Website: ginasiciliano.com
Name: Gina Sicliano
Email: ginasiciliano.com/contact
Description: Gina Siciliano is an artist and musician who lives in Seattle. She graduated from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon in 2006, where she specialized in oil painting, anatomical illustration, and self-published comics. Her graphic novella Summer Time was recently published by Mend My Dress Press. She is currently working on her new graphic novel I Know What I Am– The True Story of Artemisia Gentileschi. She has had art on display at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Gage Academy of Art, and at Oregon Health and Science University as part of a lecture series accompanying the Body World exhibit. She has also shown work at local joints such as Mighty-O Donuts, Sugar Shack Bakery, and the Mecca Cafe.
Gina is also the drummer, vocalist, and flyer artist for two rock bands– Mega Tiger and Oixoi. Her bands have played shows all over Seattle in venues such as Highline, Benbow Room, the Two Bit Saloon, the Mercury, the Kracken, the Josephine, and Cafe Racer. When she isn’t absorbed in one of her various projects, she is tending to her orchids, working at a used book store, or pedaling furiously around the city on her bike.
Summertime: A Graphic Novella in 4 parts by Gina Sicliano
“…a beautiful, heartbreaking and redemptive tale of sex, violence, punk, love, self-destruction and survival. Not to mentions Ginas drawings, all skillfully done in ball-point pen are just plain awe inspiring.” – Mend My Dress
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The True Story of Artemisia Gentileschi Part 1 and 2 by Gina Sicliano
Against the backdrop of a repressive and violent seventeenth century Rome, I Know What I Am tells the story of female painter Artemisia Gentileschi. In a world where the Catholic church controls everything, this extraordinary woman challenges the society she was born into and becomes a groundbreaking artist.
I Know What I Am portrays a time period full of philosophers, criminals, plagues, inquisitions, lecherous church officials, and high- profile artist celebrities. This gripping graphic novel serves as both an art history lesson and a coming-of-age father daughter story, as well as a new look at the history of sexual violence.
Using solely ballpoint pens, Seattle artist Gina Siciliano creates a unique work that interprets Renaissance and Baroque style through an entirely new lens. Bridging the modern “low” art form of comics with the traditionally “high” art form of painting, Siciliano comments on our forgotten past, the ways we define progress, and the history of women in art as a whole.
Written and illustrated by Gina Siciliano, Edited by Jason Conger
78 pages, notes, bibliography
I Know What I Am – The Trial of 1612 continues the story of seventeenth century painter Artemisia Gentileschi. As Artemisia strives to become a professional artist in Catholic Rome, she must also fight to uphold her honor after her father’s coworker, Agostino Tassi, brutally attacks her. With the help of family friend, Giovanni Battista Stiattesi, Artemisia and her father take the perpetrator to court, sparking a complex and suspenseful battle both similar and different from contemporary legal practice. In graphic novel form, Seattle artist Gina Siciliano provides a close examination of the eight month trial, which stands as a window into seventeenth century values and culture. I Know What I Am – The Trial of 1612 uses Italian Renaissance and Baroque history to further the dialogue on the social, political, and personal repercussions of sexual violence, the role of art throughout women’s history, and the power of the painters during this tumultuous time period.
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Fourteen“inspired by our weekly art classes at the Villawood detention centre.” – Refugee Art Project
“Ahmad Ali Jafari was a friend and supporter of the Refugee Art Project. I met him the first time I visited Villawood Detention Centre for a drawing workshop. He died of a heart attack a few days later, the fourteenth refugee to die in detention since 2008. This drawing series is for a zine that commemorates his short life and mourns our inability to get to know each other” – Zanny Begg
To read an eulogy for Jafari by Safdar Ahmed in Overland click here.
a poetry zine featuring 12 Boise writers by Samo~Supertramp and Sparky Sparx
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The Love Notes You Know Exactly Where You Misplaced
a mini poetry zine by Alfredo Landa. 7 loves, 7 poems. Very cute.
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Tara Jay
Stunned Lungs
Stunned Lungs is a poetry zine — Poems about sex, anxiety, class & poverty, family, illness, grief, hair-pulling, dogs, bodies & gender, street harassment, etc, etc.
