LAVALAND ZINE:

Community Writing and the Arts in Athens

______

A Thesis

Presented to

The Honors Tutorial College

Ohio University

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for Graduation

from the Honors Tutorial College

with the degree of

Bachelor of Science in Journalism

______

By Aaron T. Krumheuer

June 2012

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"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." Edgar Degas

Without art, life would be an impoverished thing. Sometimes we fail to notice just what it would be like without art. The rooms in our homes, our workspaces and public squares, all would be more alien, more void of spirit. That is because there is transcendence in the art that we amass around us. It allows us to see past our surroundings, beyond our own subjective perception into that of the artist’s. It pulls us out from within and stirs our emotions. It contains a dialogue that commands us to interact. It asks us silent questions, interrogations across the canvas on quality, beauty, and truth.

I write about the arts because I too like to ask questions. As a journalism student, I was educated to ask important ones, those that reveal cultural, social and emotional truths. Journalism is a dialectic trade, and the conversation between a journalist and interviewee unfolds unique answers, some that were never before spoken. As a writer, I turned to arts and culture because it is something worth interrogating, worth elevating in conversation. The artists who work around us not only make beautiful art but also have stories to tell. The only thing worse than life without art is failing to notice when it is there.

My background in arts writing began as a freshman at Ohio University, when I wrote about music for The Post. I was in several bands in high school but gave up playing music to focus on schoolwork. As soon as I got to college, I found myself attracted to it again through writing. At The Post, my job was to cover the concerts that came through Athens, of which there were many. It was exciting to 3

interview the national bands that toured through Athens and write reviews about new album releases. Yet I found myself more drawn to the local music scene, to

Athens' quirky punk bands, house shows and do‐it‐yourself music festivals. It was familiar to me from playing music in the past, but it was also a welcoming scene.

As a member of the Athens creative community, I was exposed to much more than uptown concerts. I came across noise musicians playing electronic feedback to packed crowds in basements. I saw performance art and radical theater, with homemade stage lights and props. I was exposed to zines, set up at merchandise tables at concerts, which were filled with fun, original writing, and voices and viewpoints I had never seen in other publications. I also met a slew of artists working across media, doing installations, prints, photography and paintings. I started playing in bands again and came to recognize the unique environment that Athens offers to the creative and motivated.

Reading the local news publications in town, I noticed that these events occasionally received a mention. Typically, the more “bizarre” or colorful artists received coverage in town, at least until the sensational news angle lost its flavor.

Music performances were also a constant angle for news stories, since a concert is a big social event and has the element of timeliness. Yet a significant lack of coverage of the visual arts stood out. I realized this was partly because art is not a big‐drawing social event and partly because people do not quite know how to talk about art—especially journalists and even me. Though art is present everywhere, the dialogue about it so often falls short at personal preference. Long 4

ago, I used to believe the only question worth answering about art was its ultimate meaning, and that that question was best answered by those with art degrees.

Near the end of my college experience, I spent a summer writing about the literary arts at The Chautauquan Daily in western New York. I learned there are broad similarities among poets and writers and visual artists. Talking with writers everyday, visiting art galleries and listening to the orchestra, which were all part of the job, showed me that the creative process is common to all artists. It is like a web of personality, inspirations, attitudes and biography. By recognizing

I was involved in a creative process, through music and writing, I saw there was much more I could uncover in visual arts than I initially imagined.

I decided I wanted to create a publication about the visual arts for my professional thesis project. It would not cover a broad population, but rather, the one I was already in: the loose creative community of Athens. Writing countless profile pieces for my internship showed me that readers become more familiar with art if they become familiar with the artists. This could only be favorable to the artists who lived and worked in my community. On a broader level, I wanted to articulate and interrogate the creative process, as a challenge to me and my journalism education.

Not everyone would be interested in this publication, since visual art is in some ways a niche, so I decided to make a zine, a form I had fallen in love with through this community. Zines could be informative, most notably political and 5

how‐to zines. They could also be entertaining like comic zines and inspiring like poetry and personal memoir zines (perzines). Some zines are even full of interviews. What often differentiates them from books and magazines is that they are handmade, creative, and imbued with a personal passion, arising from the zine creator, the direct and singular author of the words.

I was familiar with how large an undertaking it is to produce a complete four‐color, glossy magazine, and how pale in comparison it would be for one person to imitate a full magazine staff with high production quality. So it only made sense to personalize my publication and make a zine, a creative project that mirrored and complemented my subject matter. It was not helpful to rely on standard conventions like the inverted pyramid, an event‐oriented story format, when writing for a zine‐reading audience, so I turned to the question and answer format. The goal was to be direct, to let the artist speak for herself and to recount the stories like a conversation, just as they unfolded.

