Marjorie Barrick Museum Podcast

Unknown Speaker 0:00
The following especial programming aired in collaboration with the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art on the campus of UNLV and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Unknown Speaker 0:21
All right. Welcome to the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art radio show. My name is Deanne and I'm here today with the A4 Zine Club. It's a fantastic student organization, they focus on zines. They use the Las Vegas zine library in the museum's lobby as a kind of focus. The lobby is a place where they meet at the moment on Monday evenings, and they talk about zines they make scenes they do all sorts of zine-y things. So can I start by asking the three of you to introduce yourselves. Manny, would you like to go first?

Manny 0:53
Sure. So hi, everyone. My name is Manny. I am currently the vice president of the A4 Zine Club. I started off as the president but has since moved down to the vice presidency, which has also been quite fun.

Unknown Speaker 1:10
Jadelin My name is Jadelen. I am the secretary and librarian of the A4 Zine Club. Compared to Manny I am definitely a lot newer, but it's been really fun. And it's been a nice welcome to the world of zines, because I was never really a part of it until a 14 club.

Unknown Speaker 1:30
And Alex, yeah, I am a graphic designer currently working at the port Marjorie Barrick Museum, as well as a member of the board zine club.

Unknown Speaker 1:42
Brilliant. Okay, so many you were one of the founders of the zine club, weren't you?

Unknown Speaker 1:47
I was Canadian. Go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 1:50
Go for it. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 1:53
Me and one other person Tracy Fuentes, who has since graduated UNLV is doing their masters at NYU. We were both working at the Barrick Museum back in 2021, 2022, when we met, and we saw that when the pandemic hit the Las Vegas zine library, as you mentioned, that was in the lobby area was brought into an office. And we started thinking about, you know, this is a really cool resource, people need to see it and experience it and be able to browse it. And so we thought, what better way to do that than to start an RSO, which is a registered student organization here at UNLV. Essentially, a zine club so that we can invite members and students and anyone else to come and experience the zine and look at it. And then ultimately, it grew into this whole thing where, you know what, let's also allow people to come in and make things for themselves, too. So, like I said, we started the club back in early 2022. And since then, has grown to do so much more than nzms including events and other collaborations with clubs and stuff like that. Yeah, you've

Unknown Speaker 3:08
done some absolutely terrific collaborations. You've done readings and fairly big, big creative events with others in makers like Jean Munson and Cozi Las Vegas, is it Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 3:21
Cozi LV which is run by three people, three amazing people here in town. Nicole, Jean and Gina. They're probably our biggest collaborators. We work with them a lot on a lot of events, and programs. And they're just so well connected to with with the community here inside UNLV and outside. So yeah, we were just lucky to be able to find that, you know, there's a whole zine community in Vegas that was so supportive and open to us, also joining the zine community.

Unknown Speaker 3:56
But yeah, that's fine. Can we it's just occurred to me, there might be people listening to this, who don't actually know what zines are. Would one of you like to just tell those people what the heck we're actually talking about.

Unknown Speaker 4:08
So zines are self published magazines. That's where the name comes from. And they take on a lot of forms. Usually, they are like, you know, in the form of a little booklet if you make them in person, but they come in digital forms. They come in like photographs. We've seen some really unconventional ones made of like, fabric that's been sewn together, basically any form of art you want to put together and basically send out to the world. And it basically if you really want to go into the history of it, it started with like, fan culture fandom, and that's where it became known as fanzines, and then was fan magazines that show into fanzines, and now it's just zines as a whole as its own subculture.

Unknown Speaker 4:49
That's fabulous. How have they survived? I mean, I'm thinking so much at them. You know, today so much is online, it's digital. But one of the great qualities of zines for me is The fact that they are, you know, like, actual paper that I can pick up and read. How do you think they have survived when so much else that was hard copy as has just gone online?

