This week has been about:
- compiling our imagery,
- beginning to layout those images,
- compiling more “prompts” for the prompt zine
- finalizing the layout/formatting of each zines
- finding how they can connect to the other aspects/groups to this project
As far as imagery goes this week we set two goals for ourselves, the first,
- on Monday we said, everyone come in on Wednesday with 5 drawings, collages, etc that you would like to have in the zine.
- everyone in our group came forward with very diverse imagery
- from their we decided that each week one member of the group will be tasked with scanning and laying out the imagery we have compiled for the week
- this week was Sakura’s turn to scan and lay out
- we decided on a Mondrian style layout for the spreads
- to keep things simple and straight forward and to ensure that there was a cohesiveness to the spreads even thought the work was split between the group
These were the collages I contributed!
Creating these compositions with the prompt to have it reflect my mental health was at once therapeutic and also difficult for me. I have been struggling lately with the state of my mental health more so than I have in a very long time. This project has definitely highlighted my ability to be in touch with what is going on with me in the venue of mental health. It is something I think about constantly yet is somehow something I am only explicitly articulating in my work now, through this project. It makes the work difficult, emotionally, to bring myself to do, but I think the honest reflection I get back is worth it.
As Sakura was laying out the images she was sending me photos of the spreads with messages like, “we go so well together,” and “they’re dancing,”… that deeply moved me. The one thing I desire is to have those that view my work to feel the intense emotion that I feel while making my work. We cannot possibly appeal to everyones’ emotional landscape but if we can make someone feel deeply, I think that makes a piece truly successful. Both Sakura and I have formed a deep sisterhood in discussing and making based on our mental health and I think that is what is most worth-while about this whole experience – at least thus far – for me.
Some of our prompts include:
-Scream as loud as you fucking can in a public space – act normal – walk away
-Imagine what is bothering you is a fly in the room – grab the fly with chopsticks and kill it
-Look at a freckly face, the freckles are islands, play the islands like drums.
-Smear peanut butter all over your hands and lick it all off.
-Write a love note to a stranger, tell them your deepest thoughts and fears, and burn it.
-punch a wall
-drink more fucking water
-make up your own language, name it, list it. Speak to everyone you see in that language for a day.
-read your horoscope
-Six strands of hair all laid in a row on a slide you went down when you were little.
-Touch hands with the boy that was in your second grade class in blue fleece and shock him.
-Tie your shoes, double knot them, triple knot them, quadruple knot them. Slide your feet out.
-Bat your eyelashes and with each bat your cuticles loose a hang nail.
-You are a pigeon on the edge of a column you are perched just before the yellow brick on the round edge, round your edges.
-fingernails short and red run across the railing on stairs they have been out at sea for six months. Think of their journey.
-imagine it coming on and crashing like marble into the ocean and it causes a wake but then settles.
-prunes hands after taking a bath in the indian ocean in the blue upstairs bathroom.
-rest
-take a moment to be still
-think of all the thoughts in your head like little brown specks on a glass surface. Spray it with windex, wipe it away, STREAK FUCKING FREE.
-There are skyscrapers of hair growing for 2 inches above your eye, beyond them is as flat as Ohio.
-Grandma in a tartan scarf measure the sound of its rustle with a wooden ruler.
-A little blonde girl dancing on a piece of wood, this morning she was swimming in a big lake.
-The tadpole in a little wade pool that is native to South Africa but you’re in Cambodia in a straw hat.
-Enjoy your lunch!
-Each step you take you plant a peach tree in the ground.
-wear a sweater so big you can swim in it
-light a match and flush it down the toilet. Imagine the match is the memory of every terrible experience you’ve ever had.
-put a pillow over your face and scream as loud as you possibly can every stress you feel right now.
-look around you and realize the beauty that each day holds. Sometimes the empty abandoned shopping carts are more scenic than anything you could imagine in a hard time.
-wear an outfit that has every color of the rainbow
We have decided that the prompt zine will be formatted as 8 sections that fold down form one greater page.
Sakura put forth a method of making a zine with several “spreads” in it from one 81/2 by 11in paper.
We agreed that that small format made the prompts seem almost precious.
Jenny and Brittany want to screen print these. They can do multiple iterations of the zine on one screen so it will be efficient printing!
For the imagery zine we are making it 6×8 to also make it easy accessible and comfortable in the realm of scale.
Jenny and Brittany will screen print the covers to the imagery zines.
Bambou and Carolina approached us on the subject of branding. They have chosen a color palette (mostly cool tones) and a font (we asked specifically for a sans serif typeface which they met us halfway on because they had originally wanted Georgia which we collectively did not gel with aesthetically.) They researched calming aspects of the branding and were able to find a typeface that met both their research and our aesthetic standards.
With the color palette in play we decided that each text zine would be a different color ink from the chosen palette.
The back of the sheet of each zine will be a map guiding you through the space.
We decided that the way to integrate the prompt zine while having it still be independently strong was to have it in part have prompts that correlated directly to the space (like, “touch X and imagine X based on it,”) as well as prompts that could be done outside or inside the space (like, “breathe,”)
The cover of the imagery zine will also have the branding we decided on collectively.
We also thought that as the imagery works as a prompt in a sort of different mode that some of the aesthetics of the imagery could mirror that of the installation and the video and so forth. That is of course tentative as the other groups have not fully developed yet but it was an idea we thought of as yet another way to integrate.
Also we have a group chat named “Zine Queens.” That’s pretty amazing.