Stunned Lungs #1
If you have ever read the poet Shannon Olds, you know how poetry can tell a story stronger than a story itself. That’s what this zine is like. If you like poetry at all, you should get this. It is amazing. The poems tell a story of their mothers home a feeling of vertigo and suffocation; a story of body and sex, and such deep everything you really must read it. – Cindy Crabb
Stunned Lungs #2
another beautiful haunting poetry zine from Tara, with poems about love and bruises, annihilation and jellyfish, the last desperate thing we did. With a beautiful block print cover, each one hand printed and sewn. – Cindy Crabb
Suzy Subways
The Propaganda Maker
Short story (fiction) by the amazing Suzy Subways. Suzy is a really good writer. This story I don’t exactly know how to descibe – it is about a person who is basically imprisioned, living in a part of a bridge with someone who makes propaganda. Sometimes she gets out – turning into rat and sneeking out. The whole story is kind of creepy and really intriguing and seems like it’s symolic for various policial and emotional and realtional things.- Cindy Crabb
The Eyes of the Manthis is a fiction story by my friend Suzy Subways. it’s about a girl who kills her mom’s rapist. and about queerness and activism – Cindy Crabb
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Delivery Dyke (1996, about my adventures as a pizza delivery girl in Brooklyn)
Subways (2003, with stories and interviews about NYC communities)
Zine Yearbook 9 (2009)
The Zine Yearbook is a book with articles, stories, comics, and all that kind of stuff from lots of different zines. It’s always great and it’s a great way to find out about a lot of zines you don’t know about. – Cindy Crabb
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Stolen Sharpie Revolution: a DIY Resource for Zines and Zine Culture (5th edition 2015)
This is the 5th and latest edition of this book and was printed December 2014
-Buy one copy or multiples for friends, stores, or distros
-Add a limited genuine custom Stolen Sharpie Revolution Sharpie marker (seen in the last photo)
Since 2002, Stolen Sharpie Revolution: a DIY Resource for Zines and Zine Culture has been the go-to guide for all things zine-related. This little red book is stuffed with information about zines. Things you may know, stuff you don’t know and even stuff you didn’t know you didn’t know! Stolen Sharpie Revolution contains a cornucopia of information about zines and zine culture for everyone from the zine newbie to the experienced zinester to the academic researcher.
Stolen Sharpie Revolution consists of thoughtful lists and step-by-step how-to guides on everything from definitions of a “zine,” where to find zines, why they are important, how to make them and how to participate in zine culture. This book has everything you need to get started creating your own zine, or to figure out what to do with the zine you just made.
Stolen Sharpie Revolution serves as both an introduction into the wide world of zine culture and as a guide to taking the next step to become a part of it.
Erick Lyle / SCAM
On The Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of The City
Erick Lyle’s On the Lower Frequencies is at once a manual, a memoir and a history of creative resistance and fun in a world run rotten with poverty and war. Whether handing out fake starbucks coupons for free coffee, dropping flyers on mall-goer’s heads that say “aren’t you glad this isn’t a bomb?” or having punk shows in laundromats, Lyle (formerly known as Iggy Scam) has shown the world over the years that you can resist consumerism and have fun and have a sense of humor at the same time.
Lyle, an icon of the samizdat zine scene of the 1990′s, is equally at home on mainstream radio, where he has done several commentaries for This American Life. His “Secret History” traces the evolution of cities, for sure, and of neighborhoods, and of dissent, but also of his own thinking under the pressure of experience, from his early focus on the more outre forms of resistance, through more contemplative times as he becomes preoccupied with the passage of time and starts to articulate an affirmative vision of the type of society he’d like to live in and fight for. In writing, for example, on Reagan’s death he feels relief that came from realizing that by the time Reagan had actually died, his teenage rage had ceased being the motivating factor in his life, that what keeps him going is the sense of what he wishes the world actually looked like, inter alia, public art, squats, free breakfast programs, illegal peace demos in san francisco, punk holidays (joey ramone day, in which people gather and do a secret santa exchange of mixtapes), even a booklist.
But he never seeks refuges in the abstract. In one of the book’s key set pieces, “The Epicenter of Crime: The Hunt’s Donuts Story,” Lyle celebrates the history and passing of a donut shop that was once a nerve center in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. On one level, it’s an epitaph for a beloved hangout. On another, it’s a metaphor for the racial and economic tensions that can accompany gentrification. And on yet another, it’s an untold history of an entire neighborhood via a single retail establishment.
