Santa Rosa Zine Fest 2023

This outdoor, in-person event will feature tabling by local zine-makers, artists, and creators; hands-on crafts; and live zine making and screen printing workshops, as well as the Sonoma County Library’s Bibliobus! This event will bring together artists and creators of all experience levels to celebrate the DIY medium of the zine.

Featured Workshops:

Mini Zines 101 with Long Arm Stapler

Zines are a fun and accessible way to put your thoughts and feelings out into the world. No need to be intimidated by the publishing process! In this workshop, you will learn how to make a pocket-sized zine out of just one piece of paper. Make one, make a million! Mini zines are the perfect way to showcase your ideas and manifestos, and are as easy to make as they are fun to share.

Maira of LONG ARM STAPLER (they/them) is an East Bay-based artist making zines about gender, mental health, and pop culture. They are a founding organizer of Bay Area Queer Zine Fest and are passionate about demystifying the zine making process. They have also been involved with the East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest and Rock Paper Scissors. Maira hosts a zine-related podcast, also called Long Arm Stapler.

Hands-On Screen Printing Demo with Print | Organize | Protest

Come screen print t-shirts, posters, and signs of resistance & empowerment. We will provide designs from artists in the community and equipment for public use, YOU come and print them. Paper & fabric will be provided, participants are encouraged to bring clothing and other materials to print on.

PRINT | ORGANIZE | PROTEST is a network of independent artists and printers working together for radical social change. P.O.P. events are coordinated and autonomous- we work together as collaborators to coordinate action-oriented printing days and open our doors to the public to come and print shirts, signs, and posters.

Violet Dreams, Passionfruit Streams: Queering Utopia with Violet Alexis Bea

Violet will present a collaborative video produced by her friends at Kickback Theatre of a comic reading of some of her thesis pages. She will also present a few additional pages in a more traditional slideshow and read-out-loud format and talk about her work, inspiration, and thoughts around queering utopia. There will be time for questions and audience interaction.

Violet Alexis Bea (she/her) is a queer, brown creator from India. She has a background in architecture design and worked on a collaborative project illustrating mythology in the indigenous style (Pattachitra) of Orissa. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts. Queer, psychedelic, sci-fi themes feature in her work. She loves drawing lizards and deep sea creatures and experimenting with panel layouts. Her favorite graphic novel is Prince of Cats. She loves hot dogs and the color purple.

Kickback Theatre is a queer neurodiverse team of artists producing original, immersive performance and experimental digital productions in the West Midlands, Founded by University of Birmingham alumni in 2021. They strive to tell relevant stories on the topics of identity and experience. They incorporate innovative staging ideas to create spaces that engage, involve, and celebrate, keeping in mind sustainability and accessibility. Their work on the piece includes project management, script supervision, feedback, sound recording, video editing, marketing, publicity, and distribution. You can find Kickback Theatre on Instagram, facebook, and Twitter @kickbacktheatre, or contact them directly on their website kickbacktheatre.com.

Zines and the Power of Printed Media

Luis Blackaller (he/him) returns to SRZF, this time to share about his source of inspiration for making zines and their potential. Luis will bridge a connection between zines and high tech media to illustrate the idea that the way media is used determines its function. From the print media of his childhood in Mexico City to the screen-based media of the past 25+ years, we'll explore zine inspiration from the past and present. There is no dead media and zines today are the people's media more than ever.

Cartoon Distortion is Luis Blackaller and friends —Art, Film, Photography, Cartoons and Comics, Geometry, Speculation, Dreams, Television, etc. Luis Blackaller (he/him) is an artist, filmmaker and small press independent publisher from Mexico City with an interest in comics, the conservation of ephemeral printed media, public space, issues of representation and diversity in popular culture, the life-cycles of narrative colonialism, and good old fashioned cinema. Links to more information and to support Cartoon Distortion can be found at CartoonDistortion.com