The result is LAVALAND, a zine and corollary website (or e‐zine) directed at the visual arts of Athens, Ohio. I interviewed 5 visual artists that spanned several genres, generations and aesthetics. I collected submissions for both the website and zine. I attended museum exhibitions and art shows in living rooms. I consulted several local authorities in the arts for advice, subjects and effective presentation, and I asked each of my interview subjects for their own take on what they saw as the most notable aspects of the community. I spoke with artists who were still crafting their style, some who eschewed careerism and some who 6

were part of international exhibitions. I put these interviews together on a website and in a printed zine. My hope is that LAVALAND sketches the broad sensibilities of the Athens art scene.

LAVALAND audience

The purpose of analyzing my audience was to better focus my content and direct artistic, creative, and editorial choices in their favor. For commercial purposes, this analysis would have focused on marketing and advertising. It would have more closely considered the spending habits of my audience and how

I might sell them this publication. Yet this is a zine. It is inherently not‐for‐profit, which means my audience analysis is less for targeting sales and more to illustrate this community.

When observing the characteristics of the LAVALAND audience, it was useful to consider several factors. In a town of 23,832 people, the university draws in a large resident population. With around 18,000 undergraduates and

4,000 graduate students, Athens is also considerably young. Though students are not my exclusive audience, I figured the average age of my readers would fall between 18 and 30, with both genders equally represented. They are an Internet‐ savvy generation. They use social media to share and spread information. If they are not students, my readers hold a day job in Athens and might work on the side with creative projects.

Since LAVALAND's focus is on visual arts, it follows that my readers are likely inclined to create art or directly support it. This is a factor of their 7

psychographics, or general attitudes. Altruism is probably the largest motivating attitude for local arts patronage, so, like the local food movement, my audience has an inherent belief in the goodness of buying locally. This manifests in their attendance at local art shows and concerts. By supporting one local resident in their creative endeavors, all members of the community are lifted. This functions in reverse, as well. Judging from my experience in the local music scene, where fellow musicians make a point to attend as many of their peers' shows as possible, I observed that it is mutually beneficial for my audience to support one another. A commitment to support other artists by an artist might stem from a desire for their own support and place in the community.

Another motivation of my audience to follow the local arts is to 'be in the know.' People want to know who in their community is productive, making quality work and receiving recognition from their peers. They want to know who is progressing the aesthetic boundaries of the community and who is succeeding commercially. There is social capital in having this information and discussing it with peers. Likewise, it satisfies their intellectual curiosity to learn about how local artists do their trade and their work process. Above all, I hoped that my audience finds a sense identity and pride in supporting the arts.

The interviews

A community publication seeks to affirm a “sense of community, a positive and intimate reflection of the sense of place, a stroke for our us‐ness, our 8

extended family‐ness and our profound and interlocking connectedness”

(Lauterer, 1995, 9). As such, I found there were appropriate ways to achieve these goals within the realm of the arts community. My interviews highlighted the individual artist in a way that focused on their work process and their day‐to‐ day life in the community. They interrogated their motivations and inspirations, as related to locale, as well as why they chose to reside in the community. I attempted to foster understanding of a particular artist's work and aesthetic through their influences, inspirations and creative choices.

Overall, the main goal was to enhance the closeness a reader felt to my subjects. Therefore, I chose the question and answer format to present my interviews. The Q&A is distinct from news stories and is mainly the province of niche magazines. Popular among arts magazines, I admired the way a Q&A allowed the artist to speak for herself. In this form, no journalist re‐wrote or interpreted the words of the subject, with the exception of a short introduction.

Although it allowed for less scene setting and physical description, I noticed a

Q&A allowed readers a more nuanced interpretation of the artist through their real‐time responses, reactions and reflections. Their digressions and exclamations became illustrative of personality, and a feel of conversation seemed to take precedence over any explicit, factual narrative. I felt this form of

"story" would mesh well with my unique audience, who would prefer a more direct, conversational delivery.

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The website: www.lavalandmag.com

To host my interviews online, I wanted to design a website similar in appearance and function to my paper zine. Although I did not have any web development skills entering the project, I was still able to build my page with the help of a site called Squarespace. This site allowed me to drag and drop the web site components where I wanted them and customize the styles and themes of their appearance. I found it to be better than most blog‐building pages because everything could be rearranged and altered from the template. I wanted to have a streamlined format for reading my articles that would place emphasis on the subjects more so than the function of the site, so I minimized the number of buttons and widgets that the viewer sees when entering the page.

