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Richmond Zine Fest: A World Of Creativity At Your Fingertips

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The 13th annual Richmond Zine Fest came to the Richmond Public Library last month and introduced attendees to an entire world of unique and wonderful do-it-yourself artistic expression.

On the second weekend in October, the Richmond Public Library’s main branch played host to the 13th annual Richmond Zine Fest — a small festival dedicated to the plethora of zine creators and artists around the city. Saturday’s Exhibitor’s Day showcase found tables crowding the perimeter of the basement and third floor of the downtown library, all cluttered with small, self-published booklets, as well as comic books, art prints, buttons and keychains, action figures, and even the occasional self-portrait. It was truly a wonderful sight.

I was first introduced to the idea of zines when I was in high school. I was astonished by the idea that I could input all my esoteric ideals and understanding of the world into a small booklet that I put together and printed myself, which would then be readily available to be picked up and read through by anyone.

I was also amazed by the variety of genres and categories zines could fall into; I’d only ever seen the highly-polished formats of the magazines you could buy in the grocery store, but the world of zines went in so many other directions. By the time I was out of high school, I’d officially decided to sacrifice my hands to the thousand paper cuts that come with self-publishing in order to create some of my wildest ideas.

Brian McDaniel (via Instagram)

Attempting to fit into the mainstream’s idea of literary and artistic creativity can leave a lot of creators at a dead end, searching for a way around the corners of creativity in which they’re less than comfortable. Zines allow artists to stretch out beyond the strictures of mainstream ideas and highlight their own unique talents for the world to see. The opportunity to go in all sorts of unconventional directions — replacing words with images, images with an artistic reformatting of word structure, and much more — makes zines a limitless space where everyone with a creative inclination can find a home.

That feeling is common in attendees of Richmond Zine Fest, even if they’ve never attempted to make a zine themselves. “I came here a year ago with a friend of mine and fell in love,” said one Zine Fest attendee. “It felt like a reunion of sorts… almost like a celebration for all of these artists.”

Finding your creative medium is only part of the battle for zine makers — finding your audience is just as big a struggle, one many zine creators face in the course of their work. Locating people who are as interested in your zine as you are is one of the hardest parts of the process. However, Richmond Zine Fest helps deal with this problem. If you’re a creator, at Richmnond Zine Fest, the audience comes to you.

“I’ve been coming for a couple of years now and every year it gets better,” said another Zine Fest visitor. “I always either find new work from some of my favorite artists, or find new artists with amazing work.”

Budget Press (via Instagram)

This year’s Zine Fest brought many different writers and artists together in one place, to enjoy the talents and ideals of their fellow creators. The floors of the library transformed into a sort of mall showcasing the independent art scene of Richmond and the surrounding reason. You could find all sorts of different work.

Richmond’s own Brian McDaniel, known around town for his fashion photography and his involvement in Dialogue Magazine, brought a selection of personal zines featuring his own writing, photography, and what he called “doodles.” DC-based zine publisher Budget Press brought a selection of work by many different creators, including founder Johnnie B. Baker. Yonic Youth, a collective focused on the work of women, POC, and the LGBTQ community, were on hand with issues of their zine as well as stickers and hats. And there were many, many more on hand as well.

“I’m a writer myself so it’s great to see things like this happening in the city,” said a visitor. “It’s a reminder that there is space for me and others like me to have our work appreciated in the public eye.”

Yonic Youth (via Instagram)

Richmond Zine Fest stands as an annual mecca for writing and illustrative artists from every subcategory imaginable. For anyone who feels there is no home for them in this vast, subjective field we call art, it offers a fire-lit cabin. If you missed it this time around, never fear — Richnond Zine Fest will be back next year. Until then, you can keep up with them on Instagram @richmondzinefest. Start working now and maybe next year, you can bring a zine of your own.

Top Photo via Richmond Zine Fest/Facebook

Razorblades And Aspirin: The Punk Photography of Michael Thorn

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Punk photographer Michael Thorn will begin a six-month residency
at Lamplighter Coffee’s Addison Street location this weekend. Starting with a grand opening event on March 2nd at 7pm, Thorn and Lamplighter will be showcasing new photos in the coffee shop every few weeks, and hosting a variety of related events.

“The plan is to rotate images out on about a six-week cycle,” said Thorn. “It’s gonna be an evolving, constantly updated photo show. It’s a crazy idea, and we’re still trying to work out exactly what we’re doing.”

For Thorn, this “crazy idea” revolves around bringing his social media presence into real brick-and-mortar life. “It’s like an instagram feed come to life in some ways,” he said, “as corny as that sounds. I shoot punk stuff, and am pretty much constantly shooting, so in a way this will be like my instagram, which is constantly being updated with new images from shows and events.”

