The Zine Show… coming soon to Ypsilanti’s 22 North Gallery

On Saturday, October 24 there’s going to be a big zine show at Ypsilanti’s 22 North Gallery. [Doors open at 6:00 PM and close at 10:00 PM.] Here, with details on what to expect, is a quick interview with two of the show’s curators, Erin Anderson-Ruddon and Katy Shay, the latter of whom will also be joining me on the Spetember 19 edition of Saturday Six Pack to talk about the show in more detail.

MARK: So, what can you tell me about the zine show you’ve got coming up on October 24?

ERIN: There will be zines and original artwork from over 75 artists. A majority will be from the people in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, but we’ll have work from people around the country on display. We’ll also have a few speakers talking about the value and greatness of zines, and Matthew Nisbett will be playing some of his wonderful music for us.

KATY: Displaying zines is really difficult in an art gallery, but Erin has some great ideas. I think it’s going to be beautiful, and I can’t wait to see what she does with the space… I’m going to be speaking about zines, their power as artistic expression, their physical meaning in an increasingly digital world… Zines are having a resurgence right now, and I feel like it’s partially because they give us a way to engage outside of the computer, in a more intimate and physical way.

MARK: And this is something that you’ve done before, at Vault of Midnight in Ann Arbor, right?

ERIN: Yes, the Vault of Midnight has been so amazingly supportive. They’ve hosted many of our pop-up community art shows over the years, including the last Zine Show.

KATY: We did the last Zine Show in 2013, I think. It was amazing! So much fun. Izzy Johnson played, and the Vault was a terrific venue. The artists, writers, and zinesters who participated came up with a really wide variety of stuff. I was incredible.

[above: Beloved Favorite No.1 by Grace Rother]

MARK: Other than the location, how is this year going to be different?

ERIN: We’re really excited about how much the show has grown since the last one, in terms of the number of people getting involved. I think we featured the work of around 20 artists at the 2013 Zine Show. There are over three times that many participating this time, though. We’re thrilled to be working with such a talented group of artists, writers, and zine makers, and we can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with. We’re also excited to be setting up this year’s Zine Show in the beautiful gallery space at 22 North, as we’ve typically adapted our community art shows to spaces that aren’t traditionally used as galleries. This has always been part of the fun of it, but we’re looking forward to doing it in a gallery. The 22 North space will be perfect… a much deserved showcase for the works of art, and labors of love, that zines typically are.

KATY: Because we invited a lot more people to participate in this show, the content will be a lot more wide and varied. We have people from all over the country participating. And we didn’t put any restrictions on what the zines can be about, so it’ll be really fascinating to see what people are going to come up with.

MARK: Will you be contributing zines of your own?

KATY: Yeah. My zine is going to be a hodge-podge of weird shit I’ve written, drawn, thought about in the last three or four months. It’s interesting to put a zine together like this, it’s different than coming up with a concept and executing it. I’m letting the content shape the zine. [right: Image from Hot Tee no. 1]

In fact I came up with the zine name, Hot Tee before I really thought about what would go in it. I just wanted it to hark back to the old-school zines of the 90’s, before the internet.

I remember being really into this one zine where a girl wrote a review of a Cibbo Matto concert she went to in New York and how she got ice cream alone afterwards. I thought she was the COOLEST. The other things in the zine were about bands she liked, and the way people treated her at school. I want Hot Tee to be like that, episodic, with no real connection between the pieces beyond personal interest/desire to share.

MARK: How about you, Erin… will you be contributing a zine for the show?

ERIN: Yes. Right now I am working on an artist zine which is a sort of peek into several of my current and past sketchbooks. It’s a lot more freeform than the one I contributed to the last Zine Show. My creative process if often pretty structured, and I’m really enjoying the looseness this time of recombining the elements of creative play and experimentation that often live in an artist’s sketchbook, but don’t always get shared or seen by others. I also have a smaller, more object-based zine in mind that I would like to produce. As it currently exists in my head, it will be a hand-printed, accordion fold linoleum block print piece, but we’ll see if time affords itself! [below: Untitled work in progress by Erin Anderson-Ruddon]

MARK: Are there any submissions that you’ve received thus far that you’d like to mention, to give people a sense as to what they might see if they come to the show?