The user experience of the site is based around the story roll, which is the first item that appears when visiting. It is a running list of the most current posted items, which are interviews, stories, events, photos or outside links. These posts are made up of a title, a brief introductory snippet of text, and a photo. Once a user clicks the “Read More” button and takes the jump to the article, the post also includes a longer body of text, such as the full‐length Q &A, and a series of photos representing the artist's work. At the bottom of the article are links to the artist's personal websites, or, in the case of Sage Perrott, a web store to purchase her work. 10

After a user navigates back to the home page containing the story roll, they have several options. They may choose a button from the top menu that takes them to a page listing of articles on “Painting,” “Photo,” “Music,” or another medium. These headings are linked to tags, listed on each post, that group them together. Besides choosing to view articles by medium, a user may also use the search bar. The only other pages on the website are an “About” page, where I posted a brief rationale of the site, and a “Submit” page, which is a form to submit a message to me.

For the following scholarly essay, LAVALAND was analyzed through the lenses of two bodies of academic literature: community journalism and zines. As a work of community journalism, it was necessary to research the meaning of community as it pertains to the media. This led to an exploration of the ways people gather in communities through shared interests and the Internet. It also led to a consideration of the distance a journalist has to her community. In researching zines, I sought a definition and history of the format that illustrated its propensity for community building, and I also examined the similarities and differences in print zines and e‐zines and how they might co‐function.

The final chapter is my critical essay. Here I included my successes and disappointments, what I would do differently, and how I felt my project unfolded.

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Literature Review

The following essay will serve to orient this digital and print project in the field of journalism studies. Being a journalism student producing a zine, I drew from two bodies of scholarship: community journalism and zines. These areas of scholarship overlapped to help define and describe my work.

The first part of the review focused on studies in community journalism, which allowed me to examine the ways my professional education played a part in making editorial decisions, researching subjects and interviewing local artists.

It also made me consider my personal relationship to the Athens creative community. I here defined community journalism via its relationship to the community and explored the various interpretations of what a community is.

Taking into account my audience for LAVALAND, I discussed communities based upon shared interests and digital communities, which make their home on the

Internet. These two definitions helped to further define the digital community network, a unique form of digital community that exists to enhance a geographic community. This concept aligned with the purpose of my website, or e‐zine.

Just as the work I put into my digital community network had the priority of enhancing the creative community of Athens, I recognized that so too does community journalism as a whole. This is its reflexive quality: covering the community while building and enhancing it. The reporter's relationships to the members of that community made all the difference to how well this works, and I discussed this through the lens of journalistic distance. I arrived at a crucial 12

distinction between the practice of community journalism and the practice required for the mass media. I then considered how this meshed with the unique format of the zine.

Community journalism

Traditionally, journalism scholarship has focused on mass media and considered a large readership and its relationship to a journalistic elite. More recently, scholars have turned their attention to a neglected segment of the media landscape: the local newspapers and magazines that cover town and city life, issues of identity and niche interests. The study of community journalism differed significantly from models and theories related to mass media because of a fundamental difference in its relationship to its readers.

Though community journalism was a broadly defined practice, one similarity that arose within its scholarly literature is the familiar relationship between the journalist and her community. As Reader (2012) noted, "the study of community journalism is largely the study of the relationship dynamics between journalists and the communities they serve" (p. 5). One of the first texts to address it was Byerly's Community Journalism in 1961. Its orientation as a guidebook for journalists, rather than an analytic study, was a common approach during the following decades of writing in the field. Byerly, for all his advice, was mostly concerned with discerning the differences between large daily newspapers and small ones. One of the most important distinctions he made was 13

a community journalists' "nearness to people" (p. v). This spatial proximity was like a system of checks and balances with the benefits of having a neighbor next door. As Lauterer (2006) put it, "readers know the folks at the newspaper by name" (p. xiv). The field was thus grounded in the study of these communities, with all their interpersonal relationships and implications.

Definitions of community

It was necessary to appraise the meaning of community before understanding the way journalists can target it. For scholars, the definition of community was wide and encompassing, yet at the root of it was the people who inhabit it. A town planner broke down the idea into three categories: communities of place, ideas, or ethnicity (qtd. in Lauterer, 2006, p. 84). Others have expanded the community of ethnicity to include communities of all identity

(Lowrey, Brozana and Mackay, 2008). On a practical level, each community could be addressed by one newspaper. Surely the local paper falls into the community of place. Yet if it caters to people who like to read about art, it would also be a community of ideas. Further, if that paper was written for those who make art, it may be considered a community of identity.

