St. Cloud's Zine Fest celebrates self-published booklets
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A group of local artists is making sure that, for the first time this year, St. Cloud is part of the zine scene.
Feb. 22 marked St. Cloud's first Zine Fest, a free event celebrating zines: small-circulation, self-published booklets often filled with art, poetry, stories and miscellany.
Zines — pronounced "zeen" like the final syllable in magazines — are typically either purchased or traded between zine makers, said Cheri Satre of Sauk Rapids. Satre, Kelley Holmes of Sauk Rapid and Felicia Wilson of St. Cloud organized the first St. Cloud Zine Fest and already have plans for next year's.
"I think we really want to build the art culture in St. Cloud," Holmes said.
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St. Cloud State University student Hyesu Cho has been to zine festivals in Minneapolis and South Korea. The graphic design student began making zines a few months ago and planned to have a table to display her zines as well as stickers she designs at the St. Cloud Zine Fest.
"I thought that it's really like (a) good chance to show my interests," she told the St. Cloud Times.
Cho said she likes how zines feel accessible to "normal" people rather than solely artists, and how self-publishing allows her to share her opinions and way of thinking.
Her zines can be text-focused or image-focused. One is a list: "All the things that make me nauseous." (Spoiler alert: The perfume section at the mall made the cut.)
All three organizers — Satre, Holmes and Wilson — are zine makers.
"My kids would make them for me," Wilson said. "Little books, and then I found out from (Satre and Holmes) they were actually a thing."
Zines can be about anything. Satre has one about plant identification. Holmes did one about weird things her husband likes.
"I like things that make me laugh," Wilson said about the zines she gravitates toward.
Satre has an interest in art history, and she's turned out zines focusing on that subject. Satre also made one about her family's experience with her daughter's eating disorder.
"I'm an artist, and I felt like I just needed to share that story," she said. A zine turned out to be the perfect way to do it.
Wilson and Holmes tend toward collages in their zine-making, though Holmes also likes watercolor and ink.
"The coolest thing about zines is it gets people realizing that they can actually do something with the ideas in their heads," Holmes said.
"We really saw the zines as a really cool art form that's accessible to anybody — any age person, a person of any ability," Satre said.