Diving into print
Cyanotypes. Zine-making. Greek publications!
Hello!
Here in Northern California, it's been cool and drizzly, the evenings sweeping in early. I've been making the most of being at home by spending lots of time in my library – reading and browsing the books, journals and zines I've been accumulating in recent months, steeping myself in print like a teabag in a mug. Delicious!
Two gorgeous print publications I procured on my travels that I've been savouring back home are:
- Kerkis, a book by the photographer Dimitris Tairis about a love affair unfolding over a summer on the Aegean island of Samos
- The Boy is Beautiful, a bilingual journal edited by Leonidas Liolios embodying the excavation, celebration and reclamation of queer Greek history and culture
Both Dimitris and Leonidas kindly agreed to me interviewing each of them about their respective publications. I'm delighted to share with you these conversations below:
Xander Beattie
Xander Beattie
Look ma, I'm making a zine!
Inspired by Amelia and Adam Greenhall's new zine about making zines (and the novelist Robin Sloan's zine publishing practice), I've begun working on creating a zine of my own, which will feature a short story called And the Hummingbird Beats Her Wings. I'm mailing a copy to everyone in the US who ordered The President as a little Christmas present: a festive thank-you, if you will.
[If you're based in the US and haven't bought The President but still would like a zine, reply with your address and I'll send you one. And, if you live outside of the US and would like to read it, here's where you can get the PDF to print one of your own!]
Blueprints
Longtime (long-suffering!) readers of this newsletter may recall that blue is my favourite colour. Bluey art prints are my collecting catnip (partly because I love printmaking as a medium, and partly because I guess I also can't afford most blue-hued paintings?). A long time ago, the artist Morné Visagie generously gifted me a monotype, The Piety of Blue; I bought two cyanotype prints from the Michaelis graduate art show a few years later, and, more recently, cyanotype zines from an artist working out of Boise, Montana. (I'm currently lusting after this cyanotype, printed by Eleanor Lines in Athens, but I need to save up, first.)
I never thought I'd have the opportunity (or ability) to print cyanotypes of my own, until I came across an introductory cyanotype workshop at my local arts centre. Over two evenings in August, I made cyanotypes by placing greyscale stencils (based on photos I had saved on my phone) on chemically coated paper that was exposed to ultraviolet light and then bathed in water.
Cyanotype printing was huge fun, surprisingly easy and very satisfying. Fine-tuning to get the best exposure and balanced contrast is likely the hard part, but as a novice, I was perfectly content with my imperfect prints, heady with the joy of having made something (and something printed, something blue).
I'm tempted to do more cyanotypes but I'm also feeling a tug towards giving block printing a try after reading author (and zinester!) Austin Kleon's "unofficial guide to block printing".
In the meantime, though, there are revisions of my novel-in-progress that need attention, and zines to print, fold and mail.
Love and loathing in Los Angeles
My friend Vincent recommended the novel Tim and Pete to me and I'm so glad he did! Here's a text exchange with him shortly after finishing it:
I've also been reading:
- Njabulo S. Ndebele's novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela (remarkable!) a few months after watching the moving stage adaptation in Joburg
- Some poetry: NDN Coping Mechanisms by Billy-Ray Belcourt and Matthew Gellman's Beforelight
- The graphic novel Come Home, Indio (great rec, Maru!) which, like Julia Wertz's absolutely exceptional comic Impossible People, is a memoir about addiction and recovery
On the half-hour drive into the nearest town I mostly daydream to too-loud EDM instead of listening to pods or audiobooks. That said, I did make time to listen to the doccie my friend Alex produced for BBC Radio 4 called Chemsex: Hidden Pleasures, Hidden Harms (a nuanced and non-judgmental exploration of fraught terrain). And I've been finding the Unburied podcast (from the makers of the excellent They Killed Dulcie) unsettling and fascinating in equal measure.
Your turn 🤗
As always, I'd love to hear from you! What have you been reading, writing, printing, painting, cooking, making, baking, watching, listening to? Current favourite forms of procrastination? Creative projects you're thinking about taking up (or discarding)? Also: if you made a zine, what would it be about?