Unknown Speaker 5:12
It's interesting, actually, there was a period of time where zines kind of fell out of fashion. And they went back up around the 70s to 90s, especially with the riot goal called riot girl culture in the 90s. And I feel like maybe part of it is because people are still drawn to physical media and the art of it. And we see it here now with like zine clubs and how people like making it. And I feel like before there was a lot of like smaller fan needs. And then there are mailing lists. And of course, there are places where you can meet other people to hand them out and physically exchange it to. And in our zine library, actually, there are zine collections where people mail in their ziens. And then they're put together by larger groups, and it's a great way to send your art out there and keep it alive.

Unknown Speaker 5:54
That's fantastic. And do all of you make zines? Yes, yeah. Awesome. Alex, would you like to talk about some of the zines you've made? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 6:04
So as Jadelen mentioned, zines can kind of be anything that you want them to be a lot of mine focus on my graphic design, background and illustration. My very first kind of like public zine that I ever made was a very small collection of some various like characters that I've bootlegged throughout my personal design work and whatnot, and played into the idea of like bootlegging, and like bootleg and culture. I've also done another zine in which I took some Trader Joe's receipts and do it on them, scan them in and then just kind of put them in at a specific sequence. So to say, and kind of made a little homage to Trader Joe's. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 6:50
I do love Trader Joe's. The apartment that I live in now is pretty close to one. So before I was not near one, and now I'm like, thank you to Trader Joe's for being so near to me.

Unknown Speaker 7:06
So what about you, Manny? What kind of scenes do you make?

Unknown Speaker 7:08
Yeah, so I actually, my first zine came about when I was introduced to film photography. So I'm by no means a professional photographer. But when I picked that film camera up, I took it on my road trips. So when I would go visit, you know, different parts of Nevada or take a trip to California, I was really drawn to the landscapes. And so I would just snap pictures of the landscapes that I would see on the road trip. And I ended up putting it into a collection of photos in a zine called some landscapes. And I just printed two copies, one for me, one for my friend. And that kind of gave me the full process of, you know, taking photos, thinking of how to arrange them, putting them in a file, printing them, and then finally, putting it out into the world. Just as an experiment to see just, you know, what the process of making and publishing a zine was. And since then, I have made more issues of that some landscape scenes. The second issue was an interview with actually, Professor here at UNLV, Hikmet Loe, and we talked about land art. So I was able to kind of bridge the gap between my photos of landscapes with Hikmet, it's knowledge of landlord.

Unknown Speaker 8:30
Have you made any more issues? Or is it? No,

Unknown Speaker 8:33
so I just published my third issue last year, and I took a trip to Seattle, by myself, kind of to help my brother move. And I started noticing that a lot of trucking companies had really interesting logos just plastered on the side of the trucks. And so I when I got back home, I looked up all the different trucking companies that I could remember seeing. And I instead put my landscape photos with images of those logos, as kind of like a little road trip for people to see the landscapes and kind of imagine what kind of trucks I was passing by.

Unknown Speaker 9:12
Yeah, I remember when you had those, like, cosy that to a lot of really interesting conversations with people that knew a surprising amount about trucking. You'd be like, did you know this company shut down. And we're like, no. But we had like, several people talk to us about that. And one guy was like, oh, yeah, I'm a trucker. And my grandpa was one too. And he like, ran down the list of companies. I was like, wow.

Unknown Speaker 9:34
And that's, that's something that I love about zines is that you come across such niche topics. And the people that make scenes have such specific experiences, which is one of the reasons me and Tracy pushed to get the zine library back out into the lobby, because it warms my heart every time I'm, you know, walking around the museum and I see somebody browsing the library, and just imagining what random zine they picked up and What kind of like pages they're like browsing. There's a really cool series that anyone is welcome to come browse. It's called the Thrifty Times, which is basically a zine that every issue focuses on a different topic within the thrifting world. And there's a really cool one, that's the clown issue. So that issue is all about thrifted items that relate to clowns and the circus and just kind of stuff like that. And I don't know, that's just in such a Vegas thing, but it's also so niche. And that's just one example of all the different types of zines that you can find in the zine library.

