Threefold 09
winter’s slowness, Auckland Zinefest, and my voice in Valley Voice
Welcome to the Threefold Letter. This month, being okay with making mistakes the slow creativity of winter, a new herbarium zine and panel talk at Auckland Zinefest, and an article in Valley Voice.
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Winter is slow moving and I find my creative activities have lulled. Part of that is winter illness, and the other is just the cold. I expend my creative energy choosing dry logs and promising kindling for the fire and little else. I haven’t even been baking as our oven broke! In mid-July I spent the day out at my folks’ place, harvesting woad with my Nana. This is our first ever crop, and I was very excited. I pulverised the leaves with a mortar and pestle and rolled the resulting green mush into balls, squeezing out the liquid with great gusto. I set the balls to dry. Twelve hours later found they had grown into white puffballs – mouldy, and completely useless. The day wasn’t an entire waste, however, as I simmered two pots of onion skins for over 6 hours. The onion skin pulp is in the freezer, waiting for warmer times. I can’t face being elbow deep in paper-making slurry when the weather is so nippy!
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I am sending this newsletter out late on Friday night. Tonight, I am a snow flurry wakening in the cold, whispering quickly and urgently, folding and trimming a new zine. I will have a stall at Auckland Zinefest tomorrow at the Auckland Art Gallery. The new zine is a sort of herbarium and a leisurely pondering about herbaria, William B Yeats, Emily Dickinson, and my frequent visits to the Glen Eden Library.
This is the 15-year anniversary of Auckland Zinefest. The first Auckland Zinefest was in 2009. It was started in Auckland by Tessa Stubbing, an amazing designer, zinemaker and event organiser (and now an incredible teacher!) I first got involved with Zinefest as a stallholder in 2012 after we returned from Scotland, and in 2013 I joined Tessa’s newly established zinefest committee. The current zinefest committee has asked me to join a panel to discuss zinefest’s history, the changing face of zines, and the zine community. The panel talk will be at 1pm at the East Terrace on level 2 of the art gallery. And if you’re there on Sunday, there’s another panel on the same topic with Tessa Stubbing herself!
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Last month, film critic and freelance journalist Helen Martin visited me to chat about my art practice. She wrote an article from our chat for the July issue of Valley Voice Rural. Helen taught me film studies at Unitec when I first left school. It was a real treat to catch up with her, and to share what I’ve been up to since then.