ERIN: Right now, we haven’t actually seen many of the works in progress that people will be contributing to this year’s show. However, most of the artists/writers/makers are folks that we have worked with on various community art shows over the years, and there will definitely be a broad spectrum of styles and content based on this experience. We will be having a get-together mid-September to share and workshop our zines, and I look forward to seeing what everyone has been working on then. We really have an amazing group of people assembled for this year’s show and I cannot wait to see how it all comes together… I know it will be great!

MARK: How did you both get interested in zines?

KATY: My very cool friend Beth introduced me to Riot Grrl music and zines because I had a crush on a boy with a chelsea haircut who was into Seven Year Bitch and L7 and stuff. I was immediately hooked. I love the physical intimacy of a zine. I love holding it close to you and that cozy space between you and something someone made with their hands. It’s like seeing someone else’s bedroom when you’re a teenager. You learn a whole lot about them. [right: Hot Tee no. 1]

A lot of Riot Grrl zines had personal stories of abuse at the hands of family, boyfriends, schoolmates and writings about depression and anxiety. I really connected with it there was nothing like that out there for a teenaged girl living in Western Michigan. Again, it was before the internet and finding zines and music… It was like a the clouds opened and the heavenly chorus sang. It made me feel like I wasn’t the only girl in the world.

Beth and I made a zine together called Fresh! which was a send up of Seventeen and Sassy type magazines. It was pretty stupid… we were thirteen. We made fun of preps and jocks and eventually I stopped pulling my weight and Beth took Fresh! over. In 9th grade I made a zine called Laugh it Up Fuzzball which was TERRIBLE.

I got more into zines after taking Linette Lao’s zine class at Eastern. Linette is awesome, and really encouraging. I was really proud of the work I did in that class… both as a writer/author but also as a peer to my fellow students. I really liked helping other students figure out ideas, do storyboarding, and so on. After that class, I was just totally zine crazy. I’ve produced like seven in the last three years. Doing the last zine show was just wonderful. I got to see how my friends played with the medium. And these are really creative people, painters, writers, comic artists, designers… pushing themselves out of their comfort zones and trying a new thing either in medium, or just in the actual physical constraints of a zine.

[above: 2015, work-in-progress page from Lucy Cahill’s “Famous Freak-Outs” zine. This is a scene from “Empire Records.”]

ERIN: I first learned about and got into zines when I discovered punk rock music and it’s inspiring DIY culture. The earliest zines that I collected were mostly political in nature, including a copy of the well-known feminist zine Hot Pants, which I still have on my bookshelf to this day. My initial attempts at making zines in middle and high school were earnest but pretty hilarious, and were mostly comprised of strings of expletives and collaged images and text. I revisited zine-making again in my last year of college, and my senior project was a collaborative zine that I published and released at a show I held at the Blind Pig. I have admired zines for a long time and it’s really great to see how the medium and culture continue to evolve. There are so many wonderful, different kinds of zines out there, from the political, informational and how-to, to the incredibly brave personal narratives, to gorgeous image-filled artist zines and comics. They are such a wonderfully democratic and versatile platform for expression.

MARK: And you’re currently accepting submissions?

KATY: We’re actually not accepting any more submissions. The deadline has passed. But I do want to encourage people to bring their zines to the event! Some of the artists, including myself, are really into trades!!!

ERIN: And we’ll have a place for attendees who are interested in participating in future shows to sign up for more information. We would love to continue to grow this show each year. And we definitely encourage local makers who are not exhibiting at this year’s show to bring their zines to share and trade at the opening if they would like to do so.

[Show flyer above by Lucy Cahill.]