One of the things that brings me joy is art-making.
Arts and crafts have always been a part of my life. My mom and her sister were both avid crafters, and their mom (my grandma Klaus) did exquisite crochet. My dad’s mom was also a crocheter and knitter, so crafting was on both sides of the family.
My aunt’s favorite medium was embroidery (see the picture of her in a skirt she embroidered), and she would embroider things that my grandma crocheted, like pillowcases.
My mom’s crafting repertoire was a little more eclectic and less traditional. She did tole painting, felted crafts, and made small art pieces with driftwood, shells, and lichens she found at the coast. She also did paper mache, making puppets and sculptures to display in the elementary school where she was a librarian. Every summer my aunt, two friends of my mom (two unmarried women who lived together and were maybe queer), and grandma spent a week at the beach with my mom and me to craft, sew, embroider, etc. It was like craft camp. One year I even made us a camp flag out of an old dishtowel that I decorated with a drawing of a sea monster.
In junior high and high school, I really thought I would be a visual artist when I grew up. I didn’t pursue that. There have been times when I’ve felt regret about that, but being an artist wasn’t something people around me did as their primary way of making an income. That isn’t to say it was solely for fun or personal fulfillment. They definitely made art and crafts to see. The craft-fair scene was a total side-hustle. I’ve tapped into that at times with my off-again, on-again Etsy shop. Mostly, the money I make and, I presume, the money they made went toward financing their crafting habit.
Sometimes, my art-making falls by the wayside. I get busy or tired and just feel uninspired. There have been times when I’ve been really active. Usually, those moments coincide with feeling overwhelmed with school, work, and life.
In fact, here’s a zine I started making in grad school.
More recently, zine-making has been a way of cultivating a regular craft practice and an opportunity for self-reflection and practicing gratitude. For the past few years, I’ve made zines in the morning instead of using a daily planner or journal. Every week or every five days, whichever works for me, I make a mini-zine in which I write out gratitudes, to-do lists, schedules, etc.
Here are a few examples, including a glimpse into my very un-systematic day-planning.
The zine covers vary quite a bit. Sometimes, I’ll pull a card from an oracle deck and use that as inspiration for a drawing and a thought I want to carry with me during the week. Sometimes, the covers are related to what’s going on in my life. Other times, they are generic.
I generally carry my weekly zines with me in a bag, backpack, or coat pocket. Having it with me connects me to the art and to my current moment in time.
At significant moments in time, such as the beginning of the new year or end of the semester, I’ll do a special zine in which I reflect or set intentions.
Sometimes, I’ll use them instead of a program book at my annual professional meeting.
One of the things I like about zines is their DIY nature. Modern queer/ feminist zine culture really emerged in the 1980-90s as part of the Riot Girl movement. (Here’s a brief zine history.) They were an easy way of sharing information, ideas, images, etc. Find yourself a photocopier (remembers Kinkos?) and you were good to go. You could put out a zine at the same time as you were making quarter-sheets to hand out for a band. Since zines are self-published and produced, they offer little glimpses into micro-cultures.
If you’re interested in reading zines, a lot of libraries carry them or have them in their archives. There are also several digital zine archives. If you want to support zine artists, you can check out a zine distro and buy some. Zines can often be purchased at indie book or record stores and at various zine fests.
If you’re interested, here are a couple of sites to check out:
Lynn R. Huber 