The Independent Publishing Resource Center

318 SE Main St. Suite #155, Portland, Oregon, 97213 [phone]

[iprc]

This week’s featured zine, now on display at the IPRC zine library: “Bear Fight!” by various artists (2010). More than 75 artists duke it out with sometimes cute, sometimes scary, always fuzzy bears in this collection of drawings and short comics! . . . . . #zine #zines #zinester #zinesters #diypublishing #independentpublishing #bear #bearfight #bears #drawing #artcollection #variousartists

[iprc]

This week’s featured zine, now on display at the IPRC zine library:

“Cooking with Mary Jane” by Nuqjatlh (1995). 

"It is 1995. The AIDS war rages on," the introduction warns. "This book serves as yet another weapon, to help you fight your battle valiantly." As promised, this zine will help arm yourself properly with recipes for Pot Pesto, Banana Pot Bread, and -- of course -- brownies.

[iprc]

This week's featured zine, now on display at the IPRC zine library: 

"Seeking the Lotus: Issue #3" by Various (1999)

This introspective zine with a cover made of recycled paper reflects on topics such as Buddhism, meditation, Zen, and more.

[iprc]

This week's featured zine, now on display at the IPRC zine library: 

"10 Weeds You Can Eat!" by Urban Edibles (2008)

As the self-explanatory title states, this zine describes several weeds you can snack upon, with illustrations for each one. 

[iprc]

Poetry | Julia Wohlstetter: Clean Lines | Bodega Magazine

IPRC Certificate Program in Poetry grad Julia Wohlstetter with two poems in the latest issue of Bodega.

[iprc]

IPRC Certificate Program in Poetry grad Eva Bertoglio with three poems in M Review.

[iprc]

IPRC Certificate Program in Poetry grad Jake Vermaas in Gramma Daily:                               “no not even piercing the window

with a waterfountain      not busting out as some old stoic trope or anything just straight home to an empty

room with the blinds shut”

[iprc]

Volume 1 of LIBERATION LITERACY is here! - to get involved in any way contact [email protected]! Keep your eyes out for 4 volumes per year! 

The IPRC’s latest collaborative project with incarcerated individuals at the Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI) in N. Portland is hot off the presses. This newsletter is in conjunction with the reading group and library maintained at the CRCI and will help to provide continuity and community visibility for the group. 

Read more about LL efforts here: https://liberationliteracy.wordpress.com/

Listen to the group interview National Book Award winner and historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi here:  http://kboo.fm/media/58835-crci-reading-group-interviews-ibram-x-kendi

[iprc]

M. Sabine Rear and Women Artists Zine - Zine of the Month Interview

M. Sabine Rear is a cartoonist, zinester, and the cute blind lady you gave your seat to on the bus. She makes comics about disability, gender & sexuality, professional wrestling and fine art. 

What is your most unexpected source of inspiration?

Lately I find a lot of inspiration in professional wrestling. I started watching it with my sweetie (who is a lifelong fan) this year and I'm totally hooked! My art practice is centered around highly personal, experiential topics, and is often emotionally draining, so it's totally refreshing to step outside of that and watch dudes play out a soap opera of friendship and betrayal. Their simple emotions and absurd story lines are great fodder for comics!

Your zine, Women Zine Artists, highlights some of your favorite modern and contemporary women artists. What prompted you to ask your friends and colleagues if they could name five women artists?

When I asked people to name five women artists, I was most surprised by which artists came up most - Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keefe. These are women who make art that is aesthetically understood to be approachable and beautiful, but whose biographies and art-making narratives are quite subversive, often contested, and not always well-understood.

“The personal is political.” What does this mean to you? How does it inform your work?

Identity and embodiment determine who we are in public and how we engage public culture. This public meaning-making is felt most strongly by those of us whose bodies occupy contested, policed categories. As a disabled woman, I feel acutely aware of how my body, my identity, the things that are personal to me, inform my lived experience. Simply by existing I engage in a politics of disabled visibility and by doing the work of making and sharing art I am a part of a conversation around what a disabled woman's body does and means.

What do you want people to get out of your work?

Women Artists Zine was, for me, a time-based exercise in making sense of an art history education and sharing art that I love and biographies I find compelling. I hope that it conveys my excitement about art - specifically art that people find "pretentious" or "inaccessible." This kind of art is full of secret code about its maker and I find that so thrilling! I hope that readers will take it as an invitation to explore the work of other artists who have been excluded from the limited canon of "great art."

What role has the IPRC played in your creative process?

The IPRC is the most amazing space. It is where I have printed and assembled all of my zines, and where I go to collaborate and to share work. I am so thankful to have a space that is so welcoming and accessible. I am currently enrolled in the comics certificate program, which is another amazing facet of the programming and resources offered.

How can people find and support your work?

My work and information on events and projects I am involved in can be found at www.michaelsabine.com. I am also on instagram and twitter as @michaelsabine​

[iprc]

[iprc]

On January 19th, screen printing open hours turned into a print pull party, Love Fierce Fight Hard, led by Anna Knecht-Schwarzer and supported by Lauren Moran, Katherine Spinella, and our letterpress crew.