Unknown Speaker 10:38
Who makes the search insane?

Unknown Speaker 10:39
That's a good question that I am assuming there, there must be some sort of contact information on on the zine itself. But I haven't really looked to see if that person is still or that group is still making issues of it. I mean, if they're listening, please bring his music. Yeah, it would be awesome. You can email us at a4ineclub@unlv.edu with any tips we'd love to know. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 11:05
And is that a good way to date donate seemed like you. Let's say I'm I'm person who sits at home, I make scenes. I'm listening to this. I'm saying, Boy, I'd really love to donate my zines to the zine library so that people in the zine club can you know, and everybody can see them and read them. How should I go about doing that.

Unknown Speaker 11:23
So we have multiple avenues. If you have a physical copy, you want to drop off at the American Museum on the shelves, we have a little mailbox that you can drop it into close the door, and we check back on it periodically. If yours comes in a digital format, and you either want us to publish it digitally, or we can print it out for you. You can email it to us at our aforementioned email, or on our Instagram at a4zineclub, we have a link to where you can contact us and stuff in. And our Discord and stuff is also listed on there where you could get into direct contact with the officers if you have any questions about submissions. Or actually also, if you want to get your zines or submission to a group seen in we are doing a second collaborative zine last year we did the Bizarre Zine this year we're doing the Mundane Zine. So in stark contrast to that, so I'm excited to see how people will pull that out. And you know, taking all like the boring things in life and seeing what they what kind of spin they'll be able to take with that. I love that

Unknown Speaker 12:22
you're going to contribute to that.

Unknown Speaker 12:23
Hopefully I have more time this semester. And I have some ideas. And I'm really looking forward to it. Because I think it's such a Oh, ironically interesting concept.

Unknown Speaker 12:32
I think so too. I mean, I'm thinking now of Manny story about the truck logos. Yeah. And realizing that to some people just saying truck logos and trucking companies, they would think that was mundane, but when you were describing it, and talking about actually turning into a kind of travel diary that sounded you know, I want to read that zine.

Unknown Speaker 12:50
I'll definitely see if I can get you a copy. But for example, that was also a way for me to stay awake. It was such a long drive. I think it was like 16, 17 hours, looking at all the different logos and thinking about their design was a way to stay awake. Because yeah, a long drive can get pretty mundane.

Unknown Speaker 13:11
But what about the history if this scene library is at something like how long has it been around?

Unknown Speaker 13:16
I was going to add to that Jalen because the original person that started collecting this zine library, Jeff Grindley, he's a local artists writer poet, made it really easy to access the zine. So there was this guy named Jeff, like I said, started collecting zines from way back in the 80s. And I believe that he was looking for a place to kind of showcase it publicly. And it started off in a coffee shop. So people were able to visit this coffee shop and come across this small part of the collection and browse it. I believe that coffee shop has since closed. And so Jeff started looking for other places that he could share his collection with. And eventually it made its way to the Barrick Museum. And then like I said, COVID kind of came. And we had to restructure the way that the museum was laid out. The library came into storage. But yeah, that's kind of like the very short abridged version of that history. Jeff is still involved with the zine library, he sometimes comes in, grabs a couple of zines collection and takes them out into the world to show at events, maybe show that workshops, which he has also given us the opportunity to curate the zine and kind of like use the zine in our own programs as well. So we'll also curate a selection of scenes that we find interesting and take them out into, you know, the Involvement Fair at UNLV so that people can browse and see what the potential of a zine can be. And that's gotten a lot of interest to so we've gotten a lot of cool members that say, Hey, yeah, I saw the collection of the library. And I kind of am interested in making my own. So I see the zine library as a very important and like pivotal part of the zine club because it is such a dense resource for his the history of zines, the history of scenes in Las Vegas. And then also as a way of teaching people, the possibilities that scenes can give creators and artists

Unknown Speaker 15:22
got it and they sort of go to zines that you choose when you do want to say go to an involvement fair and really grab people's attention.