A study by Lowrey, Brozana and Mackay (2008) examined the many definitions of community that appeared in 65 studies published between 1995 and 2005 concerning media in the community. Of them, 30 asserted that physical 14

location was fundamental to community; a handful of which also "emphasize[d] the community's role as a place to meet or connect" (p. 280). Another 27 of the definitions positioned community outside of geography and linked it with the special or imagined community, based on physical characteristics, which is often made up of people with a shared ethnicity (2008). Finally, there were 20 that defined community as interpretive. These communities were broader than the previous two definitions and bound by discourse. According to Hamilton, they were often embodied in the media, "which reflect and promote community cohesion through shared symbols" (qtd. in Lowrey, Brozana and Mackay, 2008, p.

282). Community members congregated along various commonalities, and the media they interacted with is often the very place they form. Although LAVALAND caters to a community of place in that it covers Athens, Ohio, it is more specifically an interpretive community, or a community of interest, of people who consume, produce, and appreciate art.

Digital communities

The concept of community can be further narrowed as it pertains to the gathering space of the community. As stated above, there are many types of community that do not share a physical meeting place. This makes their relation to media all the more important. The virtual community was one defined as that which uses the Internet as its meeting point (Srinivasan, 2004). A digital network was advantageous to these communities because it provided "instantaneous exchanges and accesses of greater information than were ever considered 15

before" (2004, p. 93). Virtual communities were also freed from the economic imperative of newspapers and magazines to cater to wide, general audiences, and so a plethora of communities from all over the world could congregate on message boards, blogs and chat rooms to meet and discuss.

People from just one locale could gather online, too. Between the geographic and virtual communities, Hollander defined a hybrid form of community media called a "digital community network" (2002, p. 32). This growing class of media entities "can be seen as an attempt to enhance the development of geographically based communities, using digital technology"

(2002, p. 32). By catering to a specific area, they could address local issues in the same way as a newspaper or regional magazine. Unlike these print publications, they could also target communities, from the marginal to the miniscule. Partly because Internet real estate is inexpensive and partly because it requires little expertise, a digital community network could focus specifically on imagined communities and communities of interest. As stated, the purpose of a digital community network was to complement the geographic community, and helping communities flourish was also a unique purpose of community journalism.

Reflexivity of community journalism

Community journalists were most often a part of the very communities that they cover. As a musician, I have a special relationship to the creative community and to those musicians and artists with whom I work. My nearness to my subjects can be considered in light of what scholars call journalistic distance. 16

Abrahamson (2007) defined it as "the ideational and figurative distance between the producer and the consumer of media form" (p. 669). The journalistic distance between a reporter at a large national newspaper and her readership is likely massive. Yet on a local level this journalistic distance approaches zero and for good reason. Discussing niche magazines, which exist to serve communities of interest, Abrahamson observed that their readers needed "an authority on the publication's subject" with knowledge "of a practical, hands‐on sort" (1996, p.

56). A journalist working to cover a very specific community benefits from a familiarity with the subject, and her journalistic distance to the community would therefore be lowered. Being herself within the community, like everyone else, would enhance her credibility. However, this might bring inherent biases to the surface as the boundaries between the personal and professional overlap.

Although a journalist should be conscious of these boundaries, it must be noted that she is practicing a different kind of journalism, one with a unique priority. As Steiner observed, "community journalism is credited with representing, reinforcing, and even constructing community" (Steiner, 2012, p.

21). The community building aspect of this form of journalism cannot be disregarded, as the reporter is a part of the community and therefore wants the best for it. Lauterer discussed the way in which the editor and publisher of a paper called the Daily Record "wanted his staff to think of themselves as citizen journalists, involved in the welfare and civic life of the same community they were covering" (2006, p. 54). Likewise, my relationship to the creative 17

community of Athens engendered a certain enthusiasm that would not likely appear within the mass media. My orientation to zines also affects the way I approach my subject, as zine authors are almost always passionate members of their own creative communities.

Zines

This second segment of the review considered the zine in relation to its community. This addressed LAVALAND, the printed zine. Within scholarship, zines are studied across various disciplines, and this makes it a scattered field. I pulled from these various disciplines to define the zine from several angles and place it as a distinct format lying outside mass media. I then examined the history of the medium, from its inception among science fiction enthusiasts in the first half of the 20th century to its evolution as a radically amorphous publication.

