Qaran-zine: Zine Club continues to create art through quarantine

While most have used quarantine to binge watch “All American” or teach themselves how to bake, some see the extra time as the perfect opportunity to produce and expand on art forms like zines — small, handmade magazines ranging from five to 10 pages, featuring digital drawings, objects, collages, illustrations, photography and more. 

These mini magazines are produced by Zine Club, which typically meets every Monday after school in sponsor Adam Finkelston’s room. Looking to continue creating their projects, they’ve found ways to work around the troubles of quarantine by brainstorming theme ideas using their club’s GroupMe chat. 

“The great thing about zines is that they can be anything that you want them to be,” Finkelston said. “It’s definitely a really great way for students to be expressive, to be thoughtful and also be creative.”

After bouncing around ideas, they quickly decided that the theme most fitting with the current circumstances would be “pandemic.” 

Each of the six students participating were assigned a page — along with Finkelston’s two pages — and given complete creative freedom to fill their page with whatever they wanted, as long as it related to the central theme of pandemic. 

Senior Sydni William chose to fill her page with poetry, writing about her existential, dark and edgy thoughts regarding viruses spiralling through her head. Written in all caps on an aged piece of paper, the poem focuses on the “lingering spirit of closure.” William conveys the idea that we are all mourning through this hollow time in different ways, however she hopes that “we emerge from this thing as appreciative, empathetic people.” 

“In fact I was thinking about [being quarantined] more,” William said. “But [making zines] is a way to make art and share art so I like doing it.”

While William chose poetry, other students chose things like drawings and digital art. Sophomore Arin Sowell, who was assigned the front cover, created a human-like figure with an array of victorian flowers — chosen with intentions of portraying symbolized meaning through the flower types.

Sowell drew a dark, crimson rose to represent mourning, chrysanthemums to show neglect and pogonias to represent sickness in his digital painting — all coming together to perfectly represent the idea of pandemic. 

Club founder and sophomore August Hyde represented the idea of pandemic through a hand sewn mask that he scanned to cover the majority of his page. Using photoshop, he outlined the mask with the words “I’m very worried.”

Hyde felt that creating his page was the best way to express the reality that COVID-19 could be a plausible threat. Struggling with lung issues since childhood, Hyde knew that the autoimmune issues running in his family could create a serious problem. 

“It was kind of a growing concern in my brain that I [feel] like can be relevant to express in this zine,” Hyde said. 

As for Finkelston this was a way for him, like the students, to dive into the deeper thoughts he’s faced through this pandemic. He created two pages, carving out of monolium and turning his works into prints — looking simple, but again with deeper understanding.  

One of which includes a simple wooden chair adrift at sea, and the other with a man losing balance standing on a poll over a body of water with numerous dangers beneath him. 

“They’re both images that I felt illustrate the atmosphere of having some confusion, some instability, and imbalance… feeling like you’re drowning a little bit or trying to keep your head above water,” Finkelston said. “Things that are familiar being thrown into unfamiliar territories”

While shedding light on the more in-depth and even metaphorical meanings of pandemic along with the feeling of being mentally and physically quarantined, the “pandemic” zine also incorporates the more bubbly side of things. 

Titled “Tatum’s Pandemic Essentials,” freshman Taitum Aikin created a page illustrating all of the things helping her get through quarantine with quick descriptions — from gallons of peach iced tea to phone games and lots of snacks.

The club has used zine-making as a way to both fill their time during quarantine, and dive into the thoughts and feelings correlated with this pandemic. Whereas they would typically keep their finished zines in their “zine machine” — a cardboard box in Finkelston’s room — the quarantine-zines are meant simply for personal use. 

When it comes to jumping into any form of art during quarantine, the zine club is all for it. 

“Even if it’s not trying to make the best piece of art, just experimenting and trying a new process that you’ve never done before, you get so carried away,” William said. “I’ll wake up in the morning and I’m like, ‘I’m going to do this today,’ then I’ll forget to eat until like five o’clock because I get so into it.”