Unknown Speaker 15:30
Definitely Thrifty Times is one of them. I always bring out we have at cozy we got one donated that folds up into a really little little tiny booklet. But when you unfold it, if creates a huge font on the back, and you can see all the comics and it's kind of like, you know, those cootie catchers, where depending on how you fold it shows a different thing. That was really cool. We also have one what is it the it's all about toilet since a photographic toilet. And again with like meeting people with the niche interests at the Involvement Fair, there was a family and I guess the mom and the son, they installed toilets, and they're telling me about oh, this is what this model is and they were like, if you go into the restroom at Roku that they have this model it's the best toilet you can import from Asia to America as a good to know Yeah, um, we do switch it out regularly though. We have some that are made by members as well on display like we have some of the ones we made as well as like ones from Gina. We had the one you made for the zine exchange. We brought that one last time to

Unknown Speaker 16:27
it. Yeah, that was awesome. It's on the topic of Trader Joe's. We have a zine in the the zine Library. Thank you, Jeff, by the way for collecting this into the library. But it's a Trader Joe's bag called Bagazine. And it's basically a traders, Joe, a Trader Joe's bag folded up into a booklet. And it just just has handwritten accounts of the author. Oh, yeah. And it's one of my favorite. What I love about it, too, is it's it's the it's the second issue of the Bagazine. So I'm so curious with the first issue. And if there's a third or fourth issue of the Bagazine, I always

Unknown Speaker 17:04
tell people, sorry, sorry. I always tell people with that one when they asked like what scenes can come into, because I'm like, people literally made one out of a paper bag, but it's a little delicate. So like, I can't We can't bring it with us every fair. I wish we could.

Unknown Speaker 17:16
Yeah, right. Yeah, I suppose that's something that goes with things being handmade they can get. But I was gonna say I, I may be wrong, but I think the person who created magazine is the husband of Audrey Basilio. Oh, you know, that might be right. Yeah. So if if we do want to if you do want to get a hold of the maker of magazine and ask about issue, because I think I've only seen issue two.

Unknown Speaker 17:40
Yeah, I wonder maybe, maybe issue one is, is somewhat it's a different, you know, it's a Walmart bag. I don't know something.

Unknown Speaker 17:47
Oh, maybe he's still making them? I don't know. I mean, if he call, Phil, if you're listening to this, and you are the person behind Bagazine, can you send us some more issues? That would be great. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. And, personally, what kind of ziens Do you like, so not necessarily the ones that you bring out to bring other people to the club. But like, Alex, if you're looking in the library, and you're thinking, I'm just going to pull out a zine and read it, what kind of zine do you look for?

Unknown Speaker 18:15
I tend to be mostly drawn to like, any kind of photo zines. I don't really shoot photos myself or anything like that. But I've always just been kind of captured with by photos and just the way people like other people see things in the world. That and also, what got me into scenes in the first place was all those scenes from like the punk era, and one on like the late 90s. So anything that kind of has that aesthetic to it or resembles any of that. I'm quick to grab it and flip through it.

Unknown Speaker 18:50
That's good. Yeah, we do have a lot of those in the zine library, don't we? I believe so. I remember going through it once. I was just doing some really ad hoc cataloging and it was just punk scene punk scene music see music scene? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 19:03
we have. It's a whole shelf just for pumpkin music. I think almost two shelves. Actually.

Unknown Speaker 19:07
I'm not surprised. And Manny, what about you? What do you what things do you read for pleasure?

