October is a cat shaped month...
And that cat is slippery. An oiled cat. A greased cat that cannot be caught as it runs chaos through my house…
Edinburgh Zine Fair was the second and only fair I applied for on time this year, and they have let me in! With The Book of Murmurs all wrapped up (and available for preorder!!!!) I had time this month to make some new things.
This has been the year of Riso for me. I am still learning how the process responds to textures and mediums, so expect imperfections all round. But I am finding it a wonderful place to experiment with short stories that have been pinballing around my head for a while.
Using a zine fair as a reason to make and share new work is something most comic folk I admire have been doing for their whole comic lives. I am beginning to cherish them as places outside the internet to discover new artists and talk to humans who dig comics.
I wanted to make something more immediate as well. As the weather has fought and squalled with it’s own elements these last few days, I’ve traced, drawn and cut lino into fun shapes
This time last year I was exhausted by my pursuit of the Shenk and about to attend Thought Bubble for the first time. We spent that November in the inimitable company of Helen and Sprout. We folded spells and pressed charms into Shenk collections. Hundreds of comics we’d dragged from Edinburgh, south.
As the darkness of winter begins to fold itself around the city, I return to those cats and their people. Muses for hope and growth as the soporific rot of autumn encroaches on my heart.
My hands and my mind seem to demand to be occupied right now with hopeful scratches of ink and strange tales of transformation. The frightening rise of fascism, the continuous killing of Palestinians in Gaza that will not cease, our increasingly dangerous dependence on technology and how vulnerable it is making us…all of these things lie like rocks in my belly. Painful and heavy.
The pressure is relieved when I look at things through inks and pencils. Come and revel in the bright flashes of joy and humanity with me on Saturday 1st October at EZF !
It is the season of the brightest moons and the dark Night Toast of the soul.
