Finally, a web "presence"

After many years of hemming and hawing and keeping an online journal for my day-to-day crap, I'm giving my zines their due with a site dedicated to their existence. It's been a long time coming. For those of you just joing us, here's an introduction, which I wrote for the recent exhibition Evolution of Cut and Paste at Bookworks in Asheville, NC, curated by the lovely and esteemed zinester/book artist Emily K. Larned.

Do I define my zine, or does it define me?

My first exposure to zines was in the early 90s, when I saw a few scattered on the floor of my friend Sherri's SUNY Purchase dorm room*. I thought they were interesting, but certainly not something I thought about doing myself, because maybe I wasn't cool enough or maybe I didn't have anything to say.

So when I found myself a couple years later back at home, a little lost (which certainly hadn't been in the original plan), Sherri was the person who suggested that I start making zines. To her, it made sense for the way I compulsively documented my life in my journals and letters, but I didn't do anything with the suggestion until about a year later, when I moved back downstate to live in a small town called Port Chester and enjoy its burgeoning music scene. Using my Smith-Corona word processor, I conducted and transcribed interviews with local musicians I admired. I collaged a cover out of old National Geographic magazines, and in February 1995, the first issue of Highest Population of Rock Stars was born. Despite the color-photocopied cover, it wasn’t much to look at, but it was my baby. And since it was free, people actually read it! That was enough for me.

Six months later, circumstances changed and the party was over. Living back at home once again, I turned to my zine as an outlet for my relative misery, to somehow focus on the things that made me happy in a tangible way. HPRS gradually turned from music zine to full-on perzine by the time issue number seven came out. I was selling my zine for two dollars, mostly by mail and sometimes in the local hipster record store. I started making real zine friends too, some with whom I still keep in touch to this day!

These days, my zines don’t get published nearly as often, but they are still a big part of my life and who I am as an artist. When the first issue of Pumpkin came out a few years ago, it represented my reconciliation of the digital and the DIY, art and craft, storytelling and incantation. Maybe only I can tell: it was my first real step toward something a little more complicated and ambitious, a little bit how I wanted my life to be. Now that I am in grad school as an artist, I am happily encouraged to be proud of my zine pedigree and integrate it into the other things I make. My thesis project, which will be exhibited in spring 2007, promises to take the basic idea and content of the zine and explode it onto the walls in a way that engages the reader/viewer in a whole new way. I couldn’t be more excited.

*These likely included early issues of Lisa Carver’s Rollerderby, the I Hate Brenda newsletter (a Shannen Doherty-bashing zine), and the music zine Sunny Sundae Smile, among others.

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For a few years I tabled at Broken Pencil's Canzine in Toronto, though I missed the past two (a symptom of grad school, I guess). I'm happy to announce, however, that I will be offering my wares at the upcoming 2007 Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, on March 31st, which promises to be an awesome event. Hope to see you there!