Unknown Speaker 19:13
I gravitate towards the zines that are like one offs. I feel like I tend to enjoy seeing somebody's first zine. Right, somebody's first attempt at making something physical, because that's, to me a very raw example of what they can kind of create. And a lot of the times it's personal zines. So short for persons. They might write a story about an experience they had or a memory or they might write about. You know, even sometimes something is like an event that was a traumatic for them. It's very intimate when you get to open a zine that was published by someone who wrote something so personal And I feel like it's a form of therapy as well to kind of put that out into a physical form and kind of send it out. And almost like releasing that, right. And, you know, sometimes those kinds of ziens might just have one copy, because they only made it for themselves, or maybe they made it for a really trusted friend. And then somehow they ended up in someone's collection. But I feel like those types of things carries a special, you know, aura to them. Whereas something a little bit more commercial, some, you know, something that has 1000 copies that was made to sell at a bookstore. You know, as nice as they might look, they're a little bit less intimate. I'm not saying that. A zine that has 1000 copies to it can't be intimate. I've seen plenty, but definitely those like obscure one off shoots of something, are where

Unknown Speaker 20:52
much bravery in that. Yeah, you're giving people that complete strangers the opportunity to criticize Yeah, your pain, if it is something traumatic, you know, to potentially put you down even or, or perhaps really sympathize with it. And yeah, maybe get in contact with you and say, Yeah, I know how that feels, or Yeah, so that that is really brave. Sorry, I interrupted you. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 21:16
no, no, that's that's completely why I'm attracted to them. Also, in a way to black and white zines, because you get to see just the most basic limited version of something that is still appealing and can say something so strongly, because color printing is not cheap, guys. What about you, Jay,

Unknown Speaker 21:38
on the opposite end of the spectrum, I'm actually really drawn to the really colorful pops of color zines. And like, ones that use unconventional materials or formats, like you know, we brought up the paper bag zine, I brought up the ones made of fabric. And Mariah even bought one that it was about, I believe subways and the front cover opened up like the doors of a subway. And one word they used, like, I love that kind of thing. And I love hand drawn zines I love especially one niche that I discovered after cataloging cataloguing the library was that their how to type scenes that range from like, actual recipes to more jokey ones. Like there was one that was like, when like, all about like, dumb sexual, like how to do this. Jokes about that, and the art was really well done. And I love it. And like, I personally make, like, honestly, semi-educational ones, partially because I do them for projects. And it's either like jotting down daily thoughts or random things. So I also kind of like those where you open it up, and you can tell the person is just like, doing whatever, and have a good time that I love that.

Unknown Speaker 22:41
Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 22:42
yeah, that's great. I know that we there's one series of zines in there that we've I think only got parts off. But it's somebody's very personal story about their relationships. And I remember, you know, talking about the idea of diary and journal, it was very much like reading someone's journal, and hearing all the problems they were having with I think it was their boyfriend and losing him and so on and so on. So if if I am feeling you know, like putting together a perzine or a zine about a topic that I love, or I want to tell people about, how should I start? Like, what's the very first thing I'm coming to you saying, hey, falls in club I want to zine? What should I do? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:24
so the thing that I love about the A4 Club is that there's people that are knowledgeable about so many different things. So if even if you come to the zine club with a very vague idea, there is somebody that will be able to help you either digitally, okay, this is how you collage. This is how you can illustrate or if you want to, you know, type something on a typewriter, which we have three of we will show you how to use a typewriter. Right? We have a printer free printing. Right now we say unlimited copies. But that's that'll change once our ink starts to go down.

Unknown Speaker 24:03
There's a limit, unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker 24:06
But yeah, I think once you have a solid idea, thinking about the format, right? Do you want to make it more digitally? Do you want to make it handmade? Do you want to make one copy? Do you want to make 10 copies? Do you want to make 50 copies? Right, kind of laying that groundwork, that foundation to plan out your the process of your zine? And then it's writing or drawing or putting together the content, right? Thinking about how many pages and thinking about what kind of, you know, content you want? Or if you want to make it a collaborative zine as well. Do you want to bring in other artists, other creators writers to help you with that? And then how are you going to put it out there, right, who do you want to give it to? Who do you want to see your zine? Those are all things that you have to think about. There is no way in order to do that, but I feel like one Once you have an idea of what you're interested in, you can start to lay out like a little bit of a framework and process.