Though zines take many different forms, the theme that runs through its history is community. As LAVALAND's website is much like a zine, I discussed e‐zines, which are based on the Internet, and their similarities and differences to the physical zine. This led to an appraisal of how the two formats play upon one another’s' strengths to establish and maintain community. The literature review ended with an avenue for possible research upon the role of Internet‐aged zine producers, and how they use the Web to connect with their community of readers.

Definitions of the zine 18

A zine is an outlier among publications: a misfit, handmade document that has served many purposes since its inception in the early 20th century. They are often xeroxed, bound by staples, and filled with text, writing, art and photos, though their quality varies with the skill of the producer. Some are even printed in full color on heavy stock. The academic study of the medium is far from a developed body, and scholars from fields as diverse as aesthetic theory, gender studies, communication, sociology and library studies have each approached zines from different angles. As such, the literature on these publications was scattered and imprecise. Art theorist Sholette (2003) deemed the zine as "Dark

Matter," in that it is "work that functions outside of and is therefore invisible to the established art world and to academic scholarship." As a medium that transcends content categories, form, authorship and purpose, it is certainly a nebulous entity to approach, but a few similarities in definitions arise among the many disciplines that have studied the zine.

The simplest definition came from the journalism scholar James

Romenesko who reported on the mid‐1990s explosion of "mostly haphazard mail‐order products that are done for fun rather than profit" that "have circulations less than 500" (Romenesko, 1993, p. 40). From his vantage point as a longtime journalist and media critic, he noted that they cover "topics that the mainstream press rarely addresses." From an aesthetic perspective, scholars such as Piepmeir (2008) focused on zines as "paper documents, usually made by hand, without any financial incentive" that were "quirky, individualized booklets 19

filled with diatribes, reworkings of pop culture iconography, and all variety of personal and political narratives" (p. 214). For these scholars, the materiality of the medium is paramount, yet from a production and content perspective, they were "characterized by their idiosyncratic themes, low circulations, irregular frequencies, ephemeral durations, personal tones, and noncommercial orientations" (Rauch, 2004, p. 154).

However, coming from a zine publisher turned scholar on the subject, zines were more political in nature. Duncombe (1997), an author of one of the few books about the medium, noted that "in an era marked by the rapid centralization of corporate media, zines are independent and localized" and that they "reject the corporate dream of an atomized population broken down into discrete and instrumental target markets" (p. 7). They were therefore not only an alternative to magazines and newspapers, but a reaction to them.

Though these attributes described the zine, its essence is found within the creator, usually a single person, and his or her primary desire to create and communicate with an audience. As Duncombe noted, "zines are as much about the communities that arise out of their circulation as they are artifacts of personal expression" (p. 49). An understanding of this community‐based nature of the zine was found in its history.

History of the zine

The origin of the word zine came from "fanzine," which was a combination of the words fan and magazine. As early as 1930, loyal adherents of science 20

fiction pulp magazines began piecing together their own publications with names like Comet and Time Traveller (Romenesko, 1993, p. 40). These fanzines existed for "discussing the intricacies and nuances of a cultural genre," namely, science fiction. (Duncombe, 1997, p. 15). They were cheaply made and printed, and their distribution was extremely limited to the small niche of sci‐fi magazine readers.

Though commercially unprofitable, they succeeded as a labor of love. The fanzine continued in this direction for decades, until its essential form was adopted for new purposes in the 1970s with the birth of punk rock music.

With a similar niche size as sci‐fi fans, punk rock fans produced their own publications for a new reason: they were "ignored by and critical of the mainstream music press" (Duncombe 1997, p. 11). So fans of punk rock began creating their own publications, to document their local scenes and express their joys and grievances. Already a subculture, fanzines absorbed much of the audience, politics and attitude of the punk counterculture, taking up where the

1960s counterculture left off. Political, social and sexual radicalism became intertwined in the medium. Throughout the 1980s, underground zines served as an alternative forum for discussion and radical group cohesion, a counterpoint to prevailing Reagan‐era conservative politics (Duncombe). This influence from punk rock in still strong in the zine community: Maximum Rocknroll, a zine that began in 1982 to cover punk culture, is now available at most bookshops and newsstands yet remains staffed by volunteers and printed on black and white newsprint. 21

It was in the decade of the 80s that the genre of zines began to coalesce into a broader, more self‐aware community. Duncombe noted "as the 'fan' was by and large dropped off 'zine,' and their number increased exponentially, a culture of zines developed" (p. 11). In 1982, the same birth year as Maximum Rocknroll, a fanzine aficionado named Mike Gunderloy launched his own periodical called

