The city’s most stylish DIY arts magazine comes from two students out of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
Triple 3 Magazine started when co-founders Lydia Walz and James Kramer met at the school’s Textile Lab in early 2024. “We found an intersection of his passion for photography and mine in graphic design,” Walz says. Plus, they shared a desire to capture their burgeoning perspectives on contemporary art.
The name came first, then the format: featuring three artists, three interviews and three photoshoots. “Our first thought was we could do this little zine maybe once a month,” Kramer says. “In the first issue, we made a whole 150-page magazine.”
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They started spontaneously by emailing artists they liked. Subjects have included award-winning poet Eileen Myles and New York-based digital artist Maya Man.
“It feels controlled in some ways, where we are able to select and curate people,” says Walz. “Other times, I think we just follow the path of who is willing to talk to us or be behind a camera, and in these last few issues, everything’s sort of fallen into place.”
Kramer cites their interview with Myles, when they drove six hours to Michigan to meet them, as when he felt Triple 3 Magazine click into place.
“It was so DIY,” he says. “Their wisdom was something that I’ll never forget; having conversation with this huge generational difference was exciting for not only us but for them.”
The pair covers the local creative scene – Nomka Enkhee and Phoenix S. Brown are among the Milwaukee artists featured. But the scope of the magazine stretches beyond Wisconsin.
“It’s the starting point to have a broader cultural conversation extending past Milwaukee, but always keeping that Milwaukee touch,” Kramer says.
Each issue, around 150 pages, carries loose themes. The upcoming fourth edition deals in artistic devotion. Kramer says previous issues put an emphasis on the fashion, but the new one will think of it theoretically, leaning more “documentarian” than “anything too premeditated when it comes to creative direction.”
What’s next for the future of the magazine? “It didn’t cross my mind, actually, to end this,” says Walz, who graduated in the spring. “I work full-time, and [Kramer will] be a student again in fall, but, I mean, we’ve juggled more before.”
Issue four of Triple 3 Magazine is set to release this month at Melon Books (423 W. Pierce St.) and online.
