With work that includes a story of infidelity and suicide told through receipts, pamphlets entitled “A Dead Baby is a Sad Thing: A Gentle Guide to Getting Over the Loss of a Child,” and a photo essay about dead bodies, it’s almost disappointing to find out that Marc Calvary is not a raving lunatic who sleeps in an abandoned school bus and lives off of nothing but cigarettes and cheap whiskey. It’s just plain disorienting to discover that he lives in a cheerful studio apartment divided into nearly perfect quarters between an office, a loft, a kitchen, and a former dining area that has been converted into something of an indoor garden by his wife, Julia Rae Calvary. The Calvarys share the space with a cat, a fish, a ferret and a hedgehog. Ignoring the fact that he’s smoking almost constantly as he speaks, three hours of conversation with Marc Calvary slip by comfortably with a lot of laughter and minimal signs of lunacy.
“He really tries to act like he’s a crazy, bitter old man, but he’s actually an incredibly sweet and creative person,” said Libby Jean Miller, a model that appears in issue No. 2 of cherrypepper, Calvary’s self-published erotica magazine.
The 29-year-old artist and self-diagnosed manic-depressive is anything but vanilla, however. Calvary creates, designs and self publishes an array of work centered around his two main projects, the carbon based mistake and cherrypepper. Calvary’s zines, the carbon based mistake, are compilations of his photographic, literary and artistic work that address issues of depression, alienation and human frailty with devastating sarcasm and an unsettling sense of empathy.
Marc Calvary was born March 30, 1975, in La Puente, Calif. His parents divorced when he was in sixth grade and moving became an almost annual event, but he never ventured far from La Puente. In 1993, Calvary’s mother and brother moved to Oregon, where his mother had grown up. At the time, Calvary was working as a production assistant and an extra on films such as “Forrest Gump,” “Ed Wood” and “Airheads,” although the only credits he appears in are for a B movie called “Demolition Day.” In 1995, he decided to join his mother and brother.
“I had visited Oregon a lot as a kid, and I always liked it here,” Calvary said. “When I finally decided to get the hell out of California, I figured the best place to stay is somewhere that you know people and can crash on a couch.”
When Calvary was a child, he would change the dialogue in comic strips, making copies for himself and his sister. In high school, he discovered Factsheet 5, a guide to zines and alternative publishing, and was amazed to find out how many self-publishers were out there. Inspired by the thought that if others were doing it, so could he, Calvary began working on various projects that he eventually abandoned. An early attempt at a submission-based zine called Swoon yielded a crop of grim and cliché high school poetry that didn’t excite Calvary much. He planned to publish his next contributor-based collection, Fragile, but was delayed by various factors. He later abandoned the project after discovering that one of the submissions was a word-for-word copy of a column by Dave Barry.
In 1998, Calvary produced his first copy of the carbon based mistake, originally titled retarded children love comics. It wasn’t until issue No. 3 that this became the subtitle under the umbrella of the carbon based mistake. Calvary has produced a total of 10 issues, each one different from the last in both content and appearance. Issue No. 4, “Things You Told Me in Confidence,” is a 16-page, folded and stapled, photocopied collection of unsolicited confessions made to him by friends and patrons of the bar where he worked. It simply lists 25 secrets, such as “you get sexually aroused by the music from Nintendo games. Especially Super Mario Brothers,” and “you used to drown your wife’s cats because you hated them … you told her they must be running away.” His most recent issue, “The Noise Between Static,” is better described as a book. It is 100 pages, bound rather than stapled, and contains photography, short stories, an essay on a lucid dream, a story told in receipts and much more.
“What I love about self-publishing is that there are no limitations or demographics you have to cater to,” Calvary said. “You can do what you want and it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it.”
Calvary started another publication in 1998 in response to his disappointment with Playboy Magazine. According to www.cherrypepper.com, the kind of girls that Calvary was drawn to were rarely represented in such mainstream publications. He wanted to represent the beauty of women who weren’t airbrushed and surgically enhanced, so he found models and shot them on a 35 mm camera. As the project went on, complications arose that made him decide he would never do it again: Girls were dropping out at the last minute, angry boyfriends were attempting to sue him and long hours spent on design and photo development were getting tiresome.
Two years later, Calvary began receiving calls on a weekly basis from women who wanted to pose for the magazine. He bought a digital camera and decided to bring the magazine back, this time with a clear vision of what he wanted it to be. So far he has released four issues, one in full color, and has received very positive response. He is most proud of the praise he has received from women about the magazine.
“I have always supported (cherrypepper) because I think that it’s necessary,” said Julia Calvary, who has posed for the magazine herself. “In other publications there is always a sense of trying to create a personality in the women, whereas Marc uses the girls’ personalities to create the photos.”
The models for cherrypepper choose their own clothing and environments for the shoots. When the shoot is over, Calvary goes through the photos with the models and gets rid of any photos the girls don’t like. He makes the magazine from what is left.
Another of Calvary’s projects is the Art Exchange Program grant, which began as an idea between him and his friends to exchange art with one another, and was eventually developed into a contest open to all self-publishers as a way to give them something for their work. The contest has no entry fee and a prize of $150. The contest is open to any original submissions created for the print medium. Due to the broad definition of eligible submissions, Calvary is hoping to obtain sponsors and eventually award prizes for individual categories such as zines, art books and comics.
“I always said I would be a great rich person and that one of the first things I would do is organize a grant,” Calvary said.
Calvary hopes to complete issue No. 11 of the carbon based mistake, the second Sad Libs (a parody of Mad Libs), and issue No. 5 of cherrypepper by April. For more information on Mark Calvary and his Art Exchange Program grant, visit www.thecarbonbasedmistake.com.

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