On Wednesday, the Ontario College of Art and Design University’s Zine Library held a collaborative zine making day that also gave attendees access to over 200 zines to read throughout the day, and a button maker to make treats to take home. I zipped through before work to make 12 Nicolas Cage buttons (see photo gallery at the bottom), but at various points throughout the day many others stayed longer to contribute a page or two to the library’s zine themed around “Summer Memories.” OCAD U Librarian Marta Chudolinska (who also contributes a paper cut comic to Broken Pencil) says she chose the summer theme because “it has so much potential in it for all kinds of images and stories: good, bad, sad, crazy, etc.” Twenty-six pages were created throughout the day, and the library is leaving the pages and the materials out throughout the month, creating a zine station so that anyone can stop by and add to it for the rest of July.
A white board in the library holds the pages contributed so far along with a set of questions that contributors can answer that will be incorporated into the zine. “We’ll collect all the pages and the responses to the questions if we get more and … assemble it into a super summer zine! We don’t have the money to print lots of colour copies, but we’ll make a few, one for our zine collection and a few other zine libraries. And then probably print a few in black and white to give away,” says Chudolinska via email.
If you want to contribute to the zine but can’t make it over to OCAD U’s Learning Zone (122 St. Patrick St., Toronto), you can email your page to Chudolinska at [email protected]. The zine will be vertically oriented half size so pages should be 5.5 x 8.5″ or smaller.
It’s a pretty obscure and strange little poem, but that’s why I enjoy it so much (and hope you all will too). Production of the zine is underway and I hope to have it for sale on my upcoming online store sometime this Summer.