Scape
Zine, Erin Clark, 18 pgs, clarkerin.com, $12
Scape’s self-description as “a series of dreamy collage landscapes” sells the zine short. The spreads in Scape are lush, vibrant and mesmerizing, utilizing Risograph printing to create lush, layered images that are downright otherworldly.
It’s important with Scape to note it’s expertly printed on a Risograph, combining colours expertly. It’s a real challenge to figure out what colours the three layers are. Clark uses the technology to its greatest effect. Each of the environments is unlike the one before it, and new colours and patterns emerge with each successive turn of the page. The blues, pinks, and yellows of the first landscape, a beach, are washed away by the bright oranges and tones of the landscape that follows, clouds over farmland. These in turn submit to pages of a dense jungle landscape. The scenes depicted merge and fall in on themselves as the varying tones and shades work alongside one another, with Clark’s wavy and flowing linework helping to achieve the dreaminess she aspires to. Checkered and dotted patterns sit amongst the cool, quiet colours of the dreamscape, adding texture. The orderliness of these patterns contrasts the looseness of form all around them.
Scape is, in short, a visual treat, with each page more impressive than the last. Just as you’ve finished processing one page, the next one blows it away.