An exhibition at Grove City College highlighting the art and style of underground “zines” will provide visitors a chance this week to make some DIY art of their own.
Running through Dec. 11 in the Gallery of Pew Fine Arts Center on campus, Zine Machine opens with a reception from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14 where visitors will be able to help create a zine on the spot. Short for fanzine, a zine is a homemade book or magazine, usually celebrating a niche genre or subculture, characterized by low-tech, cut-and-paste text and graphics and often self-published with the aid of a copying machine.
“At the opening, students and community members – whether artists or not – will have the chance to make a page for our community zine,” Chandler Brutscher, gallery director and exhibition curator, said. “There is no one right answer, theme or method to making, but we will have plenty of printed matter available to cut and paste onto artists’ pages as well as pens, pencils, and other tools.”
The contributors will be able to take home a zine containing the page they created and the finished work will become part of the exhibition, which features zine collections and work from artists across the country.
“This exhibition is hands-on. Gallery attendees can touch the work and they can make the work. I hope they relish in the quirk associated with this artform and find themselves compelled to document something unique in a very DIY way,” according to Brutscher, a northeast Ohio print-based artist who serves as guest lecturer in printmaking at the College.
Zine Machine, Brutscher said, builds on the College’s fine arts curriculum. “Grove City College has unique art offerings that include emphasis on both graphic design and visual arts,” she said. “The zine exhibition forms a happy marriage of the two, and demonstrates a strong connection between both digital and handheld techniques. My hope is that students can be inspired by what they view as well as challenge themselves to consider the myriad career niches out there that they may have never even heard of.”
For more about Communication and Visual Arts at Grove City College, visit www.gcc.edu/comm.