Thorn’s photographs will be featured in Lamplighter’s dining areas, and in the bathrooms. In the bathrooms, his photos will line the walls like wallpaper, to immerse visitors in the scenes he’s shot.

“I’m gonna re-paste the entirety of the bathroom walls with images,” said Thorn. “The idea is to have this overwhelming experience. I tend to print images as large as I can afford to. The whole goal of my work is to make you feel like you’re there, as best I can. So I shoot really close, like right on top of people. When I print my images, I tend to print really large, so you feel like you’re standing where I was.”

The residency will begin with a grand opening party, entitled The Bastards Can’t Dance — like his zine, Razorblades and Aspirin, it’s named after a song by UK punk band Leatherface. Throughout the next six months of his residency, he plans to do a variety of other events relating to the punk rock DIY (Do It Yourself) ideology he subscribes to. A coffee shop may seem like a curious place to host art and events like these, but for Thorn, it’s all about making connections — which is what drew him to the shop known as “Richmond’s living room.”

“In doing punk, hardcore, or underground stuff, you use the venue that’s available to you. It’s democratic and open, and galleries don’t always lend themselves to that,” said Thorn. “Coffee shops are places everyone goes to, and even if those people might not necessarily like the sound of the bands that I shoot, my goal is to make my photos impact people, regardless of their preferences.”

For Thorn, feeling a connection between his art and the venue where he presents it is more important than getting his work into conventional gallery spaces. “At Lamplighter, I really resonate with that — they are into creating that space for possibilities,” he said. “Beyond that, coffee and punk are really well aligned — people have been writing songs about that forever.”

And that connection goes even deeper for Thorn, a lifelong coffee shop habitue. “To me, it feels like a natural alignment,” he said. “I spent my youth sitting in coffee shops that would stay open until two in the morning, just because I had nowhere else to go.”

A relatively recent arrival to Richmond, Thorn has been part of punk and hardcore scenes around the country — and beyond — for most of his life. In the 90’s, he played in hardcore bands, but later realized that being a musician just wasn’t his calling. After really getting into writing and photography, zines became his focus.

“I had a camera and would casually take pictures, which I lost a lot of, moving around so much, before being able to save stuff digitally,” said Thorn. “I’ve never really been good at playing in bands — I figured out early on I’m better at documenting things. Doing photographs stood out to me, because it gave me a way to still participate in the culture.”

But his goals weren’t all as high-minded. “There’s a bit of selfishness to it,” he admits of being a photographer. “When you’re in a band, you have to collaborate, and work with three or four other people. But if I’m taking photos, it’s all up to me — and that carried over into zines.”

For several years around the turn of the millennium, Thorn served as a coordinator for Maximum Rocknroll, a San Francisco-based zine started in the early 80s, which was for decades the most widely-read punk-related periodical.

Now he produces his own photography-specific zine, Razorblades and Aspirin. The zine acts as a documentation of the numerous shows he shoots. Whenever he can get the funds together to print up 45 to 60 pages of photographs, he puts a new issue together.

For Thorn, zines are intended primarily to express appreciation for the culture they document — something that he sees as a struggle in this day and age. “I think is more difficult than it’s ever been,” he said. “It’s doing things because you actually care about them, instead of doing things just because it advances your band, or your own agenda. I’ve worked in that world of publicists, but with the DIY stuff, my heart is saying, ‘Fuck all that.’ I see more value, and feel more, in people’s work when you can tell it’s [created] because they’re moved by it.”

During Thorn’s residency, he and Lamplighter are planning a whole host of special events that are currently in the conception phase. There will be concerts, featured artists, art shows, and more.

“I have vague notions right now,” said Thorn. He has a variety of goals for the project, including bringing in bands and working with other artists. “There are other photographers whose work I really like, and think is much better than mine, so I’ve thought about making one rotation where I curate other people’s work. And then publish a zine based off of that.”

For now, nothing definite is planned beyond the grand opening, but keep an eye out for more “cool shit” to come. The grand opening of Razorblades & Aspirin Presents: The Bastards Can’t Dance is this Saturday, March 2nd from 7 to 9 PM at Lamplighter’s original location, 116 S. Addison St. For more info, click here.

From Flying Drones, Podcasts, and Animation, VCU Students Master New Crafts With ‘Wednesdays in the Workshop’

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Down in the basement of the VCU Cabell Library, students are immersing themselves into a whole new world of experiences–and it isn’t dusting off old books or leafing through archived letters for an academic assignment. From learning to fly drones to stepping into the inner workings of virtual reality, to swapping zines, and creating animated flipbooks frame by frame, VCU students are mastering new crafts while having fun at the Wednesdays in the Workshop series.

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The thriving program, which was developed by The Innovative Media Center in the Fall of 2016, curates free weekly workshops with professors and other faculty, and sometimes even students to give participants hands-on demonstrations and instruction with something a little bit different and more exciting than the everyday curriculum.

