For all its arts credibility
and resident cartoonists, it seems nothing short of amazing that Seattle, of
all cities, has had no small-press festivals.
The city boasts Fantagraphics as a local publisher, which has served to
galvanise a strong comics scene, with some energetic and vocal work emerging
from the underground. What’s notable about
many of these works is that they appear at the crossroads between comics and
zines. But, the exposure of this work in
its home city has been marginal at best.
Until now, that is.
Last weekend saw the inaugural
Short Run small-press show at Seattle’s Vera Project. The event was curated by four local
cartoonists and zinesters — Kelly Froh, Jenny Gialenes, Martine Workman and
Eroyn Franklin. It featured over 75
exhibitors, ranging from first-time minicomics makers, to local legends like Jim
Blanchard and Megan Kelso. That “crossroads”
aspect was also very much evident, with many tablers exhibiting prose works or
pure illustration. Then there are the
people like Jason T. Miles, whose Profanity Hill distribution collects together
all aspects of the burgeoning underground.
Indeed, Short Run felt very different
from regular festivals — it had more of a community vibe to it, with a bake
sale greeting visitors when they walked in the door and tables tightly arranged
so that exhibitors could chat to one another across the aisles… if they were
able to. The show floor was jam-packed
with attendees and business seemed to be brisk, with many visitors voraciously
indulging in the works on offer — I witnessed one lady buy a complete set of
Tugboat Press’s Papercutter
anthologies (nearly 600 pages of comics!).
Feeling that there was
something unique and special about this show, I decided to chat to the organisers
over email to find out more about Short Run and what its future may look like.
 |
| l-r: Martin Workman, Kelly Froh, Jenny Gialenes, Eroyn Franklin |
What was the impetus for starting Short Run? Why now? Why
Seattle?
Short Run was founded to
strengthen our small press community and show off all the amazing work
being made in our area.
Seattle has been lauded as a home to comics artists and small press self
publishers of all kinds and we've craved a festival that celebrates them. All
of us at Short Run hoped that something like this would appear in Seattle
before now, but after spending a lot of time wishing and waiting we finally
realized that we had to do it ourselves if we really wanted it to happen. It
was important to us that Short Run included small publishers of all types,
since we each have slightly different interests. Kelly makes true blue
mini-comix and has a degree in fine art, Jenny's a zinester and crafty gal,
Martine and Eroyn make work that cross between art and comics. We all came
together because we felt that Seattle was missing something and we wanted to be
a part of finding that thing. We've had a lot of fun and feel really lucky we
work so well together as a team.
Did you model it after any other small-press festival, like say the
Portland Zine Symposium? To me, it felt like a nice melting pot of various
disciplines with zines, comics, literature, animation, etc.
Short Run felt like a nice
melting pot of various disciplines with zines, comics, literature, animation,
etc. We didn't model it after any festival in particular. We have been tabling
in other cities since about 2004, so we had a strong idea of what we wanted out
of an event. Ideally, a festival will give artists and writers a stage to show
work to their peers and audience while building a strong sense of community. We
wanted to showcase the best self-publishers our region has to offer; people who
are passionate about their discipline and share it through printed short run
editions.
Did your own experiences of exhibiting at other small press events help
you plan for Short Run?
Indeed! We've learned a lot from our years of exhibiting. We also had a few ideas we thought could make our event fun and relaxed. At one of our first meetings we discussed our likes and dislikes with our experiences tabling, and Kelly even poked fun at a few of these things in the comics she drew that we used to promote the event. We knew we wanted our event to be free to the public, and the tables as low cost as possible. We were also familiar with the “dead zones” of a table floor, and tried our best to configure the room so that every table was active (we will be better at this next year). Lots of little things were discussed to make the tablers comfortable and the attendees happy that they came.
How many of the exhibitors were known to you already? Were any of
them personally invited to attend the festival?
A lot of the tablers were known
to us. The comics community is a friendly, supportive one in general. We knew
we had a great “base” to build from, but we also had the goal of reaching new
faces and people who had maybe never tabled before. Once word started to
spread, we were emailed by people we didn’t know. We have since received emails
from people who came to show as attendees, and felt inspired to make their own
books so that they can attend as a tabler next year. That’s amazing to us!
How far did the exhibitors travel to attend? I noticed a lot of Portland residents — was there anyone from further afield?
Most of our exhibitors were
from Seattle and Portland, a few from Tacoma, Bellingham, Olympia, Alaska, and
an exhibitor all the way from Reno!
Do you have a rough number of how many people attended the festival on
Saturday?
We had over 800 attendees in
our first year.
What were some notable successes of the day?
There was a strong sense of
community! Both exhibitors and attendees seemed excited and happy to be there.
Our exhibitors were selling out of their stock, and making money. One person
told us that it was nice to come to a show like this and see so many people
smiling.
Do you plan to organise another Short Run for 2012? How would you like
to see the show grow?
Yes, we will do this again
next year. We are considering how large do we want to grow, how we want to
expand our programming, if we are going to apply for nonprofit status, and how
we can get financial support. This year we put this on entirely ourselves with
our own money. We had no idea if it would be a success, so we had to plan on
maybe losing our asses on this. We still wanted to try, and luckily, Seattle
came through for us.
While there is a very healthy arts scene in Seattle, a few people I have spoken to say that it's not quite as closely-knit or as much of a community as the one that exists in Portland. Would you agree with that? Do you think smaller, local events such as Short Run help to foster a stronger community?
We hope so, that’s kind of the
whole point. Portland is a model for sure, they have a huge comics community
and zine scene, lots of organized shows, lots of support from their public
library, and a mayor who decreed April “Portland Comics month”. Seattle is a
bit fractured in that regard. There’s a lot going on with no hub, and no means
to see what anyone else is doing. Drawing clubs and groups exist all around the
city, and tons of people are making comics, zines and books, but there isn’t a
lot of sharing and crossover. Four years ago, Fantagraphics opened a store and
gallery in Georgetown and this has been a great place to see comics-loving
people at least once a month when they have a new art opening, or a comic
artist from out-of-town appears, or there’s a book launch. We need more spaces
like this, and certainly more spaces that take on the task of curating a
section for independently published books for sale.
Anything else you'd like to add?
We want to thank everyone who
came out on a rainy day in Seattle and made our event a great success! Our
first year exceeded our expectations and we can't wait to see everyone again
next year!
— Gavin Lees
0 comments:
Post a Comment