Factsheet Five, a directory that, in its heyday, listed more than a thousand zines, each with a short review, a price and a mailing address to find it. Factsheet Five

"quickly grew to become what many considered the center of the zine universe"

(Romenesko, 1993, p. 42). This was an essential resource for would‐be zine publishers. By the late 1980s, its circulation reached 10,000, and a free copy was given to every publisher that contributed their own zine for inclusion

(Romenesko, 1993). By then, zine subjects ranged widely: fanzines; music zines, sports, television and film zines; political zines; personal or perzines; scene and network zines, fringe culture, religious, vocational and health zines; sex zines; travel zines; underground "comix;" literary and art zines; and the rest, "a large unsortable category" (Duncombe, 1997, p. 15–17). The 1990s saw a greater increase in content and popularity, and during a peak in 1997, one estimate at readership was up to 50,000 (p. 17).

E‐zines and the Internet

Print zines are still growing strong today, even in Athens, Ohio, where the zine writer Cindy Crabb now publishes Doris, a serial in print since 1991. Though she still creates her zines with typewriter, scissors and glue, Crabb can now be 22

found online. The rise of the World Wide Web led scholars to consider how the zine medium can transcend its community base online. Rauch (2004) stated that

"this unusual convergence in the mid‐1990s of mass popularization of the high‐ tech internet boom and what some have called the low‐tech "Great Zine

Explosion" . . . could be considered a temporal crossroads for two paths of democratic expression" (p. 155). Though just how the community‐building aspects of the zine fared with the convergence is undecided.

One way in which the zine genre benefitted from the Internet boom was the web's greater potential for interactivity. Smith (1999) noted how "the most intriguing aspects of the Internet are the possibilities it presents for the development, growth and maintenance of distance‐transcending relationship" among e‐zine producers and their fans (p. 1). He studied the ways in which zines on the web, e‐zines, operate in much the same way as print fanzines: they present

"one's familiarity with the topic, and thus one's qualifications to publish an e‐zine about that topic" and they "invite the active participation of their readers" (p. 3).

Although Smith studied the uses of e‐zines among comic book fans, much of his analysis is universally applicable across the medium. E‐zines, like many printed zines, attempted to situate themselves within an imagined community through the use of "news items, databases, columns, and bootlegged artwork" (p. 4).

Though a major difference between print and virtual zines was the inclusion of hyperlinks, which created portals to useful resources and express "an identification with a larger community, a community that readers are welcomed 23

to visit" (p. 6). Through the use of hyperlinks, an e‐zine could extend its community in a very unique, virtual way not possible in the print form.

Another significant differences between a print zine and an e‐zine was its potential circulation rate. Because a zine was dependent on the costs and resources associated with self‐publishing, an e‐zine, made up of the same content, could potentially reach an audience of millions (Smith, 1999, p. 2). It follows that the other most noticeable difference between the two forms of the zine was their materiality, which some believed impacts the nature of the reading experience.

Rauch (2005) studied the convergence of the web and the zine in interviews with

27 zine creators who witnessed the birth of the online e‐zine. She observed from

Smith that "although print zines serve as a precedent for e‐zines, most e‐zines are not transplanted print zines" (p. 155). This was because most of these original publishers were reluctant to adopt the technology: they would not think to post their content online and would rather use it for networking and distribution of their print copy. When asked why, many pointed to how "personification, social interaction, permanence, and physicality affected their motives for distributing zines" and that "the Web also requires a lasting personal commitment to maintenance that many self‐publishers would rather avoid" (p. 158–62). The materiality of the zine was thus an important aspect of the medium.

Zines offered their audiences' something more intimate than that directed to them by e‐zines. Through their materiality, through their singular authorship and handmade aesthetic, they offered analogues to the personal, physical 24

relationship. The community that reads a zine was one that has "fewer layers of separation between the reader and the creator" (Piepmeier, 2008, p. 229). This is because the zines' creation was quite literally produced via fewer hierarchies of editorial and technical decisions. As such, Piepmeir was concerned with community as produced by the visual and sculptural elements of a zine. As she noticed while teaching a class about zines, "my students have been inspired to become part of the zine community because of physical encounters with actual zines . . . in a world where more and more of us spend all day at our computers, zines reconnect us to our bodies and to other human beings" (p. 214). She asserted the physicality of the zine as a paramount quality, but there was still room for virtual publications to touch upon creative design, the other key aspect of Piepmeir's evaluation of the form.

