Zines are even more ephemeral than chapbooks. I wonder how this from Jes Walsh made its way from Berlin to Toronto. Jes used Etsy to get product out — this may be a route for how these small [approximated 4 inches by 5 1/2 inches ] creations to have reached our shores.
Myra Phan proves more illusive. Some online presence relating to OCAD. The URL artfully inscribed by hand on a small piece of tape on the cover her zine sketchbook is now defunct. The WayBackMachine at the Internet Archive records a posting captured Dec 11 (2008) presenting and promising “Another anatomically incorrect drawing: I’m going to make a series of them and bind them all together”. Myra’s zine comes with a strip of paper wrapping round the covers providing the only words to accompanying photoreproduced sketches inside.
drawing has taught me that rewards come after
persistency and patience.
repetition has taught me to appreciate
the most subtle differences in everything.
The fate of small books let loose into the world has inspired poets since at least Martial to apostrophize and wish them well. One of my favourites is Byron at the end of Canto 1 of Don Juan quoting Southey [and satirizing him by the way].
‘Go, little book, from this my solitude!
I cast thee on the waters—go thy ways!
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The world will find thee after many days.’
Little books have a long history. See the online exhibition Go, Little Book: Portable Medieval Manuscripts from the Beinecke Library which nicely puts hands in the picture to give a sense of scale.
And so for day 1455
07.12.2010