blog
12.02.24
baby's first blog post + stalling at FOTP 2024
Hey I have a website. That’s pretty cool. If you’re on here in the first place there’s a good chance you know me already. So hi! Good to see you. In any other case also hi and good to see you.
I’m trying to figure out what I’m using this website for. The main spark was the lovely folks doing WriChal24 and posting their work on their respective places (hi! Good to see you). I’ve also convinced myself to make it for other reasons that aren't opposed by “just post your writing stuff in a google doc somewhere”. Namely to build a central place for art, a maybe too personal blog, and a small-scope project to apply my long held but rarely applied love for coding (she’s been tested learning css but we’ll ignore that for now). I'm still figuring out what else there might be.
I've been thinking a lot lately about existing in public/online, being perceived in fixed moments as a constantly changing thing and how strange it is. I hope to build up a body of work I can look at and solidly say, amongst my fluid perception of myself, that I make stuff. That’d be nice. My perspective and mental state is, for lack of a better word, volatile? As of now I’m lucky it’s not dangerously so, but still I feel a bit weird about doing anything online especially with making and publishing art - which is often fairly emotional. Instead of being paralyzed by the notion of existing in some tangible way, my approach lately has just been to try and be bad at it and if it sucks don’t worry about it (oops!). It’s been nice especially participating in WriChal24 because it’s increased my confidence with my writing. Development only comes with doing stuff even and if it’s awfully embarrassing I want to continue!! Ah so gay.
I wanted to start off by talking about my experience with tabling at the recent zine fair, Festival of the Photocopier 2024. That was really incredible. I was lucky enough to get a table, it was super busy, there were so many wonderful artists and I met some lovely people (plus Katie and Jimi came to visit :-) ). Zines have been my medium of choice for the past five or six months. Being able to set a scope for a project and then being able to definitively say “it’s done”, as a finished and physical thing, is pretty cool. Most of my zines have been mini-zines (made with a single piece of paper, with 8 A7 pages including the cover and back), which are the perfect size to elaborate on little ideas without feeling like space is left to be filled, and for my attention span. Making mini-zines amongst bigger works has been a really wonderful time.
Anyway. I was super nervous presenting my stuff at the festival. Honestly who wouldn’t be. Leading up to the day, the weight built: “oh this looks like shit”. Exploring a medium and constantly developing, it comes with the territory, but I feel like all the things I’ve made don't really match my current perspective/standard at any given time. So it begs the question: go ahead! Prove otherwise. Do better. What do you do about that but understand you have to accept it? Maybe other art people also sympathise but I find most ego statements I build up around my art don’t exceed “that’s good enough for now”, otherwise I find myself getting frustrated. Expression and devloping skill are two different things to me. I’ll probably feel differently about all this in a week’s time.
Putting a price is also a difficult thing to tackle both conceptually and practically. There were so many variable prices on objective print quality/quantity happening at the festival. How could I compare something I’m charging $2 or $5 for with someone charging exactly the same for different work? I guess the answer is that all art prices are subjective and whatever you want to charge you can but it doesn’t ease the dissonance. Charging for something feels very bold. The “art is a luxury item” argument stops exactly at when you decide how much it costs, and whether you believe any given person should be able to have reasonable access. Yeah of course this is worth maybe 10% of a grocery trip. Depending how much you can afford for groceries. Honestly I should just give all my stuff away for a buck to cover costs regardless of density/my perceived worth. OK Anxious ramble over!!!!
Aside from all of my worries of tabling at the fair, it was honestly a delight to be in the space. The zine community is so incredibly diverse, creative and caring. Just the fact that there were about 200 different tables, people sharing a part of their own experience, expression and knowledge is incredible. I love being able to hold that little piece of someone. Every time I see a new zinester’s work it opens up my perspective on what zines can be.
I spent about as much money I made on the day on other zines. I also met Peo Michie, one of my favourite artists ever. They were super lovely. They didn’t want to take my money so we did a zine trade. We each own some of each other's work. That’s absolutely wild. Thanks zinesters for being so cool.
So hey. Thanks for reading. Hopefully I’ll be here again soon and I’ll get a chance to flesh out the website. What’s that going to look like? Uhhh? Eugh?????? Final answer!