DnA Artists
Artists & Friends
Chicago Zine Fest Recap
Author: Alex
Date: 06/14/23
Tags:
#events
It has been a WHIRLWIND festival season, pals! Alex here, reporting from Chicago. The weekend after Halftone Zine Fest the famous Chicago Zine Fest kicked off!
The fest was on 5/19-20, but I only attended Saturday. Both Chicago Zine Fest and CAKE (recap coming soon) were back after their pandemic hiatuses, making the vibe extra special.
Alex ready to go with her program and sticker letting folks know she’s ready to trade.
After swapping zines with my Zine Club Chicago BFF, Clau Rocha, I started my CZF day at a phenomenal workshop hosted by Beth Hetland! Beth’s a comic artist and book-maker extraordinaire who I’ve collaborated with at my Librarian job! Her lesson reminded me about choose-your-own-adventure zines, a format I’m eager to play with for an upcoming fest.
The results of the workshop with Beth Hetland, reigniting my excitement for nontraditional zine formats!
After that I took to the floor, where over 100 vendors were gathered to sling their zines! As the haul pics show, I…uh…went a little wild at this fest. But there were so many great folks to support as well as friends Dana and I had seen the weekend before at Halftone. How could I resist!? I want to shout out a few folks for you to check out:
- Andrea Pearson - a mutual on Instagram who I hadn’t yet met in person, Andrea runs the very cool Aquatic Panda Distro and is spearheading Chicago’s very own The Revenge of the Hallowzine anthology I’ll be contributing to this Fall! I might have fangirled at Andrea when we met, but I regret nothing.
- Emily Kardamis - cerator of on of my favorite fest finds: Cool Teen Mothman these mini comics were full of cute drawings and cute sentiments. I’m obsessedddd.
- Lily Cursed - a super kind artist who came all the way from Mexico City to share amazing zines that were cute AND political? It was such a treat to trade with Lily :)
- Claire Krügeger - we met at Halftone briefly, but it was great getting to chat with Claire more and see her lovely and thoughtful bookforms. The pic in my haul of her zine, Emulsion, does not capture the artistry so you have to check out her site!
- Rachel Bard - another Halftone pal, but also I have admired Rachel’s mini-comics in legendary local haunts like Quimby’s and Chicago Comics since I moved to this city! So it was great to chat with more time on our hands than we had at Halftone!
- Okay but listen there are so many more vendors but also creative friends who I ran into - I just promised I would limit myself to 5 (and it was TOUGH). Hit up our Instagram to grab tags to all the artists in my post!
I rounded out my day attending Incarcerated Zinesters and the Fight Against Prison Censorship presented by Midwest Books to Prisoners, a sobering and important discussion I’m glad I attended. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I left, and am stil rolling ideas around in my mind for ways I can support their work either as a Zinester or Librarian. Time will tell, but for now you should immediately look them up and learn more about their initiatives!
It was remarkable to see this community of creatives from Chicago and beyond gathered in one place, and I can’t wait to see everyone again next year! (When hopefully DnA will be a CZF vendor as well.)