A release is a doorway, not an endpoint
This week we’ve been catching up with friends and people in our creative community. Each person we’ve talked to has brought up Metalabel. What people appreciate about Metalabel, they tell us, is that it celebrates the small and the unusual. It gives them permission to think and act differently in their own work. Because of that, it’s a space they want to be part of.
We’ve been happy to hear it. That’s what the heart of this project has always been about. Creating a new path of collective self-legitimization where we, the people around us, and increasing circles of others can lift each other up. Where our collective presence and co-mingling brings increasing meaning, opportunity, and sense that our work matters for ourselves and the world at large.
We focus on releases because they’re the most visible way to engage with these ideas. But the financial exchange is a doorway, not an endpoint. A threshold of commitment that connects us more deeply with what we believe in and who we are at a moment in time.
On either side of that exchange is magic. The magic of creating and manifesting the piece, whatever it is. This isn’t always easy, but it does provide endless depth. And then there’s the magic of discovering and submitting to something that moves you, maybe the best feeling of all.
My hot take is that the feeling the artist has when they make the work and the feeling the audience has when they take in that work are the same thing. They are a physical property, a manifestation of the Oneness, a current of God in the real world. This is what I meant when I told Spike magazine that: “Information is an echo of truth. Art is a stalactite of God.”
Whatever the trend forecasters label this belief in metaphysics, that’s the level we’re on here. Making and celebrating the work because we want to. Because we have to. Because it’s fun to. Because we ache to. Because even though we don’t always know what’s happening, we have no other choice but to.
We each come with our reasons, all valid. We want to be a place that helps make them real.
Here’s what the people are feeling this week, with commentary from Metalabel curator Danielle Paterson.
NEW RELEASES
BIZARRE WORLD OF PROPERTIES (USA EDITION) by Skyhoje
Skyhoje has pulled a series of strange, hypnotic Zillow listings into a boxed set of prints. It’s an inside look at some of the weirdest homes in America, where personal taste and fantasy collide. Bizarre World of Properties offers a quiet, unnerving tour through the edges of taste, fantasy, and domestic space.
Rich Text by Strike Design Studio
How has the software we write with started to write us back? This debut issue connects printing presses and union fights to modern design tools and AI scripts, tracing how fonts and formats enforce power. Rich Text looks at where design becomes control, and where small shifts in form can push back.
100 Days Drawing Club with Oriane Brunat ༄ by Jisu Lee and Birdcall
A hundred days, one drawing at a time. The club begins in mid-September with a live orientation and ends in late December with a closing session. Participants receive a mailed kit and share daily drawings in community, building a quiet thread of practice and mutual care. Simple structure, lasting impact.
11:11 Cigarette Incense by Zeopatra
A pack of cigarettes to hold and smell but never smoke. Each stick becomes a small ritual, a pause, a wish. Lit at one end, held like a memory, and carried like a habit. The scent is sage, lavender, and rosemary. A scented vice to keep close, ready whenever you need a moment.
DJ Meisner: Collected Drawings & Paintings presented by Do Not Research
When painting is the only thing that doesn’t feel like scrolling. Made between 2020 and 2024, these drawings and paintings layer text, image, and impulse into a restless visual stream. Trained in photography, Meisner sidesteps polish in favor of urgency, pulling from the internet, memory, and mental noise. The result feels like a sketchbook flipped mid-thought, messy, pointed, alive. This second edition gathers the work into a compact 48-page volume.
Thank you for reading and sharing this space with us.
<3
Metalabel
Had no choice but to restack from the title alone. Thankful for Metalabel and how it irreversibly changed the lives of my collaborators and I.
My experience very recently: A release: an impactful recognition of acknowledged old warmth, so, so comfortable, that for a moment there is pure peace and immense relief, followed by a tender understanding that new bliss filled opportunity arises.