A zine (pronounced ZEEN) is a handmade magazine about a specific topic.
“Zines have been around since the early 20th century, and have been an enormous part of underground and non-commercial publication.” *
I learned about zines from Austin Kleon who has a great collection of printables zines and resources on his website. He also has a tutorial to make a “mini zine” from a single sheet of paper.
Having tried both ways I prefer to make zines out of sheets folded in half. Sometimes I use a single page and other times I nest and staple them.
“Zines are characteristically cheap to make, often photocopied, and have a distinctly DIY look. Often, they represent the voices of people on the fringes, and their content is hyper local.” *
Zines were bore to share information and amplify voices that weren’t often represented in mainstream media. As a result, zine making has a rich history among marginalized communities, fandoms, and activists.
If you want a deep dive into the history of zines and how to make your own I recommend this free zine by The Public in Canada.
Zinesters (people who make zines) often value the act of sharing information over an potential profit. Zines are made cheaply so they can be easily sold, traded or given away.
Zines fall into the cheap art philosophy which I’m passionate about.
Zine making is just one kind of artist publishing. Any type of independently produced book or publication is a form of artist publishing. This can range from self publishing books, newspapers, zines, or artist books.
Artist books often embrace time intensive methods and archival quality materials. As a result they are often more highly priced.
If you’d like to learn more about artist publishing I’d recommend starting here. Or browsing my artist publishing board on are.na.
I’ve been focused on zine making, but collect both zines and artist books. I may explore creating an artist book when I complete my fine art collection.
My Zine Collection
Here’s a peek at my zine collection and links to the artist’s shops.
There are lots of places online and “IRL” (in real life) that are dedicated to archiving zines. If you’d like to archive your zine you can check with any of the organizations below, your local library, or upload to archive.org (like this.) Every archive has it’s own mission so be sure to make sure your zine is a good fit before submitting.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
We can’t single-handedly solve all of the world’s problems. But we can collaborate with others to make a difference. We each have our own unique strengths to contribute.
Art for Social Change
Tell a story to imagine a better world.
Draw, paint, collage, or print visual art to raise awareness of issues.
Write a zine, book, or blog post to educate others to share your own experience (especially powerful and needed for marginalized voices.)
Collaborate to paint a mural or create pubic art.
Hold a quilting bee or host a creative community to make blankets, hats, etc. for those who need them.
Tell a story, write a poem, or make art that encourages empathy.
Make a poster, zine, or postcard about a cause.
Make art to regulate your own nervous system.
Curate an art show, publication, or performance to support or educate about a cause.
Raffle or sell something you’ve made to raise funds.
Sell merch on Threadless with a percentage to charity.*
You can grab these designs on shirts, mugs, and several other things from my new Threadless shop. 10% of the profit will go to the ACLU.
Love snail mail?
This is a virtual edition of my Art for Social Change zine for my monthly subscribers.
If you’d like a printed copy (plus postcards + stamps to write your elected representatives) you can:
My creative process is cyclical, but I like to think I am orbiting closer to true north.
I took last month off from blogging and wrote a personal update about mental health for my newsletter instead. I had more replies than ever.
Just another reminder that while I like structure sometimes I create needless work for myself. I need to shift my output to match my capacity. Not the other way around.
Last month I had migraines every other day. They let off when I lessened my computer time. It’s tough because I love blogging and connecting online, but I need to pace myself.
This means I won’t be digitizing the zines any more.
I need to slow down on migrating my archive. Otherwise my website is nearly “done” except for the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Last month’s newsletter also mentioned how well the boundaries I’ve created to protect my mental health are working. Which means I actually have capacity to take action. It’s unfortunate that my Masters degree, which focused on art for social change, is more relevant by the day.
Rather than spiraling into despair I’m focusing on positive actions that can be done.
My next step is to begin migrating my autism educational resources to my website. This is one small step to combat the misinformation and harm being spread by the US government. As well as proofing our picture book How it Feels to Me which is an #ownvoices book by two autistic adults about sensory processing.
