to stop being such a damn baby and get back to work.
New zines have included various concepts and ideas such as one called [<a href="http://issuu.com/marccalvary/docs/societal_monsters_-_sample?mode=window&backgroundColor=%23222222">samples can be viewed here</a>] that associates Christians with serial killers and child molesters, to photographs of medicine cabinets collected in Undercover Ablutions. There have been photographic essays with fake subway signs and rants of horrible commuters documented in The Straphanger's Noose and a children's story The Thin White Duke and The Beatle about a shark hunting adventure at the Hudson River with Paul McCartney and David Bowie. As well as stickers and buttons and other odd items.
