Zine workshop at Hi-Desert Artists this Sunday (9/7)

Yucca Valley’s Hi-Desert Artists will be hosting a Zine workshop facilitated by local zine publisher and scholar Jillian Sandell this Sunday (September 7) from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m.

For those unfamiliar with what a “zine” is, it’s a do-it-yourself hand folded paper and stapled photocopied magazine with origins from 60’s counterculture to its more iconic presence in the 70’s/80’s punk underground, to its heyday explosion in the 90’s, to the present, where Sandell says zines cross all kinds of cultural bounds and are more popular than ever with the emergence of zine festivals:

“There’s so many zine fests around the world but certainly around the area here in L.A., San Diego, the southwest–– really big ones in L.A. or San Francisco. These become a place where people can exchange and trade and buy each other’s work. I do see a lot of excitement and energy around zine making, trading, buying, and selling in a way that I don’t remember there being twenty years ago. It’s just this sort of interest in material culture, something you can hold in your hand, and there’s something very precious about that: someone’s handheld it, they folded it, stapled it, they stitched it together, they went to their local photocopy shop to print it. The tangible quality of zines is very different from clicking through a website, a blog, or a story on Instagram.”

A voracious collector of zines since the 90’s, Sandell says she incorporated zine culture into her curriculum when she was teaching English Composition and Women and Gender Studies. Ten years ago, she began making her own zines, most notably the series “N.E.R.D.” (No Evidence of Recurrence of Disease) that chronicled her health struggles. To date, Sandell has printed over 3000 copies of her accumulated titles.

In her workshop at Hi-Desert Artists, Sandell will review common formats and approaches, using examples from her 30+ year collection of zines. Each participant will learn at least three different ways to make a zine that incorporate visual and textual elements. During the workshop the class will collaborate on a zine which will be printed after the workshop then mailed to each participant, and Sandell says each person will leave with a minimum of three handmade zines and the tools to share and make more. 

The class is Sunday (September 7) and costs $35 to attend at Hi-Desert Artists in Yucca Valley at 55635 Twentynine Palms Highway.

For tickets to secure your place in the workshop: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/zines-tickets-1533297216249?aff=oddtdtcreator