Creating for passion and self-expression over profit isn’t exactly an unfamiliar practice within Corvallis’ art scene. Lesser known, however, are local circulations of a versatile handmade form of media known as zines — miniature mash-ups of art and writing that are self-published, self-distributed, and which offer total creative freedom for their makers.
The potential of zines to foster more grassroots compassion, solidarity and community care has been actively tapped into by a couple of local makers of zines — also known as “zinesters.” Among them is Christina Tran, also an experienced maker of maps, comics and visual essays, and tender letters.
Zine Workshops
Tran has facilitated zinemaking workshops at the Corvallis-Benton County Community Library for adults and teens, where participants were able to compile a couple of anthology zines on their experiences of Corvallis as well as of the pandemic.
“The best way I share what zines are during workshops is I’ll just show a ton of examples of different kinds of zines, so people get a sense of, ‘Oh, this can be a recipe book, or gardening tips, or political theory, or a perzine [personal zine] with my personal thoughts, or a comic, or anything really you could imagine,’” said Tran.
Many of these examples are picked from the tree-shaped zine library at Mt. Caz, a Corvallis-based renegade community art space and artist residency of which Tran is a caretaker and permanent resident. In addition to having served as a casual venue for zine readings, workshops, and drive-thrus, Mt. Caz has helped mobilize groups of people to put together tablings and “make your own zine” spaces as part of an irregular series of underground crossovers with Corvallis DIY music festivals and a 2019 NoiseFest hosted by Corvallis Experiments in Noise. Some zine readings between live music events would be put on between Tran and former Corvallis resident Sara Finkle, who helped start the Interzone zine library.
In such spaces, Tran helps people cultivate a sense of how the DIY nature of zines could translate to a regular practice or approach to how they think of a variety of things in their lives.
“Zines teach you to use whatever materials are at hand, zines teach you to embrace imperfections, zines teach you that there are many ways to do any one thing,” said Tran. “These approaches can be applied to things like cooking, making your own cleaning supplies, creating a venue out of your basement, building a workshop in your backyard, or getting an education.”
Powerful Outlets
Naturally, there are numerous things about zines that set them apart from other forms of publication — especially those that are more traditional or commercial. For Kelly McElroy, the Student Engagement and Community Outreach Librarian at Oregon State University, the most important distinction is the complete control that creators have.
“While there are many forms of what we might call self-publishing online, say on social media, that content depends on a third-party platform. If that platform disappears — or goes behind a paywall, or changes its content requirements — then your work may be affected,” said McElroy. “Zines are a form where you can control everything: the content, the aesthetics, the distribution.”
This means that zines can be powerful outlets for stories and topics that might otherwise face pushback, restrictions, or other challenges from publishers who have some level of control over what content gets distributed.
“With zines, there are no gatekeepers, so I think it allows for more voices and more niche stories to make it into the world,” said Tran. “I find that the zine scene is also very community-focused, so instead of focusing on numbers as success metrics, it’s satisfying to be able to make 10 copies and get those into the hands of people I know who will be into whatever I’ve created.”
Tran added that these traits make the zine scene uniquely positioned to help creators feel supported and encouraged to share their work — a warm welcome for curious or first-time zinesters.
“For folks making zines for the first time, it can be quite liberating. Many of us have had the experience of being told we weren’t very good at art or writing, so to go ahead and put whatever you want into a publication is a way to get free from those external expectations,” said McElroy. “It is also deeply enjoyable to express yourself in a mode you can physically hand to your friends. I have seen many times that people reading zines — for the first time, or over time — connect deeply to identity, ideas, and feelings where they may previously have felt alone.”
Tactile Possibilities
In an age of digital content, there are certain empowering gains to be had with the physical creation and dissemination of zines.
“Zines are low-cost, easily produced ways to share information using print,” said McElroy, “you can leave a zine on a park bench or on a bus and connect with people who you share physical space with, even if you do not share digital space. Zines also can include people who are left out of online spaces, like folks who have limited access to technology.”
In addition to their portability, the process of making zines invites experimentation and playing with the expressive possibilities of layout and design.
“I have in my zine collection zines that are interactive and foldout, I have mini-zines and zines of all sizes, I have accordion-fold zines,” said Tran. “It’s fun to experiment with how the form of folded paper can amplify or subvert the content you’re trying to share.”
Ideal Grassroots Partners
Handy, experimental, and outside of the mainstream — both in terms of content and distribution — zines have culturally and historically been an effective medium to be paired with grassroots organizing, mutual aid, and other local political work.
“Many social movement groups have used zines, such as ACT-UP and the Lesbian Avengers, to give just two examples easily findable in the Queer Zine Archive Project,” said McElroy.
