From the Jealous Curator

Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith are artists and curators – oh, and they’re also the co-creators of Fine Line, a brand new quarterly print magazine, based in Milwaukee, that just came out last week.  It’s ad and article free… in other words, it’s a whole bunch of big, beautiful, glossy, uninterrupted, art-filled pages....

Read the full post HERE.

From Milwaukee AV Club

Gallery between the pages: Milwaukee’s Fine Line Magazine puts fine art in your hands

by Cortney Heimerl

Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber made names for themselves through the stunning and thought-provoking shows they co-curated at the now defunct Armoury Gallery, once housed inside the historic “Fortress” building just north of downtown. Partially due to fatigue and partially due to circumstance, they pulled the plug on Armoury in May 2009. Compulsively attracted to contemporary art created by emerging and semi-established artists, the duo immediately began thinking about other venues in which to share the art they discovered, and they developed the idea for Fine Line Magazine.

Read the rest of this article HERE.

From Third Coast Digest

Walking A Fine Line

by Elisabeth Albeck

Milwaukee artists and curators of the now-defunct Armoury Gallery, Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber, have recently transformed their longtime collaboration into new wave print form.

Since the gallery closed its doors in May 2009 (along with many other art spaces), Smith and Steeber have had a chance to reflect on how their artistic goals can manifest through other means.  With its first issue out this week, Fine Line Magazine is the answer to their artistic quandry.

The magazine is a lush and stylish synthesis of  art from around the world and across many mediums including photography, print and collage and text. The focus of the magazine, like the gallery space that preceeded it, is to collect work from artists who are largely unknown, and to showcase the pieces in an uncluttered, uncompromised format.  The result is a product that is guided by a subjective, private logic.

Read the rest of this article HERE.

Q&A from the Journal Sentinel/Art City

Art City Asks Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith
by Jessica Zalewski and Mary Louise Shumacher
 

Note from Mary Louise: "Art City Asks" is short Q&A with artists or art-interested types in, visiting or having some relationship with Milwaukee, answered variously via e-mail, in-person interview, video chat or whatever format we can come up with. It was the brainchild of Art City contributor Nathaniel Stern. This "Art City Asks" was conducted by Jessica Zalewski (pictured left), one of Art City's newest contributors. Many of you will know Jessica from her role at the Racine Art Museum as well as her current and recent associations with CoPA, the Milwaukee Film Festival, Guildess and many other things. She interviewed Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith, the former owners of the Armoury Gallery. Steeber and Smith are launching Fine Line magazine on Friday.

Jessica Zalewski: How do you to choose particular artworks/artists?

Jessica Steeber: Cassandra and I have very similar aesthetic tastes, give or take, so choosing art that we're both interested in has always been fairly easy. Almost every artist we find comes from a variety of blogs we look at; for the first issue it was just a matter of sorting through the 100+ artists we now have in mind to create a cohesive set of images and ideas to present in the first issue. The particular artworks were unfortunately determined more often by availability from the artist as opposed to our personal preference, but within those confines we were able to maintain a visual cohesiveness and find what we needed or wanted.

Read the rest of the Q&A HERE.

From OnMilwaukee.com

Friends approach new art magazine with curators touch  
by Bob Purvis 

Operators of a short-lived but popular Downtown art gallery are collaborating once again, this time on a beautifully-crafted international art magazine.

Best friends Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber, both 27, are about to launch Fine Line, a well-designed, mostly writing-free magazine featuring the work of 14 artists from around the world.

The magazine's full color debut issue, themed "Welcome Home," is an immersive blend of sparse and poetic prose, drawing, painting, photography and collage that feels more akin to visiting a gallery than picking up a magazine.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Press Release - Issue One : Welcome Home

New International Arts Magazine based in Milwaukee

Launch party Friday, November 19^th

7:00 – 11:00

Studio Deep End

Milwaukee based artists and curators Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber are pleased to announce Fine Line Magazine, a follow up project to the now defunct Armoury Gallery, which closed in spring of 2009.  

Fine Line is a hybrid between the gallery and traditional magazines; free of all advertising, reviews, previews and biographies, Fine Line instead presents carefully curated thoughts and ideas.  The statement:

Fine Line Magazine exists simultaneously to explore contemporary art, support emerging artists and most importantly, to inspire a feeling that is uniquely human and self aware. It is a concrete, aesthetic expression of its creators, equal parts documentation and dialogue – a work of art in itself.

Fine Line presents only images and text – ideas without definition, questions without answers. It is curated for the viewer’s consideration and becomes a tangible guide to a thought, moment or expression. Somewhat like a deep breath, a pause in the daily go, Fine Line magazine creates a space to stop and consider the moments that make up our lives.

 The first issue, titled “Welcome Home” features the work of 14 artists spanning 7 states and 7 countries. It will be available to the public at a launch party to be held Friday, November 19^th at Studio Deep End in Milwaukee’s 3^rd Ward. A limited 500 copies of the first issue will be available for $10 each. 

Participating artists, in order of appearance:

Christopher Gorski (Portland, OR) 
Sidney Pink (Baltimore, MD) 
Jeremy Daigneault (Evergreen, CO) 
Eva Eun-Sil Han (Seoul, South Korea) 
Casey Jex Smith (San Jose, CA) 
Jennifer Bastian (Los Angeles, CA)  
Inca Pan (Taichung, Taiwan)  
Matthew Craven (Brooklyn, NY)  
Li Hui (Hangzou, China)  
Alexandro Garcia (Uruguay)  
Benedetta Falugi (Follonica, Italy) 
Virginia Echeverria Whipple (Santiago, Chile) 
Hollie Chastain (Chattanooga, TN)  
Buddy Wakefield (Seattle, WA)

From the Journal Sentinel/Art City blog

Local artists launch international art magazine  
by Mary Louise Schumacher

Many of us were pretty disheartened last year when the Armoury Gallery shuttered. The artists and curators who ran it, Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber, injected our art scene with something unique and hard to put words to. I always found something deeply human and thoughtful in the shows they put together. So much of the art seemed simple and effortless, in some respects. yet it kept me thinking longer than I would have imagined.

I knew that these gals would not go away for long, and I am happy to report that after mulling over many different types of projects, they've decided to launch an international art magazine called Fine Line. And, like their gallery, it will be very much their own. I got a peek at the mock up a few weeks ago and am very excited by the model they've devised. It will be nothing like the art magazines we know. It will be free of advertising, reviews, previews and biographies. It will present "carefully curated thoughts and ideas," they say.

Read the rest of the article HERE.