But neurodivergence is just one of many groups being targeted right now.
So I’m working with some friends to create an advocacy resource library that spans multiple issues and suggests ways you can make a positive impact.
I hope these resources will help anyone feeling stuck or hopeless.
With collective action we can support each other and bring about positive change. 🌈
“I believe in the core of my being is that art can help reach people where political rhetoric and facts can’t. There’s something magical about identifying with a fictional character, or getting swept up in a story, or just being shocked by a piece of weird art into seeing things in a different way.”
“There are a few basic themes that I think are pretty immutable, however. And the biggest one is: sometimes it is hard to understand people who were raised in a culture totally different from your own, but it is vital to try because we all fight together or we shatter.
These early index cards were specifically collected for ideating the type of creative community I want to cultivate.
There are a lot of threads to pull on here.
“the aspirations of Black Mountain College: namely to inspire us in an expansive notion of the arts and creativity through close observation, physical engagement, service, and play…”
Jill Medvedow (p. 18)
Keeping an expansive view of art and what it can do and be. It also feels important that creativity can both be of service and play which so often seem at odds with one another.
“artistic exchange” and “the cultural ecosystem is a theme”
Jill Medvedow, p. 18
“the effect of a long gestation period cannot be under estimated”
p. 20
“Josef Albers insisted that art display a rigorous understanding of its material properties.”
p. 25
This quotes are at the heart of a desire for social change. It still feels very radical to value the wisdom of youth. And also the focus on practical learning.
“We must realize that the world as it is isn’t worth saving; it must be made over.”
John Rice, p. 30
“We should realize there is a wisdom of youth as well as wisdom of old age.”
John Rice, p. 31
“There are things to be learned through observation (that) cannot be learned any other way.”
John Rice, p. 31
“Whatever cannot be expressed in words cannot be learned in words.”
It feels very relevant to Neurokind as platform to share experiences that may transcend or defy language.
John Andrew Rice and student David Bailey, Blue Ridge campus, Black Mountain College, circa 1933 or ’34
“…there is something of the artist in everyone and the development of this talent, however small, carrying with it a severe discipline of its own, results in the students becoming more sensitive to order in the world and within himself than he can ever be through intellectual effort alone.”
John Rice, Black Mountain College Bulliten, 1935 (p. 34)
Bucky Fuller, Elaine de Kooning, Josef Albers, students, and a thing that would become, a year later, the first geodesic dome
“The summer sessions permitted an extraordinary form of cross-pollination.” 🐝🐝🐝
“Almost none of the summer faculty was paid a salary but received instead room and board and some relaxing time in the country.”
Helen Molesworth , p. 42
“The summer sessions modeled a form of artistic community, one that de Kooning took with him to New York in 1950, when he helped to found the Artists’ Club, a gathering dedicated to the presentation of avant-garde ideas.“
“Black Mountain helped to establish the idea that an art school is a place of competing and diverse ideas, where the task of the faculty is to commit to a sense of rigor instead of personal taste, and the job of the students is to navigate the complexity of the options, in the hope of finding their own paths through what John Cage called “the big question,” namely, “What are you going to do with your time?”[^3]
Helen Molesworth, p. 45
“the relation is not so much of teacher to student as of one member of the community to another.”
Black Mountain College Catalogue Leap Before You Look, p. 80
“In essence there exists the utmost freedom for people to be what they please. There is simply no pattern of behavior, no criteria to live up to. People study what they please, as long as they want to, idle if they want to, graduate whenever they are willing to stand on examination, even after only a month here, or a year, or whatever, or they can waive all examinations, and graduations. They can attend classes, or stay away. They can work entirely by themselves, or they need not work whatever. They can be male, female, or fairy, married, single, or live in illicit love.”
Jack Tworkov , p. 42
These examples highlight an egalitarianism and exchange of ideas that I’d like to foster in creative spaces I facilitate.
John Andrew Rice holding court with students (including Dave Bailey, in hat), Black Mountain College, circa 1933 or ’34
“What you do with what you know is the important thing. To know is not enough.”