Scam gives the reader inspiration for living defiantly in these times.
Scam: The First Four Issues by Erick Lyle
Scam was equal parts an introductory guide on how to get things for free and punk memoir. Youths experienced trainhopping, house shows, and cross country tours that sought out swimming holes. Community was sought and celebrated through generator punk shows on Mission Street, hunting for cans of beer on Easter, and Food Not Bombs. Angst was manifested while stealing electricity from lampposts, squatting in Miami, selling plasma, tagging freight trains, wheatpasting, spraying salt water into vending machines, returning stolen merchandise, and dumpstering as seen through the lens of a young punk. Scam has gone on to inspire a generation of imitators, the highest form of flattery.
Scam #1
The first issue of Scam finds Erick Lyle, having recently turned 18, living in a punk house, paying minimal rent and working a crappy job. I hate to overgeneralize, but it’s about what people would expect from an 18-year-old who has a crappy job and lives with a bunch of punks. There’s lots of how-to style articles on topics like how to scam CD stores by ordering from Columbia House, and writing to companies, complaining about the quality of products you’ve never tried, to get free food. There’s also a ton of short blurb reviews covering everything from the new (in 1991) Screeching Weasel album to Danny Bonaduce. The highlights of this issue are interviews with Sam McPheeters (of Born Against) and Ben Weasel (uh… if you don’t know who Ben Weasel is, you can probably stop reading here). The recipe for Ole’ (that’s “O-lay”) Chickenhead wine doesn’t look bad either (it involves frozen orange juice concentrate and a balloon), but as I’m on hiatus from drinking, I’m going to have to let someone else who’s bold enough to try it let me know how it goes.
Scam #2
Coming in at over 100 pages, Scam #2 (known as the “Mutiny in Miami” issue) is the longest part of the compilation. The style of “Mutiny in Miami” is totally different from its predecessor: it’s less how-to-manual (although there are a few) and more of a flowing narrative of Lyle’s life. The tongue-in-cheek reviews of Seventeen magazine have given way to reviews of Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie and Muhammad Ali’s autobiography. The interviews have shifted focus to local Florida bands.
Honestly, it tends to ramble. Lyle writes some beautiful passages about digging through trash piles and staying up all night, but the issue is a little hard to read due to the length of some of the stories (handwritten, even four 8 ½-by-11 pages can get hard to read), but overall the content makes it worth the slog through Lyle’s layouts (now I know why my elementary school teachers always made me skip lines). The highlights of “Mutiny in Miami” include the descriptions of the abandoned Mutiny Hotel (where Lyle is squatting) with press clippings from its heyday as a cocaine smuggler’s paradise in the 1980s, and the descriptions of the lesser-known parts of Miami. There’s also a story by Ben Weasel. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Scam #3
The third issue is fairly similar to “Mutiny in Miami.” It doesn’t have the heart, though. During the time between #2 and #3, it seems that Lyle secured a working typewriter (or maybe a few different ones), for which I am fucking grateful. I hate to say it, but the issue sort of falls flat compared to the other three issues included. It doesn’t have the sophomoric humor of the first, the wistful beauty of the second, or the strong ideological stances of the fourth. It isn’t bad, but it lacks the unifying theme of all the other issues. I’m just going to mention the highlights, which include an article on Alex Trebek and the Hobo Underground, an article about being broke, and how to scam a free trip to Europe.
Scam #4
Issue 4 is mainly written in San Francisco. It has a much more activist feel than any of the other issues included in the compilation. Though Lyle’s activism is definitely evident in the first three issues (working to establish a Food Not Bombs program in Miami, etc.), this issue features numerous interviews with people from across the country working to change their communities. He interviews graffiti artists that give away free vegan burritos in San Francisco, a person who began a bike co-op in Philadelphia, and the people who began the San Francisco needle-exchange program. Lyle himself has begun a community newspaper for his neighborhood in the Tenderloin, and has begun using vandalism to express a deeper meaning than “Fuck the pigs.” There are still some interesting interviews with bands and a couple of good stories, but as a whole the issue is much more dedicated to activism than music. Highlights include: an article on living in the San Francisco Landfill, an interview with the Biotic Baking Brigade (political pie throwers!), and a search for urban fishermen in five American cities.
