The McMaster Museum of Art is hosting a workshop to teach the basics of mini zine making and trading art
For this year's Thrive Week, the McMaster Museum of Art is hosting a mini zine-making workshop. The workshop will be hosted on January 23 from 12 to 1 p.m.
Thrive Week is being held from January 22 to 26, and it is being managed by the McMaster Okanagan Office of Health and Mental Well-being. Its purpose is to bring the university community together to discuss mental health and find ways to support each other. Different areas of campus will be holding events throughout the week for students, alumni, staff and faculty.
Past Thrive Week events have included a therapy dog visit, a guided forest walk, a farm visit and a kind thoughts box.
The event will cover the basics of making mini zines while allowing participants to practice their own unique artistic style. You can also learn about trading your creations and the artistic process of zines in general. The workshop will also have a tour of the museum's exhibition Chasm.
The workshop is free to attend and includes free access to zine-making materials. To attend, you have to register online. Spots are limited!
Students should check out the upcoming event if they are interested in creating art or zines, learning more about different artistic forms or taking a break from studies to do something fun. Students should also keep an eye out for other Thrive Week events, especially if they are looking for ways to prioritize their mental health during the busy start to the semester. The full listing of Thrive Week events can be found here.
The Hamilton-based multimedia artist sat down with the Silhouette to talk about her new residency with the Hamilton Arts Council, mangoes and the power of zines
Sonali Menezes laughed over the phone when she confessed that her dining room table had been doing double duty, operating as both her eating and studio space. The Hamilton-based multimedia artist and creator of award-winning zine, “Depression Cooking,” had never had a studio of her own, due to the hefty price tag of her undergraduate degree. That all changed though when Menezes was chosen as Hamilton Arts Council’s newest Artist in Residence. The Artist in Residence program provides free studio space, among many other forms of support for artists.
“Having access to the studio space through this residency is really amazing because it actually allows me to have a dedicated workspace,” she said.
The studio also helped Menezes in building her latest exhibition, “Queen of the Fruit," at the Tangled Art Gallery. She used the provided studio space to build various sculptures for the gallery’s display cases. According to Menezes, the exhibition is a mixed media project dedicated to the mango and its culinary prominence within many Indian households. Painting, sculpture and audiovisual installations are present throughout the entire exhibition.
Though she experiments with many mediums throughout her work, Menezes takes a particular liking to zines, even describing them as her “first love.” When asked why, the artist explained her fondness comes from the unconventionality of the format itself.
“The reason I like zines so much is because they take artwork off the white wall of galleries and just put it directly into working people’s hands. They’re an accessible art medium,” she said.
The reason I like zines so much is because they take artwork off the white wall of galleries and just put it directly into working people’s hands. They’re an accessible art medium.
Sonali Menezes, Artist in Residence, Hamilton Arts Council
She hoped to continue this practice through her own work, going against the highly secluded and privatized culture of the art world as explained by Menezes, and instead making art an experience to be enjoyed by everyone.
Sonali Menezes will be creating in the Hamilton Arts Council’s and The Cotton Factory's residency studio from November 2023 to April 2024. To learn more about Sonali and her work, visit her website here.