Since the article's publication four years ago, new, non‐specialist web building resources have grown leaps and bounds, and it is no longer true that

"only bloggers with web design skills can play an active role in designing their pages" (Piepmeir, 2008, p. 221). Likewise, most zine publishers "agreed that despite the uncertain success of its publicity function, the Internet could play a significant complementary role to print" (Rauch, 2005, p. 167). Combined with the hyperlink functions of e‐zines and their theoretical potential for unlimited circulation, it follows that the zine and the e‐zine may have a yet undiscovered relationship. An area for further scholarship about zines could touch upon the relationship between a zine and its online counterpart. 25

Critique

During the year of creating LAVALAND and writing my scholarly essay, there were many points in which my overall plan for the project changed directions. Starting in Fall Quarter of 2012, I began researching the kind of content I wanted to include in the publication. While discussing ideas, a friend of mine who designed websites offered to make a simple LAVALAND site for free.

Though my original plan for a small‐scale arts and culture publication did not include an online component, he convinced me how much more interactive this page could be compared to a print publication alone. I agreed to take him up on the offer, and we brainstormed the site for the first month and a half of Fall

Quarter.

In retrospect, this collaboration proved to be a mistake. Although he was a talented web developer, spending time with him building components of the site was a distraction from writing content. He then began missing our self‐defined deadlines, and the project was put on the back burner as he focused on other assignments. Eventually, the quarter was over with nothing to show. He moved back to his home in Columbus and I could no longer wait around for him to finish the site in a reasonable amount of time. Yet this interaction taught me several lessons. The first was that receiving free consultant work from a friend was not the best way to get a project done on time. The second was that I needed to be creatively in control throughout the project, and allowing someone else to make 26

decisions could have de‐railed it. The third lesson was a practical lesson. I decided when he quit working on the website to build my own. I began and finished the website during Winter Intersession, with almost all the components he and I had brainstormed yet failed to bring together.

As mentioned earlier, the LAVALAND website hosted all of the five interviews I did for the zine, in condensed form, as well as several music submissions, concert flyers, and snapshots I took around town. By using

Squarespace.com to build and host my website, I was able to take advantage of their analytics and track my page views. As of early June, 2012, the page had

2,387 page views. January, the month I launched, had the highest count at 1,081 views. This declined until March, my lowest month of visits, upon which the site began picking back up. In May, I received 342 views. It is worth noting that I received more unique visitors in May, at 146, as opposed to January, at 116. This is partly because by May, my pages were being ‘shared’ on Facebook.com by other users.

LAVALAND’s presence on Facebook proved to be worthwhile. I created a

Facebook Page dedicated to LAVALAND which 58 total users joined. Although this number is fairly low for a Facebook Page, I found that Facebook was the number one ‘referrer’ to the LAVALAND website. Once again using Squarespace’s analytics, almost 70 percent of all visitors to the site were linked to it from

Facebook. Several artists who I interviewed shared the link to their story on their 27

Facebook page. Jade Downer, my first interview, was particularly helpful in promoting the website, and her interview was the most visited of any post.

Though the LAVALAND website received more hits than I expected, it did not function as the community building hub I imagined it would be. This was because I did not receive any submissions from the website itself. Though the page had a built‐in submission form, all of the discussions I had with artists about submissions came from Facebook, some who were not even ‘fans’ of the page.

Likewise, the comments section on the website was completely unused. This was because Facebook again usurped its use: for each link I posted to my own personal Facebook page, I received comments about the story I would have expected to be posted on the site. This led me to believe that the site itself was more useful as a blog, rather than a social hub. Facebook, in all its popularity, was a more inclusive and cohesive place to share my work; the site was simply there to host it.

Another change that came to the plan of the project throughout the year was the design of the publication. In fall, as I researched the literature review of my scholarly essay, I realized that I was incorrectly defining LAVALAND. I was trying to find a way to describe the project within the literature on magazines, while I needed to be researching zines instead. Shifting focus and writing a literature review about zines helped me to focus my work, scale down my project to a manageable size, and take the design and implementation of my publication from the format of the zine rather than a full scale magazine. 28

In all, the zine was a total of 44 pages. I designed each layout using Adobe

Indesign using the training I learned in magazine production classes. I made several full page spreads to showcase artwork, and each interview had its own unique aesthetic. I drew and inked the cover design by hand, and then I scanned it and added text in Adobe Photoshop. The covers were screen‐printed by a friend in Columbus named Pat Crann, who operates Shout Out Loud Prints. On heavy, red cardstock, they give a solid, book‐like feel to the zine. I folded and numbered the covers as an edition of 50, and Minuteman Press printed the page layouts and stapled them in place. I considered the layouts to be visually appealing, but their foremost purpose was to communicate the interview to the reader.

