Les Ateliers

Chris Landry, who ran the zine-making workshop at Ravenswing 2012, shared some thoughts on his workshop at the fair.  We will let you know the minute we get our hands on the zine you all made at his workshop! From Chris: “It felt good to be back in Ottawa to do a zine workshop. To be in my old neighbourhood and seeing familiar places still unchanged was sweet. Places like the Mayflower, Mags & Fags, the Manx, and Minto Park, site of the 2012 Ravenswing with its music, workshops, and the awesome Clothesline Project.

When my workshop was set to begin I didn’t know if folks were nervous or what, but I realized they were not coming to the table at first. Its surface had been extensively supplied which typewriters, vinyl labellers, rub-on letters, old books and magazines, posters, and flyers. I stood there next to this pile of supplies fretting until I saw my pals Megan and Alex whom I waved over and roped into the workshop.

“Make collages and look like you’re having fun, ok?” I joked. But as they started it worked: soon the table was surrounded by a dozen folks ages 5 to 50, all just dying to make a mess.

The focus was on text – on letters, specifically. Each person was assigned a letter and with that letter they were to come up with a theme that it brings to mind. We got as far as to the letter ‘t’. The pages created were varied, though largely collage based, rather than prose-based. Some were humorous, others were thoughtful, and some were basically odd. The participants’ energy was contagious. I saw graphic designers, accustomed to slicing things up on a Mac, inspired with paper, glue, and scissors. I saw art students more used to more precise materials working with a ball-point pen and sliced up newsprint. I saw children enjoying typewriters. I saw the heavy metal magazines of my youth being sliced up into zine art.

This entertaining afternoon would not be possible without Sean Zio and the excellent folks at Les Ateliers.

The zine resulting form this workshop will be available at the end of June.”

The Toronto Zine Library is run by a collective of zine readers, zine makers and librarians who are looking to make zines more accessible in Toronto. We believe that zines are still an important medium of communication, and that they should be cherished, protected, and promoted. Our aim to do this through our public collection of zines, conducting related workshops at our physical library and abroad, and by holding events that promote zines as a method of open communication and free expression.

The library has staffed hours on Sundays from 1-3, Tuesdays from 6-8, and Wednesdays from 6-8.

Chris Landry will be giving a workshop on zine culture and zine-making at Ravenswing DIY Fair in Minto Park, on Elgin St. in Ottawa, on Sunday, May 27th.  Learn more at the Les Ateliers tumblr.

Kiss Off, Issue #14, Fall 2011

by Chris Landry

28 pg. at 1/4 letter size.

$2 from Parcell Press

Granted, this review serves a sinister double purpose: I do wanna encourage any Ottawa folks who may be reading this to come out to the DIY fair this Sunday.  Chris Landry will be there giving a workshop on zines, I will be there with a table-o-zines, and lots of other people will be doing, selling, or performing neat stuff.  However, this zine is also really great, and I am happy to be here, today, on the Internet, telling you so.

Kiss Off— or at least this issue— is a little, quarter-letter, bite-size zine.  Those can be a profoundly dissatisfying ten minutes of entertainment if done poorly, or a just-right little mouthful of prose if well-executed.  I’m glad to report that Kiss Off is the latter.

Landry’s writing is crisp and economical, he succinctly evokes places and states of mind with a minimum of description. 

In this case, the places are Toronto, where Landry lives, and the Ottawa area, where he’s from.  Completed in the fall of 2011, the zine describes the lead-up to, and the fall-out from, the G-20 summit, and feelings of resilience and burn-out among activists.   Rather than writing a diatribe on something his readers have probably already heard a lot about, Landry instead gestures towards situations and feelings, which is very effective.

There is also writing about Alice Munro, about what it’s like to go to a really good show, and to a mediocre show, and about getting a poor haircut from an excellent man.  I really like this kind of slice-of-life writing when it is done well, as it is here, and gives a clear, affecting sense of the writer’s life.

Like its content, Kiss Off’s layout is crisp and handsome.  It distills elements of zine style— typewritten text, images blown up to abstraction on the photocopier— to their extremes.  The result is legible and stylish but still true to the allegiances Landry states on the inside front cover of this issue: “Kiss Off is a punk rock fanzine”. 

And it’s a very good one, so I will look forward to learning what I can from Chris Landry at his workshop this Sunday.

LIVING, LEARNING & PASSING IT ON IN OTTAWA

In 2010, Ravenswing joined creative forces with Ottawa’s community-based workshop series, Les Ateliers.  If you have never been to a Les Ateliers event, make it a resolution to attend at least one before the year ends.  Each workshop is planned so that you get to meet a small group of new people while developing a skill at the same time.  Even better, the skills you can learn at a Les Ateliers workshop are useful and fun.  They range from learning how to make skin-care products or journals to how to run your own business or how to make your home more environmentally friendly. The two Ottawans behind Les Ateliers are Rachel and Lauren, pictured here:

They are both the sweetest, friendliest and - as my buddy would say - rock solid people you can find.  Look for them at Ravenswing where they will be running two workshops, one on yoga and the other on making zines.  More details on both will be posted in the coming week on our blog.

Take a look back on the great workshops organized by Les Ateliers in previous years at Ravenswing:

Ravenswing 2011: How to Make a T-Shirt Necklaces

Photo by Sarah Lendore, 2011 Ravenswing 2010: Beatboxing with Matt Gilmour

Photo by Ming Wu, 2010