They prepped screens and provided resources for the public event where folks came together to digest, prepare for, and respond to political happenings through art-making (Pt. 2).

Katherine Spinella

Tony Marostica

Lauren Moran

Anna Knecht-Schwarzer

Anna Knecht-Schwarzer

[iprc]

On January 19th, screen printing open hours turned into a print pull party, Love Fierce Fight Hard, led by Anna Knecht-Schwarzer and supported by Lauren Moran, Katherine Spinella, and our letterpress crew.

They prepped screens and provided resources for the public event where folks came together to digest, prepare for, and respond to political happenings through art-making (Pt. 1).

John Harrold

Daniela Ragan of Letra Chueca

Katherine Spinella

Jillian Barthold

Joe Galván

Anna Knecht-Schwarzer

[iprc]

Samantha Cohen and The Bathing Suit Chronicles, Zine of the Month Interview

Samantha Cohen is a multimedia artist working in animation, installation, and comics in Portland, Oregon. Autobiographical narrative is central to her work where she explores themes of displacement, heartbreak, and the overall absurdity of human relationships.

In 2015 Samantha received an Oregon Arts Commission grant to participate in a residency at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY where she exhibited her animation in their 2016 summer exhibition. She has consecutively participated in the Portland Zine Symposium 3 years in a row under “Wet Socks” and completed her MFA at the University of Oregon in 2014. She is a current participant in Prequels 2016 Artist Incubator Program.

What is your most unexpected source of inspiration?

The mundane/monotony that exists at my day job and in my familial relationships - I begin at a monotonous point and grow/build out by exaggerating conversations with customers and my mom in both my installations and comics.

When is your favorite time of day or season for making art or writing?

Summer, summer, summer! The sun and longer days give me so much energy. I love to draw and write outside because it gives me a chance to be out of my own element and to experience/adventure in the world - a greater amount of opportunity for new experiences and, therefore, more to draw and write about. In the winter time I’m more limited to the indoors and end up in my room for extended periods of time, which becomes heavily internal.

What is one of your favorite color combinations?

Peachy orange and baby blue, I am an 80s pastel lover.

Describe an ideal weekend.

Equal parts productive, socializing, and adventuring!

Name your top five favorite artists/writers/works/things.

a. Lynda Barry

b. Don Hertzfeldt

c. 90s cartoons/kids tv shows (Pee-Wees Playhouse, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Rockos Modern Life)

d. Tracey Emin

e. Jon Pylypchuk

What role has the IPRC played in your creative process?

A place to create and engage with other local artists/writers in the community. When I moved to Portland over 2 years ago I had no foundation whatsoever within the arts community, by volunteering at IPRC and participating in the zine symposiums I built strong relationships with other artists and am constantly inspired by what others in the space are making and doing.

Want to join our Zine of the Month Club? In addition to receiving all of the great perks of a regular membership, by joining the IPRC for just $10 a month, you'll be part of Zine of the Month Club. Each month, a handpicked zine will delivered to your home!

[iprc]

Screenprinting/A Meshed History: read the full essay here

[iprc]

Portland Zine Symposium

It’s that special time of the year again! Time for the Portland Zine Symposium!

The Symposium returns to the Ambridge Event Center at 1333 NE Martin Luther King Boulevard in the Lloyd District of lovely Portland, Oregon.

We’ll have special programming for the Portland Zine Symposium here at the IPRC at 1001 SE Division Street. Please come, say hello, and get yourself acquainted with hundreds of authors, writers, publishers, artists and makers. 

Bring a sack to put your newly collected zines/books in!

The weather is mild here in Portland, so come and enjoy it while you can!

[iprc]

Indie Pride Day

No, this isn’t one of those stupid Twitter stunts. 

On Indie Pride Day, we celebrate the millions of you who write, draw, create and publish every single day, without a literary agent, a social media agent, a cover artist, or a group of highly-paid editors. 

Publishing is not easy, clean or safe work to do. For most it’s a constant struggle to quell the inner voices of self-doubt that we all live with. 

To be able to make a really great work, it requires not only talent but grace, patience, kindness, and sometimes a lot of band-aids. It also requires pizza, coffee, vegan food, salads, soda, candy and pie for those moments when all you need is a break from the monotony of having to revise proofs for the third time.

It means having to be endlessly asked the question, ‘so what’s this about?’ when tabling at a con.

It means putting on antiseptic, gauze and bandages after mishandling an Exacto knife.

It means having to stay up late with friends and talk about starting a small press.

It means going to the beach when and if you can, and talking/thinking about your book project for the entire duration of the trip.

The world of self-publishing often brings us gems like the works of Chuck Tingle but also the world of My Immortal.

It also means having arguments about Papyrus, Comic Sans and Helvetica, all incredibly overused fonts of varying quality, but also about the merits of great hand-brushed typography. 

And of course, it means being unintentionally misclassified by cat ladies at local bookshops because your amazing graphic novel is somehow ‘erotic literature’.

Please visit us if you’re in Portland to learn more about the things we do at the IPRC. Happy Indie Pride Day! We wish you the best of luck on your creative endeavours. 

[iprc]