“There’s a history of self-publishing being a part of organizing and mutual aid work. Zines, pamphlets, and tabling can be a great way to distribute information at rallies as well as for ongoing political education between events,” said Tran. “It helps make the content more easily accessible to more people. And Creative Commons makes some materials easier to copy and distribute, and therefore easier for the information to get disseminated to a wider public.”
OSU’s Zine History
McElroy, in addition to having worked on several publications and presentations on the manifold roles and uses of zines in library settings, teaches Honors Classes at OSU that involve learning about and creating zines, including HC 407 — Publishing Underground: A History of Publishing Technology and Radical Reform.
“As a form of self-published literature, zines often don’t get distributed as widely or preserved as carefully as other forms of publication,” said McElroy. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t have an important role in individual lives, let alone in social movements. So, I would say it is important to learn about zines in context of how zinesters have used them in the past, and to open up potential for new uses in the future.”
For more recent class projects at OSU, new uses have been necessitated by the pandemic. In fall 2020, a virtual zine was created by the WECelium Collective, an artist-activist group of undergraduate and graduate students that emerged from a Queer and Trans People of Color Arts & Activism course taught by Dr. Qwo-Li Driskill, a Two-Spirit Associate Professor.
Dr. Luhui Whitebear also had her students create virtual zines for her Introduction to Native American Studies and Indigenous Resistance and Pop Culture classes — taught during fall 2020 and spring 2021, respectively — which focused on contemporary issues facing Indigenous communities across North America.
“You can engage in learning in multiple ways — it’s not only through exams or only through research papers,” said Whitebear. “And shared learning is another piece of [the project]; it’s not intended just for the classroom.”
Other zine projects that have come up on campus include the historic Scab Sheet. Initially published in 1969, this underground zine series was created by a group of Black student activists following a series of protests organized by the Black Student Union — including a walkout, a sit-in, and boycotts of classes and sports events — in response to persistent racism at the university and neglectful inaction from OSU administration. Originally intended as a rival publication to The Daily Barometer — which the zine’s founders believed perpetuated a biased coverage of these events — it provided an open forum for dissenting views among BIPOC and other marginalized students who were critical of the university and sought change by raising awareness of injustices on campus, but who would otherwise refrain from expressing their experiences and views due to fear of censorship and harassment.
Spanning two volumes, the ninth issue of the first volume states, “The expressed purpose of the magazine is to eradicate the impression of many students that their radical opinions don’t count… So, non-Establishment students, this is your opportunity to find your concerns publicized and give you a chance to write about your gripes.”
Though the zine initially stopped running by 1970, it was revived decades later in 2017 by student activists to shed light on contemporary issues occurring at OSU. Featuring articles, poetry, artwork, and personal stories by present-day students, the revived volumes are intended to serve as a “continuum of the legacy of students before us who desired to have a platform to express their voice in a world that silenced them.”
In 2019, an Honors College student wrote their thesis analyzing the similar and different ways the Scab Sheets’s original and revival runs have provided an outlet for students experiencing injustices at OSU, for which McElroy served as an advisor.
Putting Corvallis on the Map
While there are several pockets of zinemaking, taking, and trading that have unfolded across Corvallis, a more centralized zine scene has yet to emerge.
“I think Corvallis is a place where you have to bring the zine scene here, and put Corvallis on the map,” said Tran. “There are zine fests in Portland, Eugene, Olympia, and Seattle — I think Corvallis could get a local zine fest going that would be on the regional zinesters’ circuit.”
“I have certainly seen great zine projects pop up in the time that I’ve lived in town, and I expect that will continue,” said McElroy. “The main question I have about sustainability is printing — there seem to be fewer and fewer self-print xerox machines in town. While many people have access to home printers, a photocopier does make it easier to print a high volume.”
According to Tran, the Corvallis Copy Center has been a beneficial local resource for printing zines; their machines can be used to make copies for cheap, though it has remained temporarily closed throughout the pandemic. One idea she proposed would be to have something in town akin to the Portland-based Independent Publishing Resource Center. In addition to hosting an expansive zine library, creative workshops, and BIPOC artist and writer residencies, the center provides low-cost access to tools and materials for creating independently published zines, comics, books, prints, posters, and other media.
“That would be really dreamy to have here,” said Tran. “That’s one of the reasons why Portland has such a good zine scene.”
Still, as McElroy noted, wherever there are people keen to make zines, there’s potential. Partnering once again with the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, Tran will be facilitating a virtual zinemaking workshop for tweens on Wednesday, Nov. 3, from 4 to 5 p.m.
“I hope every time we do something, we open people’s eyes to what’s possible,” said Tran, “and that they can make their own zines about whatever lights up their life.”
By Emilie Ratcliff
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