July is International Zine Month! And in celebration of International Zine Library Day, on
Saturday, July 21, join fans from Watkins College of Art, Design
& Film, Little Hamilton Collective, and the Nashville Public Library, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m in the
NPL’s Main Library Teen Center to make a zine. Snacks, art supplies, and lots of conversation about zines will be provided, but participants — from the zine-experienced to the curious — are encouraged to bring extra art supplies, pictures, recipes, keepsakes, or the like to incorporate or share. Zines or minicomics can be about anything, and everyone is welcome.
- A zine - pronounced zeen - derived from magazine - is an independently- or self-published booklet, often created by a single person. Zines are customarily created by physically cutting and gluing text and images together onto a master flat for photocopying, but it is also common to produce the master by typing and formatting pages on a computer. The end product is usually folded and stapled. Zines can be printed and bound in any manner. Offset printing is a relatively common alternative to photocopying, though there is some controversy among zine writers as to whether professionally printed products may be defined as zines.
The NPL’s main branch is located at 615 Church Street; Teen Center is on the third floor.
The zine workshop is an associated activity in advance of the second annual
Handmade & Bound festival of book arts, set for October 5-6 at Watkins. The free, family-friendly festival will feature hands-on activities in the book arts, demonstrations of techniques and crafts, and dozens of vendors and distributors, in addition to a juried gallery exhibition. All events are free and open to the public.
On Friday, October 5, the festival’s juried book arts and zine exhibition, Familiar Relics, will open in the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery on campus with a reception from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
On Saturday, October 6, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., creators of artists’ books, publishers and distributors of zines and comics, and book aficionados will come together to sell, trade and buy handmade and affordable publications, printed matter and book-themed creations at the book arts bazaar. The day will also feature demonstrations and hands-on activities for children and adults in printmaking, papermaking, book- and zine-making and screenprinting, as well as live music and food trucks. For information including schedules, vendor table registration and exhibition submissions, visit handmadeboundnashville.com and Handmade & Bound Nashville on Facebook, or contact the Watkins Library at 615.277.7427.
The festival is an official, registered event of Artober Nashville, a broadly collaborative promotional initiative designed to highlight, inform and inspire the community’s participation in the wide range of arts activities offered in the Nashville area during the month of October(NowPlayingNashville.com).
Handmade & Bound Nashville, Vol. 2 is presented by the librarians and staff of Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, the Watkins Community Education department, and local librarians and book artists, and supported in part by a grant from the William N. Rollins Fund for the Arts of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
Joining as partners this year are the Nashville Public Library, whose Wilson Limited Editions Collection contains more than 800 limited edition books (library.nashville.org), and Turnip Green Creative Reuse, a nonprofit designed to divert useable material from landfills for creative endeavors through innovative programming (turnipgreencreativereuse.org).
