The Portland Zine Symposium (PZS) is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I am pretty excited to attend it as my first zine fest/gathering. Late October in Portland, OR is its own type of lovely that begs you to sit inside a coffee shop on a rainy afternoon and read a book while the world goes by. I am also excited for my entrée to my (somewhat) local zine community and to meet others who enjoy making zines since zinesters are a little thin on the ground in my area.

While oodles of zines are obviously for sale at events like the PZS, from everything I’ve read, it seems like zine trades are a bit of a thing at gatherings. And I love any opportunity I get to trade art – zines, photo prints, etc. – rather than buy it. Partially because I like to stroke my punk rock ego and subvert capitalism when I can, but mostly because – let’s face it – I’m a little cheap.

In order to have something to trade, I’ve been working on adapting a former book project of mine into a zine called Everywhere I’ve Ever Lived. I deliberately designed the zine so printing and assembly would be relatively easy compared to my usual creations since my time is limited lately and because I will be giving it away.

At first, my planned edition of 30 copies was going great. My printer cooperated with me, and folding and sewing together the zines only took me a couple of hours spread out over a few days. At least it was going well until yesterday, when I got around to trimming the bleed edge from my zine and I realized that the outer edges of almost every page in my zine had cut off. At first I tried to see if I could live with it as a quirky DIY whoopsie-daisy, but it really makes the zines unreadable.

The good news is that I know what I did wrong and it’s easy to fix when I redo everything (I printed my interior pages at a different size than my cover). But it doesn’t erase the fact that I have to redo everything. It feels wasteful, both in terms of my time and in the materials I used to in the first try. And more than anything, it’s just a little disappointing.

(And yes, I did a few test prints ahead of printing everything, and those drafts printed correctly. I just made a small and careless error and now I have the distinct privilege of dealing with it.)

Making Shitty Art

The moral of the above story is that sometimes shitty art happens by accident. But it should also happen on purpose sometimes.

I resisted identifying as an artistic person for the longest time because I can’t draw or paint to save my life. And I thought that’s what art was, since those were the mediums thrust upon us in the elementary and middle school art classes I did take. (In hindsight, that’s probably because those are the mediums where the materials and space requirements are economical enough that an average public school can provide a class set, but I digress.)

The reality is that I’m not a “good” artist. These days I have varying levels of mastery in a bunch of different mediums, but I still often lack the skill to capture whatever it is I’m trying to say. But I try.

And that’s really my point: trying is important, and the result doesn’t have to matter. Artistic expression is not a competition and isn’t something that can be objectively captured or achieved. Consequently, art can (and should be) silly and fun and downright shitty sometimes because the important part is simply to try. To play, to experiment, to make. Even if the result is really shitty.

My Recent Shitty Art

So let me introduce you to my recent shitty art. I somehow ended up with a subscription to Vogue magazine. I didn’t sign up for the subscription so I’m not sure why I started receiving it, but there it is in my mailbox every month. I’m not a very fashionable person and it’s an artistic medium I struggle to resonate with, so it’s honestly pretty lost on me.

A few nights ago I got it in my head to grab the small stack of magazines I’ve accumulated and try out some magazine collage. Armed with only scissors, glue, and an empty Friday night, I started cutting items out of the pages that intrigued me and trying to figure out how they could fit together. The two results are possibly the worst (and decidedly creepiest) pieces of art I’ve ever made. They are such shitty art, but I also love them. I crack up every time I look at them because they are truly the fuel of nightmares. But I did try. And it was fun.