We finally made it to Pressed Cafe on Gladstone. They are tying into the community with all sorts of events. Bri took a picture from the outside.
I haven’t been to quite this kind of thing before. It has something of a small press fair to it, a Ravenswing event with only papery things. Or slip of paper to a digital zine. Some were handwritten/hand drawn and photocopied. Some were by a couple people, some by a group, some solos. All kinds of pet subjects or non-subjects. A wild and wonderful assortment of making things. Power to the people. Don’t Wait to be Invited. Start Your Own.
There was an intro so people could say what they had up for trade, say everything I know about shaving with a razor (“Care and Use of a Straight Razor for the Judicious Destruction of Whiskers and other Bodily Hairs” by Christian Porderer) or some of the best of a one-panel comic strip Pat Patenaude does online at The Professor Comic.
There were a couple mingle sessions, some people at table, some people carrying things in their hands, some who came to look or buy.
Or talk. Oh, and Pressed Cafe is committed to zines generally. There’s a rack to sell them there all the time.
Here’s the papery booty I got. I haven’t gone thru it all but JM already spoke of jesslyn delia smith & Jamie Gagno’s Welcome to Beautiful Ottawa which was a neat little almost advertising supplement, truer than life.
Some were traditional cut and paste, photocopy and stapled, or just folded. One up there hand-stamped and bound with twine in a neat way like “Acknowledgements and poems” by Avonlea Fotheringham…l look forward to getting into a lot of these. And while I think of it, Lots of sewn styles of Japanese book bindings. (I put that on my FB wall but other things from there disappear. Never trust a site you don’t host on your own server.)
An envelope you see up there called “YOU” is from Australia that someone mailed to be passed around. It is signed “ME” and is a handwritten letter of travel in Australia. Jessie Denise Huggett made an illustrated zine (“Speak”) of her life in relationship to Down Syndrome, Propeller Dance and her aspirations. Chris made the lighter blue one up there with a serial poem. Maxx, one of the organizers had a bunch of mini zines of life stories, the most recent one being about the broken hand (with a hand in a cast as proof of not-fiction!) and a previous one (shown up there, issue 4) about a broken foot.
Each person brought a few to 30 of their thing and all traded on equal basis or people just gave them for free. Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril did the “con·ver·sa·tion” with some typed snippets, and handwritten, and drawings and annotated in every direction.
Why should text be one font and stacked stultifyingly like bricks?
Becky David and Jessie Moore did a chapbook of drawings (“Pocketful of Witches”). The orange one up there is mine. Amanda Earl’s is the bronze-splattered one but each one was a different paint of the sticker poems so yours may look different. The leftmost one is Dave Currie’s Commoner’s Guide to Nonsense, Part 1 of 3 of the manual.
A few people going thru theirs. Including Craig Calhoun who is on air at CKCUfm’s Literary Landscape with Dave Currie in a half hour. Them and Martyn Bryant and Brandon Wint. You can listen live, online or later.
I missed a few going around. There’s a small glimpse I realize but there are too many to go thru right now in enough detail tonight, but what a treasure trove. Not a whiff of mothballs or boredom there anywhere.