Bits of paper, some with words, some with pictures, others with both or neither. Some of the pieces of paper are folded and fastened together often using small bent strips of steel wire. When compiled these are known as books or magazines or, when constructed by a wannabe illustrator, designer or pretentious hipster, they are zines. (Speaking of pretentious, those first three sentences were phrased incredibly pretentiously; what was I thinking?) I haven’t the money to go spending on zines at the moment; but if I did, I would. Waiting to start a family on my shelf are only two zines, Protomurk by Zeke Clough, and Dogs & Dice by Martin O’Neill. Between the two of them they pretty much cover all basis of my interests.
Zeke Clough (this painting is his) |
Dogs & Dice is a collection of collages assembled from scraps of paper ephemera, postcards, newsprint, rolodex cards, etc. The artwork is beautiful, and perfectly shows how simple images can have so much power. The best part for me is the photos of Martin’s bits and bobs collection; shelves and pigeon-holes stuffed with dolls faces, mouth casts, typewriter keys, playing cards, reference books, etc. And the Bisley cabinets with collage material prepared and organised into categories; retrotech, cutlery & religion, woomen & boobies, radio-morse & blowers, Gloria Gaynors, digital bollocks, thrills & swoon, Canada vs America, and of course, dogs & dice. A good lad or lass at Magazine Junkie has upped a load of pictures of Dogs & Dice so I don't have to: you can view them here.
Martin O'Neill 2008 |
I've got years worth of drawings that could easily be arranged into a zine of sorts. Couple those with some scanner collages (I don't know about you, but I really like them), come up with a semi-witty/'arty'/self-consciously-weird name, scrabble together some printing costs and Bob's your wotsit, I've got a zine. I have to many other ongoing unfinished projects to add making an original zine to the list, plus I promised to illustrate a story for my dad. It would be nice to have a book/magazine/zine made, but dad's story gets priority before my zine. Plus I'd probably just make it all about octopuses, or something... now there's an idea!
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