As stated earlier, the interviews I conducted for LAVALAND were meant to illustrate a wide range of Athens’ artists, while still conveying certain aesthetic similarities that would cater to my audience. This meant the artists would represent those within academia (Sage Perrott and Karla Hackenmiller), those who pursued some form of commercial art (Sandy Plunkett), those who struck out of art school as career artists (Emily Beveridge), and those who were not trained but made art for their own personal reasons (Jade Downer). At the same time, all those chosen made youthful, challenging, thoughtful, and unique art, which appealed not only to my sense of taste but also to my young, zine‐reading audience. 29

I chose each subject based upon either viewing their work around town or being exposed to them from a friend. Prior to making contact, I scoured the

Internet for any examples of their work. Each had a website, and several others had Flickr, Tumblr, and other photo blog websites. I analyzed their art and made lists of questions, examining their possible influences and considering the work of similar artists. I showed their images to my friends, and we discussed what we saw. When I finally met the artist, usually in the studio or a public place like

Donkey Coffee, I turned on my digital audio recorder and began asking questions.

Not all that was recorded made it into the final interview. The average interview lasted about half an hour, and one was at least an hour and a half.

The interviews also display the various ways artists talk about their work.

Although I was not formally educated about fine art, outside of a basic art history class, I allowed each artist to craft their own discussion. This taught me a lot about the different approaches an arts journalist can take. In my interviews with

Jade Downer, Sage Perrott, and Emily Beveridge, the conversations were more playful and light‐hearted. We discussed their motivations for making artwork but veered into anecdotes and funny stories. These interviews could be viewed as more ‘popular’ art journalism, more accessible, entertaining and character‐based than intellectually stimulating.

For an artist with more intellectual grist, such as Karla Hackenmiller, I was able to guide our interview towards the deeper meaning she attached to her creative process. I researched the concept of psychological liminality that she 30

drew upon in her series of Liminal prints, which unfolded into a discussion of the

Jungian shadow and the creative mind at work. Hackenmiller was also the most widely‐known artist I interviewed, and she had a very unique creative concept, that of allowing the mind to relax and create visual analogs to thought processes.

It was one of the more thought‐provoking interviews I conducted. Judging from the frequency that interview was discussed from people who talked to me about

LAVALAND, I felt it was my strongest.

I was encouraged and inspired by those who followed my work. Most had kind words to say about the interviews, and some gave me advice about designing the zine and who they would like to see featured next. Several submitted work, of which a few pieces are printed in the zine, and I came across plenty of subjects to cover in a second issue. I hope to continue with the project.

Though I was a part of the creative community that I was covering, I encountered few ethical quandaries, mostly because I found my journalistic distance to be greater than I imagined. The visual arts community, although occasionally overlapping with the music community, was far enough away from my social circle that I never had to make the tough choice of denying an interview with a close friend who made art. I sought out each of my subjects without solicitation, and we only became friends after the interview. The closest I came to a conflict of interest was displaying my own band’s flyer on the main page of my website. 31

That being said, there were a few instances of artists discussing their grievances with other members of the community. One artist railed against the

Ohio University School of Art for its elitist attitude towards local artists. Another expressed displeasure about the change of ownership of a local art space. One artist was somewhat mocking about the quality of the art scene in a small town like Athens, but she stopped herself from going any further. In each case, I printed their words as they were told, and I did not believe they would even wish to take them back.

Another reason there were few ethical lapses was because there were few opportunities to lapse. Arts journalism, at least the type of artist interview I sought, is rarely controversial. If I were to be writing for a larger publication with more clout in the art world, I might be pressured to give coverage to artist‐ friends, but being a small town zine, I carried little influence to affect the public image or commercial standing of anyone I interviewed. My inherent enthusiasm as a zine creator did little to sway my objectivity, either by my choice of subjects or within the interviews.

Being a community arts journalist, I did have the explicit intention of supporting the artists I interviewed, as stated in the ‘About’ section printed at the front of the zine. This meant that I hoped the zine would positively impact the arts community of Athens. One of the unique characteristics of community journalism is its license to provide coverage that is “representing, reinforcing, and even constructing community" (Steiner, 2012, p. 21). My evidence for such 32

community building came from the visitors to my website, the strangers I met and befriended at several art shows that had read the interviews, and the enthusiasm I saw from the artists who were receiving recognition. The circulation of the zine itself was and will continue to be an act of community, until they are all given away.

33

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