Unknown Speaker 25:07
Yeah. Do you guys have templates and things like that, that I could use? If, again, if I've never laid out a book page before? Okay, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 25:15
we have. So we have a mini zine template, which is an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper folded into an eight page scene. That's a really easy template that we can send you via PDF, or even if you come in to the zine club, we can show you how to make it yourself. We have more advanced templates, but I would say those require a little bit more knowledge of how to, you know, put together the pages and stuff but we can definitely teach you that. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 25:44
And then like, if you're not as if you want to do something digitally, but you're not as like, adept at like Photoshop or Adobe, because I've seen the process to put together a digital zine I looked at I was like, doesn't make my head spin, oh my god, like keeping track of the page numbers and how to fold it. There's like, um, if on our Discord, we have resources to like electric zine maker, it's like a good Beginner's Guide. It's basically like a drawing application. And there are sites where you can publish scenes, and it basically formats it into booklet form for you, like the whole process easier. And I think it's a great way to get started, especially if it's like, it seems a little daunting, you know, getting into this whole world, figuring out what format you want to use. And, oh, there's just a lot of really easy ways to get started. You can even just start by scribbling on a piece of paper, and that's what I do.

Unknown Speaker 26:29
I mean, Alex, do you have like one thing you do every time you started using?

Unknown Speaker 26:33
I mean, you kind of touched on it there kind of isn't like, a really, like, straightforward process for it. Kind of all over the place. I think the first thing for me is figuring out what I want to make a zine about. And then going from there figuring out like, how many pages do I want it to be? With the ones I've made? I've even kind of looked at materials first, like what kind of paper what's the dimensions of the zine gonna be? How many copies do I want to make of it, things like that. And then that's when I'll kind of just hop straight into Photoshop or Illustrator or whichever program I'm using and kind of go from there and whatever happens happens. Yeah, that's the beauty of making zines. He

Unknown Speaker 27:18
just kind of dive in like so many things in the art world. The way to do it is do it. Cool. Okay, so we feels like we're probably getting close to wrapping-up time. But before we do, where should I go to find zine? So apart from the zine library, I know that zine library is right there in the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art lobby. But let's I mean, for example, right now we're closed, the museums closed because we're installing a new show that's going to open on April 19. Where can I go to find zines? Right now?

Unknown Speaker 27:52
That's a good question we did just talk about recently. We're not affiliated with them. So this isn't a plug. We were talking about recently, like Avant Pop bookstore. They have zines and books and a lot of self published things. There are shows like what Jeff does that goes around showing them there are a lot of pop-up events around New at UNLV. And around Vegas. There's one I just posted about on our Instagram which is being held at afterlife TV and boba are people are selling them. There's like stuff like Cozi where they're selling them. And if you just go into like hashtag zine on a site or something, it'll, you'll find creators that make them. I've seen some creators on Tik Tok or Instagram that make like pretty funny content. And also like, what does it show their zine making process and it's really cool and you can buy them on like Etsy. Some really cool.

Unknown Speaker 28:42
Las Las Vegas has a lot of zine culture, if you really look for it. There's people always making them. On the topic of bookstores, there's another really cool bookstore in downtown on Fremont Street assembly, run by a guy named Pedro. He has a really cool connection with photographers and zine makers in town. So you'll definitely find some really underground zines for sale there. I think, Alex, you have some of yours seems

Unknown Speaker 29:10
to have one of my scenes there. Pedro was a really great guy and he does a really

Unknown Speaker 29:15
good job of curating his shop. very artful. Very well connected. Yeah. Oh, that

Unknown Speaker 29:22
sounds fantastic. All right. I am I am definitely inspired to go and check that out. All right, I think we're about about out of time. So I'd like to thank all three of you for coming. I like to encourage anyone listening to this who feels interested in ziens to maybe come and check out the a folding club in our Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art lobby Monday evenings at the moment. Thank you, Manny. Thank you, Jadelen. Thank you, Alex. This has been fantastic.

Unknown Speaker 29:49
Thank you for having us. This is awesome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai