This Tale is a Lie: A Fairy tale Zine

My first project this past semester, studying abroad at the Arts University Bournemouth, was to create a zine. My topic was folklore, and beyond that I was given no restrictions or guidelines.

I found my first few months there to be quite challenging, in that I had never before had so much free time for self-motivated work. That, paired with the incredibly broad topic of folklore, led me to struggle initially with finding a focus. I won’t post any of my first sketches because they are really quite aimless and I only truly started to make work when I developed a narrative to my zine.

For this documentation I’d like to focus on the exploration of different mediums and ways of working that was key to the zine unit. The narrative I developed, focusing in on fairytales, is metafictive, and therefore the use of different mediums even within a single piece became significant. (Every page is shown in order and the text was written by me).

Cover Page (watercolor, ink, folded paper, thread, digital)

My zine traverses through idealized imagery of fairytales, and pulls back the curtain.

Welcome (ink)

(Ink, lino print)

(Ink, watercolor, graphite)

I wanted to investigate the idea of the authors of literary fairytales, as collectors and potentially manipulators.

(ink, inserted photography)

(graphite, ink, watercolor)

I explored the idea of fairy tale characters having lives and minds external to the stories collected and retold by countless storytellers. With this narrative, I used differences in mediums, colors, and scale in order to separate the fairy tale characters from human reality.

I wanted to play with the reality of the page as a space, for control and imprisonment.

(ink, photography, torn paper)

(ink, watercolor, pins, photography)

(ink, watercolor, pins, needle, thread, photography)

I’m particularly attached to the piece below. Witches are evasive and do not follow the rules of society. They slip through your fingers. I chose watercolor (a similarly tricksy medium) to depict this stigmatized role of the “witch,” the woman forced into isolation for not following the dictated path.

"I'm not good, I'm not bad, I'm just right. I'm the witch!" (ink, watercolor)

Those who exert control over these characters are subject to their own rules of society. (ink, graphite, watercolor)

Below I placed myself in the role of the manipulator. As an illustrator I may make commentary but cannot exclude myself from the group. I actually felt pretty bad creating this page.

(ink, jar, water, photography)

 The zine narrative then shifts to a larger view, thinking about the multitudes of versions of each story across time.

Though each version may be but a shadow, the same girl flits between her stories (pringles tube, paper, tea bags, pins and needles, photography)

Beyond all individual versions, there is a central theme, there is a core that resurfaces and thrives with change.

(ink, watercolor, graphite)

The penultimate page is supposed to be layered over with a page of tracing paper, the words of both pages overlapping.

(tracing paper, colored pencil/ink, watercolor)

 The ending is left to you.

(watercolor, tracing paper, paper, thread)

Explanations of the content of individual images can be found on my tumblr. 

Hand-bound zines

Printmaking Quilt

I’d like to commence this blog with a project from last December. It was my Printmaking 2 final project, and entailed both wood block and pronto plate prints.

I began with the concept of making a quilt of small square prints, and after some concept sketches as seen below, I developed the imagery and the story behind them.

Trying to find a narrative flow.

Rough color scheme

The images were split into 2 categories, both by their content and execution. The woodblock images I drew directly onto 6”x6” plywood blocks, and carved away the excess. The other images were to be produced as pronto plates, which is a form of paper lithography. I drew all of these on regular paper, and then transferred them onto the pronto plates using India ink, litho crayons, and a light table.    

        

Light tables saved my sanity.

After that it was a matter of printing the blocks and plates! All 20 were printed on rice paper, which I felt would give a more cloth-like quality to the final product. Unfortunately I don’t have any shots of the actual printing process, but pronto plates are definitely less intuitive (for me at least) than relief printing. They involve first sponging water, and then rolling ink, onto the plates. The ink is repelled by the water and attracted to the India ink and the litho crayon. 

All the final pronto plate prints

All the final wood block prints

And now to explain what this whole thing is about (which perhaps I should have talked about earlier, as incentive to read the darn blog). 

This patchwork quilt alternates narrative and symbolic prints. It results from my relationship and thoughts regarding childhood and fairy tales. The pronto plates are focused on my relationship with memory, childhood, and idealizations of both, as informed by reading, constructions of childhood, the romantic child etc… In this short narrative I attempted to depict the odd balance I walk between the awareness of how steeped in assumptions and influenced by societal constructions my notions of childhood are, and the attachment I maintain to these idealizations. It struggles with trying to capture and preserve an aspect of myself I can never understand or truly be sure was ever really there.

The wood blocks are a reflection on my evolving relationship to fairytales. Like my relationship to ideas of childhood, I recognize that my understanding of fairytales are influenced by cultural associations across history. However, what I love about fairytales is that everybody seems to have a different relationship with them, a different favorite. Gripe about Disneyfied stories all you want (much of it is very justified)— I love ALL the different options and how you can piece together what you want to take away from the vast compendium of stories. These images depict key elements to my personal relationship to them, from films/picture books, to novelizations, and some of the first literary versions themselves.

My tumblr post breaks down each image individually for those further interested in the project, as well as showing larger scans of each individual print.

To finish it off, I spent 4 hours sewing (if you can call my fumbling that) the whole quilt together.