WHILE WE DON’T CLAIM TO BE any kind of authority on anything, we can confidently report that zines are a thing.
At this point, we are not even going to clarify how you pronounce that word.
Zinefests are held annually across the world, largely non-profit and volunteer-run, celebrating not only print and DIY culture but also, at its nexus, people doing stuff. Online publications like Broken Pencil and Printed Matter have curated lists of zine festivals currently held in countries across the world, including in 30+ states in the U.S. and across Canada.
The origin of zines can be traced back as far as the 1500s, but the zine thing is chiefly associated with science fiction fanzines of the 1930s and 40s, human rights organizations of the 60s and 70s and punk rock and underground comics fanzines of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
“It’s like a thing,” says Port Orchard cartoonist Pat Moriarity, who has been in the underground comics and zine world for many years and will be one of the special guests at Bremerton’s first-ever Zinefest slated for Aug. 26 at Evergreen Park.
“What I get from it, is that it’s a younger generation of people who never really had print in their life like we did as the older generation. It’s almost been fetishized. Like, now, the idea of a small-run published book is attractive. That’s just my perspective as an older cartoonist,” he adds.
Moriarity has published two short run books recently, a collection of one panel gags he originally did for Seattle alternative newspaper The Rocket (‘Loop De Loop,’ published by Fogland Press) and a collection of other work printed in 3D, accompanied by a pair of 3D glasses (‘Deep Art Work By Pat Moriarity,’ published by Noreah/Brownfield). He also designed the poster for the second annual Zine Machine Festival in Durham, North Carolina in 2018, and, more recently, he tabled at the 7th Annual Hot Off The Press Book Fair at Fantagraphics Books in Seattle last month.
Regionally—in addition to Fantagraphics’ storied history as an independent underground publisher—Seattle’s Short Run Festival, founded in 2011, has grown into featuring hundreds of small press and independently printing vendors at Seattle Center every November. Portland’s Zine Symposium, held in October, has been running since 2001. The website for the annual Olympia Zine Fest, founded in 2015 and held in September, accounts the Olympia Timberland Library having a collection of over 1,500 zines and a local book store there as being home to the original ‘Olympia Zine Library.’
But there has never been a festival dedicated to the DIY, handmade, small run, independently published, works in Kitsap. Bremerton-by-way-of-Seattle-by-way-of-Kansas-City artist Dani Gray noticed that, asked why not and set out to build one.
“What drives my passion for zines is that they are rad,” says Gray, who met Moriarity at a local art show when she purchased one of his ‘Zine Machine’ prints. “I have a huge collection of zines that range from super heavy and political stuff to ‘My Favorite Kind Of Mustard.’ There’s a full range. They can be really fancy and embossed or simply one sheet of paper. They can be filled with all words or all graphics. They can be anything… I think it’s the most accessible form of creation. All you need is a piece of paper.”
Gray said she used to go to Short Run every year in Seattle because it always fell on her birthday weekend. When she was a kid, she said she had this ‘delusional idea’ that she thought it was fun to pretend that she worked in an office. She would fold papers, her mom would staple them for her and she would draw in them.
“So technically that was making a zine,” she laughs when I ask if she remembers the first zine she ever made.
Many years later, she’s made a career in office administration with the thinking that everybody needs some body to push paper around. She knew she could work in any industry, she could go anywhere, if she learned to push paper. And she was right. She has worked in medical, long term care, wealth management, and educational fields.
“I’ve been able to go into every profession because everybody needs somebody to push paper,” she said.
She currently works in Workforce and Economic Development at Olympic College. But in her free time, she pushes a different kind of paper… enter the Bremerton Zinefest.
“I’ve always been kind of crafty, just like the need to hobby jump and make things, but when I moved to Seattle after some family tragedy in Kansas City, painting really became the thing,” Gray said. “Art saved my life. Everything in my life in the midwest was telling me that this is not the place for you anymore. You need to move on. And I had no idea what I was going to do.”
After coming to Seattle and having her first-ever art show at Museum Quality Framing in Magnolia., she showed her work at several Seattle art walks. In the fall of 2019, she and her partner moved to Bremerton so they could be closer to her partner’s father whom they had settled here around 2017. “When we moved here, I wanted art to be bigger, I wanted it to be more a part of my life,” Gray said.
When she was laid off from her day job at a Seattle wealth management firm over covid, she said she spent some listless time evaluating what she wanted to do and aimed to find a job in Bremerton so that her life could be more ‘hyper local.’ When she applied for the job at the college, she said she rewarded herself by also applying to the local Collective Visions Gallery.
She was selected for both.
Last year, she hosted a zine workshop at Collective Visions. Afterwards, she was approached by Priya Charry from the Kitsap Regional Library who was planning a zine event for the library and had been thinking about bringing an artist over from Seattle but reached out to Gray instead because she was local.
“And that went so well,” Gray said of the library event. “It was just a hit. Then she and I got to chatting about ‘We should do a zine fest here and what would that look like?” That conversation became the brain trust that grew into an instagram page and has now grown into a short run festival for Kitsap in Bremerton.
Having never put together an art festival, Gray reached out to the established zine fests in Seattle, Olympia and Portland. “And I was like, I’m doing this thing and I have no idea what I’m doing… can you give me some guidance?” she laughs. “And they said, ‘Absolutely, yes, here is tons of information.’ That’s another thing about zines that I love is the community that supports them is tight… it’s like a little family.”
In brainstorming logistics for a zero profit festival without a business license or insurance in place, Gray was encouraged to put together a presentation for the Bremerton Arts Commission. That presentation landed that organization’s support and then the fest became a full on City of Bremerton-sanctioned event.
“I just couldn’t believe how it ballooned,” Gray said, noting the festival fell in line with the city’s mission of promoting local art and culture. “This is the type of thing they need artists to do, is have events.”
Although she’d been pitching the idea, posting to the instagram and talking about the event, she said there wasn’t a lot of response from any zinesters in the Kitsap region. At least, Gray assured herself and the commission, “zinesters travel and they will come to us.”
But when the event was finalized and she put out the call to artists, within a day or two, nearly all of the vendor spots were filled with people from the area. “And I was like, ‘Oh, you are here… you’re just hiding,” she laughs.
“Maybe years ago, there wouldn’t have been enough weirdos around here to be into it,” Moriarity says, “But I think there is now. I think Kitsap County is culturally ready for such things… and this is just the early phases of it.” // BILLMAN
BREMERTON ZINEFEST hosts a pop up at Bigfoot’s House Of Vinyl for First Friday, 5-8 p.m. Aug. 4 leading up to the inaugural fest from 11-4 p.m. Aug. 26 at Evergreen Park. More on the socials @bremertonzinefest
