DESIGN GALLERY
THE CANON ZINE PROJECT
The Free Black Women’s Library
I was invited by my friend Olaronke Akinmowo, founder of the The Free Black Women’s Library in Brooklyn, among a few other amazing Black women artists, to participate in the CANON Zine Project. CANON is a zine project created by the library, and is dedicated to zines inspired by Black women authors whose works have created an enduring legacy for Black readers, but who are not popularly celebrated in the halls of academia. The zines created for this project are in conversation with those texts.
For my zine, I wanted to use the opportunity to realize one of my latest works — the newest issue of At This Point comic strip — in print, while paying homage to an important character in literature by one of its finest and most dynamic writers — Zora Neale Hurston. Below, I’ll share points from the 5-minute presentation I gave at the public zine event, but first check out aspects of the creation of the zine.
POCKET ZINE CREATION
the printing, trimming and folding of the pocket zine
I didn’t record how I edited the 6-panel comic to fit the zine template, but that was the first step. This video shows the printing, trimming and folding stage of the pocket zine creation. On the opposite side, I included a poster featuring the fourth panel of the comic strip that is displayed when the zine is fully open. I enjoy poster zines because they have utility after you’ve engaged with the text in the zine.
ZINE PROJECT PRESENTATION
Hi, I’m Valerie Caesar, I’m a multidisciplinary artist from Brooklyn. My zine for this project is in conversation with Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I’d like to play a short clip from the audiobook version and share how it relates to my zine.
(In real life I ended up reading this aloud myself because my speaker wouldn’t cooperate, but I really love the voice of the narrator chosen to read the audiobook.)
audio excerpt
In this scene of Their Eyes Were Watching God, we see through the image of the pear tree, abuzz with pollen and light and bee activity, that Janie, who is “stretched on her back … [feeling] a pain remorseless, sweet, that left her limp and languid” — is having her own “coming” of age, so to speak. I read this scene, if not as the physical act of self-pleasuring, as the first really strong inklings of sexual possibility and pleasure that you feel during adolescence, and the wonder and excitement and openness it brings. Janie’s anticipation of the exploration of these feelings almost instantly manifests an adventure in the form of “shiftless Johnny Taylor, long and lean,” appearing on her doorstep and giving her her first kiss, much to the shock and chagrin of her Nanny, who apparently sleeps with one ear open.
I created the comic in my zine as part of a semi-autobiographical, journal-style comic strip series called At This Point, and this is the second issue.
(At this point in the presentation, I shared some behind-the-scenes aspects of the making of the comic, which you can find in my original post about the comic strip, linked (above and) here.)
Although I wasn’t thinking explicitly of this scene in the book when I created this story, I see exciting parallels between them. From a storytelling perspective, the narrator’s voice in Their Eyes moves between Janie’s internal introspection, and her observation of the visual landscape, similar to the way the female character in my comic strip does.
I can definitely see a 6-panel strip that I could create from the Hurston scene that would be visually adjacent to my strip — a panel with Janie laying on her back under the pear tree; another panel with a close-up of her eyes in wonder, and reflecting a bee crawling into a flower; the next panel with her walking impatiently through the house to the front porch; and her leaning breathless over the banister, wishing something would happen; an image of old shiftless Johnny Taylor planting a kiss on her on the porch, and the last panel is Nanny, of course, snapping out of her sleep!
I love both reading and reflecting in my artwork those deliciously human, personal, quiet but internally loud moments of revelation that really the show the interiority of a person. In Hurston’s work, this was the moment at which — at least by Nanny’s determination — Janie became a woman, and we can sort of agree, in the Descartes sense of thinking oneself into creation. Janie was in contemplation of womanly things, and she became one in that very moment of contemplation.
Similarly, the woman in the comic strip, also looking for wonder, for purpose, and meaning, manifested exactly what she thought she was looking for in that moment. In a seemingly peculiar turn of fate, she rejected that manifestation. Later, in Their Eyes, we see that Janie also rejects the path that this womanly manifestation takes her on.
A CLOSER LOOK
Watch this short video at the full screen setting to view At This Point Issue #002 in closer detail.