“This program is designed to expose the VCU community to different upcoming technologies and provide the necessary skills to learn and operate these new developments to be able to adopt this knowledge into a profession, hobby, or just everyday life,” said Eric Johnson, head of the Innovative Media Department.

These informal, instructional, and educational workshops are open to not only VCU students, but the local community as well, and so far this semester, students have delved into everything from video game design, sewing, bookbinding techniques for zines, and 3D printmaking. On the schedule for the rest of March and April are workshops on leatherworking, podcasting, and making and mastering sounds in Ableton, a professional audio software used for music creation.

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“We recognized a desire for quick instructional sessions, where anyone could stop by and learn something new in an hour,” said Kelsey Sheaffer, Multimedia Production Specialist and a curator for the workshop series.

And attendance has grown significantly since the program launched two years ago. “The first couple semesters our attendance was lower, maybe around 100 attendees total for the semester, but they’ve grown to almost 300 each semester,” Sheaffer said. “I think we’ve done a better job of advertising and also choosing workshops that the VCU community is interested in  

This semester, the program had more than 80 people showing up to participant in the first event. The Zine Show and Swap Workshop, held back in February, was a popular one, not surprisingly considering Richmond’s long and vast history with the DIY zine-making scene.

“This workshop is a little different than others, Sheaffer said. “Rather than having a lesson or guest speaker, this was more of an interactive class where students could drop in and out freely to view how different zines are made and take a look at the collections that students have made over the years as well as zines from Cabell Library’s very own special collections section.”

Sheaffer was responsible for putting together this semester’s workshop schedule and said she tried to mix it up based on new workshops and past interests. “I tried to compile a wide variety of interesting topics from last year’s best hits like the sewing machine, virtual and augmented reality, and podcasting as well as adding new ones like last week’s zine series, and our new leatherworking workshop,” she said. “I coordinate with everyone to work out workshop dates and also help run the workshops myself in terms of structuring the hour and effectively teaching the lesson if they are led by students at VCU.”

VCU students get access to free equipment from DSLR camera rentals to microphones, cables, lights and more. Students are able to use equipment for any sort of project they desire, it can be both academic or for creative endeavors of their own. Sheaffer said the DSLR camera rentals are by far their most popular item.

“We get rental requests from students about every 30 minutes. We love when people come and use our equipment for non-academic reasons, we strive to act as a catalyst toward the procurement of young entrepreneurial spirits and help them learn because the majority of learning happens outside of the classroom,” she said.

The Innovative Media Center also has access to many different “makerspaces” like 3-D printers, laser cutters, embroidery machines, audio and video studios, and gaming studios. I decided to try my hand at renting some equipment for a little documentary I am working on. I left with a tripod, an external microphone, and a GoPro hero 4 with all the extra attachments in just minutes.

The Innovative Media Center, which opened is 2015,  is used for non-academic reasons as much as for classes and projects. “We have a ton of people coming in from the Da Vinci Center working in our maker space. Tons of student projects are being created that are both hobby and scholarly. We get a wide array of students from the business, engineering, and art school,” said Johnson.

These two have a lot in store for the future of Wednesdays in the Workshop as well as the Innovative Media Center as a whole. They are looking to incorporate the greater Richmond area in their expansion and immerse the community in their journey to instructional technological education.

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“I would love to bring in more community members and make it a bigger and more independent thing,” Sheaffer said, mentioning the center is thinking of bringing representatives from businesses like The Martin Agency for an animation workshop or kinetic imaging.

Johnson added they would also like to add a speaker series and skill-based workshops.

“Mostly we just need more space to satisfy the growth of the program like a classroom as well as computers with the same software in order to reach a larger group of people at once,” he said.

But for now, Sheaffer and Johnson are eager for feedback from students and the community and to start delving into even more hands-on experiences for people who participate in these weekly workshops.

“We would love to hear from students and faculty about more workshops they’d like to see,” Sheaffer said. “We’ve been trying to offer more hands-on workshops, rather than purely lectures, like the leatherworking workshop that is coming up or the bookbinding workshop a couple weeks ago.”

Wednesdays in the Workshop takes place every week from 3 to 4 PM inside the Cabell Library for the rest of the spring semester. Check out the full rundown of workshops here.

Photos By: Innovative Media, VCU Libraries and VCU James Cabell Library

 

Grlz Night brings feminist art to Gallery 5 this Friday

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Founded upon the desire to create an encouraging workspace for underrepresented individuals, Grlz Night ( ___ ) Gang hopes to create a social space for women (and others) to gather and partake in an open artistic dialogue surrounding contemporary issues in art and feminism. This artistic collective will be holding their first gallery show this month at Gallery 5, featuring work by over a dozen local artists.

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