I just finished a new zine (and my first of 2014!) entitled Brown Girl.
As the title suggests it's all about being a brown girl. Featuring several stories of personal experience, family life and of course hair!
I have also re-stocked my Without you I'm Nothing zine (the one about me being a massive Placebo obsessive for a good chunk of my life)
Pick 'em up at MY ZINE SHOP HERE!
I thought I'd do one of those yearly round up things, more for me to see what I've done in the past year and to think what I'm hoping to do in the next year to come!
To start off with, I've just put a new zine up for sale in my zine shop! Before it sounds like I'm super productive and managed to knock out a zine in the first 4 days of the new year, fear not I made this last year. It's a colouring book A-Z for my friend Nickie that I made for Christmas. I thought whilst I was getting a few printed up to gift to her, I might as well print a few more in case other people wanted one!
Speaking of zines, 2013 was a good year for me making them. As always 2 issues of Sugar Paper came out (both some of our best too).
A zine I collaborated on with Alison Erika Forde came out. I wrote a story and she illustrated it. I worked on Putrid Paints a while ago, but came out in 2013.
I also collaborated with my friend Em to finally get collective zine Poor Lass, of the ground. We put out 2 issues of that and currently working on getting the third done, whilst taking submissions for the fourth!
I also made a for A charitable scheme, NUM (National Ugly Mugs) who work to keep sex workers safe. I got to take all the literature and information about the project and put it into a cool little zine to be handed out at an event they were having. I really enjoyed working on that.
I managed to put out two zines of my own, both ones I worked on real quick. I'm currently working on a few zines now, as well as contributing to others. I think 2014 is the year I put the word FAN back in fanzines. Hoping to make a couple with my oldest zine friend Holly Casio, mostly about being fans of things!
It wasn't just zines I was making. I managed to bag my first exhibition! A lot of the work I was showing was quite old (some of it I made when I worked at The Beadshop/ pre Black Parade post revenge (for those who don't know my CV or the MCR discography that's around 2006)) so was keen to work on lots of new things.
I got to do that by forming an art collective with Kandy and Alison, Yiiikes! We got an installation quite quick after we formed and it was really good to work on something in a short space of time and see it shown quite soon after. That's definitely how I like to work.
I also got to work on a few commissions, which I always like to do, hold some workshops for post 16s and get some products up in my shop (who doesn't love a badge and postcards!).
2014, I hope you have all of this and more, much more!!!
This triptych is what I have been working on the past month.
It came about when I was making the friendship book zine. I was trying to include characters of colour in the zine.
I was already more than aware that the pop culture I love, from music to books to film is heavily white and features little if any characters/people of colour.
The only one I could come up with was Dionne from Clueless and what makes this character extra special is she isn't black for a reason, she JUST IS.
Whenever I do come across POC in films/books?TV that I really like, they are so often black for a reason, it forms part of a story.
So in short I wonder what would happen if some of my favourite fictional characters just happened to be black, like for no reason whatsoever, it didn't add anything to the story, that's just what they were!
This is 'What, is she black now?'
This could easily just be seen is me making felt images of myself dressing up as these characters (I have dressed as all three)
PS more exciting things coming soon!!
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