The Countdown to ABQZFV!

ABQZFV is nearly here! Thanks for coming out to our pre-zine fest events! It's been great to see you all, and totally fun to get excited about our big day on October 10th. But first-- we have a few more events before we gather our forces and MAKE IT HAPPEN.

1.) On THURSDAY, September 24th at 8pm don't miss GET LOST: a Benefit for ABQZF at Sister, downtown. Three dollars gets you in. We'll raffle off prizes, we'll have ABQZF merch and THREE punks bands on board. Constant Harmony, punk tricksters Rudest Priest, and new darlings, Time Wound. DJ Mello will spin tunes in between! This is your BIG CHANCE to support ABQZF before the fest! 

2.) The FINAL event before the fest!! On OCTOBER 8th at 7pm Join ABQZFV organizers Marya and Liza for a night of last-minute zine-making, cruise the zine library, and help prepare for the big day! We'll be making zines, hanging decorations and more. And then two days later, ABQ Zine Fest!! Yah! We'll have tables and chairs set up so you can work on your final layouts, and a few typewriters to add a little verve to your paste-ups. This event is free-- but if you want to put some dollars bills in the jar, we won't say no! 

3.) Look for Zinester Interviews coming your way, start on OCTOBER 1st! Every day until zine fest we'll post an interview on the exhibitors coming to ABQZFV. The first interview: Sara Century! 

See you at ABQZFV!

Zinester Interview with Pam Dailey: TheZINEasaurus

Posted on September 30, 2013

ABQ Zine Fest is MERE DAYS AWAY! From now until the fest, we’ll be highlighting some of the zinesters exhibiting at The Tannex, The Tan, and Small Engine Gallery on Saturday, October 5th. NEXT: Pam Dailey

Please tell us about the zines you’ll be tabling at ABQZF!

TheZINEsaurus is a personal zine. I share stories about my life and observations about the universe. It’s a sporadically produced zine; no regular schedule. I merge and express my love of words, writing, drawing, photography, story-telling, nature, science, animals, tape, glitter, glue, and paper.  With synonyms.  And sometimes antonyms. This is how I rejuvenate my soul. This year, I have three new full-size zines: Zine of the Apocalypse, Depression, and Road Trip. And I have three mini zines: Spring-Sprang-Sprung, Hygienic Ornamental Patterns, and Haiskoo. I’ll also have copies of my zines from the two previous years.

What do you say when someone asks you,  “What are zines?”

Zine is like ‘magazine’. They are little self-published collections of stories, images, photos, whatever. Zines started in the 70′s and 80′s as FanZines, publicity for people’s favorite bands. Now, they’ve evolved into being anything we want them to be. If you can think of it, somebody is writing a zine about it, somewhere. There are fiction zines, poetry zines, per-zines (like mine) where people share their personal lives and commentaries, stuff like that.

What’s the most challenging thing about zine making?

I find it hard to capture my ideas as they are floating by. I have tons of ideas, and I don’t always remember to write them down! I consciously make time for zine’ing every week. It soothes my soul.

How long have you been writing zines, and how did you get started?

I’ve been producing what could be called zines since the fall of 2011, when I did my first zine as part of the first ABQ Zine Fest weekend challenge. My background is in art, and I’ve been combining my sketches, photos, and other images with my words and thoughts since art school in college in the early 90′s.

What do you enjoy most about making zines?

I love it when my vision of what I want to create comes out as good as the image in my head. And I love it when the words in the thesaurus I use teach me something more about life.

Roughly how many zines do you archive in your personal collection? 

Ummm…. three. four. something like that.

Do you have a zine crush? If so, are you willing to reveal the object of your zine affection?

Yes.

No.

So much of the written word we now experience via digital media. Why are zines important?

It’s so important to have the physicality of the zine in your hands. And for us creators to actually create, put pen to paper, so to speak. The visceral act of art and writing changes when it’s solely digital.

Thanks, Pam!

Font This!

My Dirty ValenZine

ABQ Zine Fest art!

Happy Sunday, Folks!!!

We're less than a week away from the 2nd Annual ABQ Zine Fest-- making signs, banners, and hunting down last-minute thingy-me-bobs to make the day GREAT. We just want to share with you this poster, made by Joe Annabi- he's tabling with Hannah Daney. Together, they are throwing a Painting Party at ABQ Zine Fest as part of the evening festivities. Hope you're spend the day with us! 

Not to be outdone, our friend Brian Fejer made us a series of short video collages to promote the fest! We're so grateful!  ABQ ZINE FEST 2012 from Brian Fejer on Vimeo.

Making Mini Zines at Maker Faire!

Hello ABQ Zine Fest friends!

We're coming up on the final weeks before the fest! We're VERY EXCITED to get to the actual day of PLAY: October 6th from 10am-6pm. We just have a few more pre-zine events coming up before the fest!

Come make mini zines with us at Albuquerque Mini Maker Faire, Sunday, September 23rd, 10am-6pm at Civic Plaza in Downtown Albuquerque. We'll be sharing how to make mini zines out of a single sheet of paper! It's pretty fun, super easy and great into to zines, for the whole family.

See ya there!

Here Come the Judge!

Hello there!

Just to catch you up on some of the pre-zine fun we're having . . .

The Robot's winning.

Tonight we met at Winning Coffee for Word Game Night! It's sounds as exciting as it sounds! Really-- it's fun to think about words, taste the flavor of the sound in your mouth, watch the movie of your life in short blasts of memory, concepts . . . Marcel Proust would LOVE this game,  considering the questionnaires he filled out. We had Mad Libs, Scrabble, Boggle and more to choose from. We decided to go with Apples to Apples.

Things started slowly with just three players, which is only slightly harder to play than with the suggested four or more. See, it goes like this: a player (the judge) pulls a green apple card from the deck, the other players choose the card from their hand that most represents the word on the green card from the perspective of the judge. Truth is, it's not about what's on the green card, it's about how the judge FEELS about the choices that complement or contradict the green apple card. Yeah, it's a cool game. Gotsta know your judge.  Here come the JUDGE got said, A LOT. . . 

We started out with just three players, one judge, two players-- which makes it a little challenging to conceal the player's cards. As judge, we took turns covering our eyes while the the other players threw down a card. After a few rounds, we added three more players and things got good. Lots of throwing down cards and sarcastic remarks. It was pretty fun all around. We didn't quite shut down Winning, but for a Tuesday night, we got dangerously close, and a little bit loud.

***

Clouds for You . . .

No thunder tonight-- but it rained a mighty storm for awhile today in ABQ, and during our Game Night. This prompted Marya Errin Jones to make a short video of the mini zine she created while tabling at the Portland Zine Symposium in August. Each of the organizers got one-- here's the animated version, for you:

We're teaching a mini zine workshop at Albuquerque Mini Maker Faire on Sunday, September 23rd in Civic Plaza from 10am to 3pm -- we hope you'll stop by and play.