In digital era, zine publishers haven鈥檛 stopped expressing themselves by hand

BPR 瓜神app | By Matt Peiken

Published June 16, 2022 at 2:24 PM EDT

Illustrator and Asheville native Eric Knisley (far left) shows the length of one of his exquisite corpses during the Asheville Zine Fest.

It鈥檚 the first Saturday in June, and as you walk through the RAMP Studios, in Asheville鈥檚 River Arts District, it seems like stepping back a couple decades.

People behind folding tables are lining the main hallway and galleries, showing off poetry, memoir, fiction, cartoons and a lot more. They鈥檙e here under the banner of the .

鈥淚 have collaborations with artists, writers and musicians,鈥� said Erik Pedersen, running down the items on his tables. 鈥淲e have artist books, photo books, some experimental music tapes, some flip books and poetry broadsides.鈥�

Among 30 publishers here, Pedersen is an Asheville printmaker with an independent publishing operation called .

Zines are the shortened name for fan magazines. The format came of age in the 1930s and hasn鈥檛 changed much since. Writing or drawing on paper, hand-stapling or twine-binding and short-run copies are still at the heart of the practice. Some here blur the lines with art books, which can take on a boundless variety of content and physical form.

鈥淭here鈥檚 not a lot of people day to day you can nerd out about with talking paper and binding techniques,鈥� Pedersen said. 鈥淧art of it is just being craftspeople of a very specific stripe.鈥�

Jade Young (left) and Jordan Gray pitched their cookbook zines at the Asheville Zine Fest.

Another vendor here is Jade Young, who is working toward a Master of Fine Art degree in illustration. Her artistry is on display here in the form of two cookbooks, one with the tagline 鈥渟ensual casseroles for the modern domestic鈥� and the other titled 鈥淓at the Rich: Comfort Food for After the Collapse.鈥� Both are printed on 8x11 sheets folded in half and stapled.

鈥淲ith things being digital, there鈥檚 just definitely something more human about physically holding art that someone else has made,鈥� Young said. 鈥淭he new kind of generation is really into this idea of kind of analog sharing of information. So there鈥檚 definitely a much younger crowd, which I think is really awesome and kind of what zines need.鈥�

Eric Knisley is an illustrator specializing in a medium that can鈥檛 be easily shown on a screen. He and several collaborators animate what are called exquisite corpses. Single sheets of cardstock run 16 feet long, and each illustrator takes turns creating elaborate ink drawings on foot-wide stretches of it.

鈥淎nd then at the end, about a year and a half later, you have this 16-foot unscrolling exquisite corpse,鈥� unfolding the length of one printing.

The price tag on each edition is $50. When suggested to Knisley that the audience for such a creation is perhaps a small niche, he readily agreed.

鈥淧eople who want this will pay for it and they鈥檙e not overly concerned about the price,鈥� he said. 鈥淧eople who don鈥檛 want it, I couldn鈥檛 give it to them.鈥�

Many zine publishers take advantage of risograph printing. It鈥檚 a fairly affordable format that feeds paper under a rotating ink drum and making an impression through a stencil. This gives the printed paper a textured, hand-made feel that doesn鈥檛 come through simple photocopies.

Mel Mandle titled her autobiographical zine "Growing Down."

That鈥檚 how Mel Mandle of Asheville printed her autobiographical, illustrated zine, titled 鈥淕rowing Down.鈥� She created it for her senior thesis at the UNC School of the Arts.

鈥淚f one person picked up my zine and read it and resonated with it, I think that would be satisfaction for me,鈥� Mandle said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not important that I sell 50 copies or 100 copies. I want people to make that connection.鈥�

Jessica White and her husband founded this festival in 2016 and moved it around each year to different venues before finding the RAMP studios. White said she expects the festival to remain at the RAMP studios and draw zine publishers from throughout the Southeast in 2023. Proceeds from vendor fees this year went to the contemporary art center Revolve.

White and others talk about the communal nature of the festival. And in the age of tell-all digital lives, White said younger people are drawn into the medium for its relative anonymity.

鈥淚 feel like making a zine is more of a safe space than making a website or a blog,鈥� White said. 鈥淗ere, you have a book and you can be selective about where it goes and it becomes very much of a safe zone where people can be a little bit more vulnerable. You will probably hear stories that people would not feel comfortable putting out on the Internet.鈥