in the space between zine

For the open mic / reading the other week, I ended up making a zine to combine drawings, writings, and bits from my sketchbook. Over the past year, I’ve returned to a creative practice that I somewhat abandoned after I changed majors in college and left art school. At the time, I felt that my drawings were really being overtaken by words, so I wanted to study languages, and now, interestingly, it’s been drawings that have led me back to writing and a creative practice.

The phrase “in the space between” came out in something I’d written. I didn’t think much of it at first, but last November, I realized it was a phrase that really encapsulated what I wanted to explore / had been exploring. As a teaching assistant, my time in Austria feels inherently “in between” — neither here nor there. I always knew that it would be a stepping point to something else, never the final destination. In someways, it hasn’t felt like a full chapter — although it is — just a place in between something else. And then there’s been the geographical space of living between mountains and how that’s changed my experience with the physical world, as well as, my personal practice of learning how to be in my body and find more space to breathe, and the mental and emotional work of learning to stop thinking in such black and white, all or nothing terms. There is space between; there is nuance; things expand.

I began doing these repetitive drawings over the past year, taking comfort in the fact that they didn’t have to be anything — just lines. I found myself doing them as I waited for someone to call, or as I listened to a book, or on the train, or in the waiting room. They were repetitive and straight, but intuitive and free at the same time–I didn’t know what they would look like in the end. And through all this time I was writing things and dancing in the mountains and exploring film and music and being in my body. I didn’t know how it would all tie together.

For the zine, I started just doing the drawings in ink on 11x17in. paper, unsure if I would write anything. And then, the drawings just seemed to fit with snippets I’d written over the past two years, so I started putting it together.

So I guess, this zine has been a culmination of the past two years of experiences–a return to a creative practice, an exploration of love and learning how to be in spaces of Both/And and Neither/Nor — joy and heartbreak, belief and doubt, hope and disappointment, expansiveness and containment. And overall, figuring out how to be and exist in a place of uncertainty that feels “in between,” not fully formed, tight, and uncomfortable.

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to print and staple a copy for yourself, I will send you the printable PDF. Donations would be accepted but are not necessary 😉