Scam #5 1/2: Epicenter of Crime: The Hunt’s Donuts Story by Erick Lyle
Scam was always the zine in which the Miami punk, Erick Lyle, showed us examples of creative resistance and fun in a world run rotten with poverty and war. Whether it was handing out fake starbucks coupons for free coffee, dropping flyers on mall-goer’s heads that say “aren’t you glad this isn’t a bomb?” or having punk shows in laundromats, Erick has shown us over the years that you can resist capitalism and have fun AND have a sense of humour at the same time. It’s nine years later and this issue is no exception. This issue finds Erick, more than ever, preoccupied with the passage of time, in the form of obsessing and waxing poetic about the history and demise of one of the Mission’s strangest and most beautiful corner stones, Hunt’s Donuts. Imagine a place where you always look first when something is stolen from you to find a simple crook pawning it inside the donut shop, where “Open 25 hours” somehow makes sense, where you never imagine that the dream can come to an end. A fun little foray for those of us obsessed (or soon to be) with classic Bay Area history.
Scam #6 In the Streets of Buenos Aires
Scam #6 is a first-person travel essay about stencil art in Argentina! Erick has taken his chapter from the book Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, and turned it into a zine making it more accessible for those not ready to take the leap of book-ownership. We’re treated to the story of Buenos Aires, interviews with radical stencil artists, & the political motivations of street art in Argentina. After a serious economic collapse in 2001, as a result of borrowing from the IMF. Most street rioting ensued from all kinds of people and stencil art was used to spread messages.
Scam #7
Erick seeks to quash the myth that Miami is a 24 hour party and/or police state. Visitors know little of his city except for what they’ve seen during Art Basel or the FTAA protests, and Erick attempts to shed some light on the real Miami. He’s assigned to cover Art Basel for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and takes the opportunity to profile Take Back the Land, a Miami-based group of activists helping the homeless squat bank-foreclosed homes. Erick briefly interviews Shepard Fairey who’s in town painting a mural for Art Basel, and he also shares his thoughts on the FTAA protests in 2003.
Scam #9: The Story of Black Flag’s Classic First Album, Damaged!
Based on an expanded version of a story Erick Lyle wrote for the LA Weekly to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Black Flag’s Damaged, this zine includes primary interviews with Henry Rollins, Greg Ginn, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena, Kira Roessler and others around the band, including Mike Watt, Joe Carducci, Raymond Pettibon, Ed Colver, and Dave Markey. But what it really contains is the story of an excited, young Erick Lyle discovering a vent for his rage and pent-up emotions that a magical, impossible-to-replace historical album could encapsulate. And in 64 pages he successfully lays out the importance of these people, their place in time, and the aftermath of it all. Excellent punk journalism that gets to the heart of the matter without simplifying it.
cover art: Josh Bayer
‘Love, Truth and Honesty: A zine about Bananarama…and me’. I thought this zine was out of print forever and died with joy when I found this back in circulation at Take Care’s table. One of my all time favourite zines that I didn’t have a personal copy of. My life is now complete.
‘A guide to procrastination’. I discovered the zinemaker actually wrote this from two years ago and only recently printed it out. Perfect. [likim2 (at) yahoo dot com dot au].
I was also pumped to pick up Plunder 3.5 / Confessions of an SHS worker, a split zine on community and public housing [strikecuriousposes (at) gmail dot com].
And a super sweet zine on matchboxes and shyness, which you may need to write for (PO Box 60 Abbotsford Victoria Australia 3067).
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Julia Arredondo / Vice Versa Press
Read Once & Destroy, and more
Julia Eff has been writing all sorts of zines for over 10 years. They’re mostly known for their zines about gender issues, “Every Thug Is A Lady” and “Whatstheirname”, but they also like writing about myspace bands and the people that love them. They’ve been straightedge for longer than they’ve been making zines and enjoy riding their scooter and drinking tea. This is their first
Julia Eff Every Thug Is A Lady
Julia Eff’s book. It has the sort of rage & humor & reflection & passion that inspires me, reminds me what got me into zines yrs ago & why I want to continue making & reading them now. It is a voice on fire, crushed but not defeated, bruised but laughing. It’s settling into an identity & having to defend it every day from everyone.
Next to it, unrelated, is a statuette of one of those boy band kids. He’s clearly either been possessed or turned into a zombie. This is in full view at my work cubicle & somehow, my coworkers haven’t realized that I’m only 13 yrs old.
Activist Journeys 