John Rice, pg. 77
“There were no letter grades at Black Mountain College, nor were there required courses, set curricula, standard examinations, or prescribed teaching methods.”
“When John Rice established Black Mountain College in 1933, he sought to create a school that dissolved distinctions between curricular and extracurricular activities, that conceived of education and life as deeply intertwined, and that placed the arts at the center rather than at the margins of learning.“
“For Rice, education was registered not by grades or other standard criteria but in a heightened desire to learn and to question, which would lead students to an expanded aptitude for solving a range of problems and to a richer sense of self.”
Ruth Erikson, p. 77
“WE DO NOT ALWAYS CREATE ‘WORKS OF ART,’ BUT RATHER EXPERIMENTS; IT IS NOT OUR AMBITION TO FILL MUSEUMS: WE ARE GATHERING EXPERIENCE.”
Josef Albers, p. 33
Josef Albers giving Nan Chapin (and others) painting pointers, Lee Hall porch, Blue Ridge campus, Black Mountain College, spring 1936
“Josef Alber’s thought of teaching art as analogous to teaching a language, hence the students had to begin with the building blocks of aesthetics; he called drawing a ‘graphic language’ that was both a ‘visual and manual act.’ “
“Alber’s color course… proved that the experience of color was ultimately fungible.”
For example: Cutting up and collating bits of paper to see how they change in relationship to each other.
Helen Molesworth, p. 34
“The relativity of our experience of color has philosophical and ethical implications, as well. If our experience of a piece of colored paper can change so demonstrably, then what side footing do we have when we appeal to ‘common-sense’ truths like color?”
“forms are subject to perception – what Albers calls experience.”
“The task of training students to see, “to open eyes,” as Albers often said, was to facilitate their critical awareness of the made qualities of the world around them, to make them self-aware of their own experiences to better prepare them for the democratic work of making considered choices.”
“Rather Albers insisted on the relativity of color, the perceptual instability of human experience, and the need for a constant performance or testing of innumerable variables.”
Helen Molesworth, p. 41
This basis for experimentation is really key to BMC – although every artist interpreted that in their own way. Albers’ way was questioning your own perception and experience as a lesson to think deeply about the world.
3. John Cage question from interview in 1968. Interviewer: “But does that alter the fact that you might have preferred going to a different happening?” Cage: “That’s not an interesting question; for you are actually at this one where you are. How are you going to use this situation if you are there? This is the big question. What are you going to do with your time? If you use it negatively, you really are not consuming. You’re rather doing some other kind of thing which, as I’ve explained just now, loses tempo. You have somehow to use it posi-tively. We have illustrations of how to get at this, and it would be part and parcel of the new ethic or new morality or new aesthetic.” Source: p. 28 in John Cage: An Anthology (1991)
I haven’t bought a book that cost this much since university, but it is a beauty. If you’re interested in reading I’d suggest checking out an interlibrary loan or trying library at your nearest art museum. But compared to going back to school for a Ph.D., which I briefly considered this Spring, this book is basically a steal. 😉
Dornith Doherty is an American artist working primarily with photography, video, animations, works on paper, and scientific imaging. In projects that interweave the evidentiary and metaphoric powers of photographic images, Doherty illuminates ecological and philosophical issues that are often neglected when considering human entanglements in the environment.
Textile artist Minga Opazo creating work with textile waste. Some of her work incorporates mushrooms to explore solutions for dealing with waste.
In her practice, she is dedicated to research the textile industry further and to create work that exposes, reflects and finds a solution to the current situation of the textile waste industry.
…one of the reasons that I got into growing mushrooms into my sculptures and having grass into my sculptures is that when I made one of the first sculptures, there were layers of mud and clothing. I made it with dirt from the outside. It was already outside my studio. And it started naturally growing because it was wet. …“Oh, what happens if I start growing stuff in my sculptures?” And having this conceptual moment between nature and the sculptures…The pieces do what they want to do. So it’s a collaboration between nature and my work.
