Artpolicecomics was a shared fantasy, it began in the art school and overtime spread about a considerable space. I think a desire existed for an art journal that was more flexible more funny and darker than what existed at the time . It failed to live up to the fantasies it evinced, it was simply not enough to contain the richness of that fantasy. Some of this was money we simply never had enough to improve the publications, we never found a publisher or even a donor patron type. So like self pubs everywhere we depended on our own resources. When I was teaching up til 1987 I was able to push the zine towards it's ambitions and to scale up to make the dream come true or partly true at least for some of the issues. When I look at issues now I see the ambition and desire in the Artpolice the efforts we poured into the project often created a publication that was very powerful and spooky, as in this is what an art journal could look like. But as my income faded so too did the Artpolice, it fell into the digest format which was very limiting and discouraged experimentation. Artpolice was killed by my lack of income and my subsequent inability to keep the project moving in a way it had moved in the past. The attacks in 1986 adjacent to the 10th MAEP Anniversary show simply destroyed my ability to run the project the way I had. I lost my job because the attacks left me in a vulnerable position at the art school. So over time my enemies and the enemies of Artpolice had their way by lies and then simply starving the me eventually the project just lost it's heart and soul. It was a sad waning I knew it was happening and I couldn't do much about it as I was hustling for every dollar I made. And the network of artists was so spread out that more than half the contributors were elsewhere than here. We barely had a crew to assemble the zines when they returned from the printer and mailings had to wait til we could raise more funds for postage.Often the foreign issues had to wait even longer often Andy Baird would post them from his own pocket just to move a new issue out into the world.
We did some very strong issues after the humiliations of the attacks but we lost our innocence. I don't think it was just the politics that bothered our critics as it was our successes over years of shows and publications. We were a true artist's collective and we connected with other artistic communities all over creation! It was our very success that caused jealousy and envy among the liars who attacked us. Seeing the Artpolice at Walker Art Center in my show there I feel some considerable pride in the quality of the zine and it's power as art. It's sad that it had to end but it remains a vivid example of what artists can do when they work together. Artpolice had some incredible moments and often right on the page before one's eyes. And we pretty much gave it away the economics of Artpolice were always it's yours if you want it. You can examine theses little magazines in several institutions here and in other places and countries we wanted to insert Artpolice into history and into the discourse on alternative visions of art.