Every Freitag “Hazzard” bag has a distinct life of its own before ever making its way onto your back. Each bag is typically on the road almost fi ve years before being crafted from recycled truck tarps, with individual design infl uenced by the colors, writing or markings of the tarps. Hand cut in Zurich Switzerland, the Hazzard also uses recycled seat belts as the shoulder straps, meaning every single bag that comes out of the Freitag factory is 100% unique. The pack is perfect for daily use, from storing sketchbooks and electronics, up to a 17” laptop, while also featuring a dry compartment in the front of the bag.

Juxtapoz friend and Birmingham, UK-based fine artist Lucy McLauchlan will be opening a new exhibition, Holding onto Fragments of Past Memories, at Triumph Gallery in Moscow, Russia on March 22, 2013. And if you can't make it to Russia, Lucy just released 4 new prints via The Outsiders in the UK. Which, depending on your location, could be a lot farther and/or closer. You get that Google Map program out and get yourself sorted. 

Last summer, Jerry Hsu's video series, The Killing Season, debuted on the web. The series captured Hsu's 3-week motorcycle trip through Vietnam that featured, amongst other things, a brush with death, a broken rib, and constant rain. The trip has now spawned the SPA-published, limited 150 run of The Killing Season book, featuring Hsu's documentary photography of his friends and the trip. The book is now available on SPA's site. 

Working with wood for the first time ever, former Juxtapoz featured artist Steven Harrington has turned the totem-like structures of his Remain in Balance series into three whimsical, anthropomorphic lamps. Each one represents the harmony we seek in our daily lives, an inspired and inspiring reminder of the importance of equanimity.

Gerhard Richter's artistic career has traversed a whole range of impeccably technical and precise paintings to large laboriously squeegeed abstractions and many things inbetween, all of which have further enriched his fascinatingly labyrinthine oeuvre. His November series comprised of spilled ink images on paper executed with the incorporation of benzene, acetone and black tushe in order to create a variegated range of tones and colors is a wonderfully controlled experiment...

We have been excited for this book since we got word that Taschen and author/comic authority Paul Levitz were working on it (and thank you to ItsNiceThat for the reminder). Soon in bookstores, Taschen will release The Golden Age of DC Comics, tracing the company's first decades, from its "pulp origins up to the comic book burnings of the McCarthy ’50s in more than 400 pages with comics, art, comics, photographs, and more comics."

We have been anticipating this release for over a month now. June 2009 cover artist, Grotesk, has teamed up with the limited-editioned sculpture studio, Case Studyo, to release 6ft-6in, a lamp made in ode to the legend that was #23. The piece releases today, January 25, and will be made in an edition of, you guessed it, 23. To promote 6ft-6in, Grotesk and design agency, Doubleday & Cartwright, made an animated story about the lamp that lost its way.

From the print shop, Paper Monster: "Thalassa is a new release of edition variant artworks by Swoon. The stunning original image has been shown as a site specific sculptural piece at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2011. These EV* edition variants, featuring imagery of mother nature, more specifically mother of the sea, are created using a variety of handmade, found, repurposed, and salvaged materials..."

Some pieces for your collection. This morning, The Outsiders just released three new prints from artists Conor Harrington (last seen on our December 2012 cover), Mode 2 (cover of our June 2007 issue) and Brett Amory (covered extensively on this site). Seeing that we think getting a few prints onto your walls is a good idea, let us give you a rundown on all the information for each release...

What a nice way to wrap up the year. Artist Elliott Arkin, has created a cast marble on oak base sculpture of internationally famous Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei. The sculpture, made in an edition of 100 and standing at 6" tall, is titled 1/1,000,000,000, a nod to China's population. The piece itself was made in honor of Ai's photo series in which he flips the bird at monuments like the White House and Tiananmen Square.