S8E10: Tiana Traffas

Hello and welcome to the final episode of Season 8 of Long Arm Stapler, a podcast about zines! This episode, I'm joined by Wisconsin-based zinester and artist Tiana Traffas. We talk about how zines foster connections, why they're such an amazing and accessible medium, Tiana's work, and more! I also try to convince her to start sewing!

Find more of Tiana's work here:

https://tianatraffasart.bigcartel.com/

Find more of my work here:

http://linktr.ee/LNGRMSTPLR

http://ko-fi.com/LNGRMSTPLR (where you can also support the podcast for as little as $1/month!)

Thank you so much for listening to this season of Long Arm Stapler! Going to take a few weeks off and then get right back into gear with the first guests of Season 9: the organizers of the Midwest Perzine Fest.

Logo by Miquela Davis: @ghostsb4breakfast

Intro/outro:

Who Likes to Party Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:07

Hello and welcome back to Long Arm Stapler, a podcast about beans. I'm your host, Mayra. This is the final episode of season eight, um, which is really cool and exciting. Um, and I have a cool and exciting guest to go along with it. Uh, I'm joined by Tiana Trafis, who is a self-taught artist and zine star from the Driftless region of Wisconsin. Many of her ongoing projects include street art, zine making, painting, drawing, printmaking, and the occasional small sculpture. Her artwork has been shown in juried shows and galleries across the US as well as internationally. She creates pur-zines, instructional and DIY zines, political zines, and art zines. She loves a snail mail zine trade. When out of the studio, she enjoys reading good books, practicing folk herbalism, and thrifting for vintage and antique treasures. Hello. Hey. Uh, welcome to Long Arm Stapler. Um, I'm excited to chat with you about your zines, um, especially Ephemera, because I'll talk about this later, but it made me cry, uh, like almost immediately, but in a good way. Um, but we'll get to that in a bit. Um yeah, so how did you get into making how and when did you get into making zines? Yeah. First of all, somebody telling me that something I made made them cry is like weirdly exciting. Like right off the bat, too, like, hello, nice to meet you, your zine made me cry. Yeah, it's great. I love it. Um, yeah, so I think it I think I'm surprised a little bit by how long it took me to get into zines because it seems like a natural place to, you know, in my evolution of somebody who makes things, it makes sense that I would end up making zines because as a little kid I loved, you know, drawing, I loved little notebooks, little um uh do you remember they had these like hardcover paper books that you could buy, and they were like blank books for kids to make their own books. I think so. And I loved them. We had this little uh like shop uh in the town in my town, and we would go there every Sunday, like we'd go to church, and we'd eat Chinese for lunch, and then we'd walk down to this shop. My parents were both teachers, and it was geared towards teachers, this shop. So it had, you know, just educational stuff in there where you could buy things for the classroom, and they had these books, and I would buy them up all the time, and I would make my own books with them, and then that kind of transitioned into making like one-off art books as gifts for people, and then eventually I made my first zine as a teen. It was like a pocket astronomy zine, so I could carry the winter constellations with me. So whenever I was outside, I could kind of refer back to that little zine. And I think actually I might have made it both for myself and for my at the time boyfriend who is now my husband. Um so yeah, and like I I'm a visual artist, and so I think a couple of years ago I just wanted to explore my creativity without limits and kind of let myself not only focus on the real art that I was trying to get into galleries or group shows or have an exhibition, and zines kind of became this thing, this like safe place for me to play without pressure. And the first scene I made was called Dark Myths to prove that men are babies and women are witches, and it was like this very sort of silly, snarky mini zine with like feminist um interpretations of myth, and it was a way to express my frustrations with patriarchal theology, mythology, and you know, as somebody who left uh church and Christianity behind in my past, so it was kind of this way to like process a lot of stuff that I needed to process. So I think that's that's kind of my zine journey. I I think zines are such a good space to kind of play and process um, kind of two things that I pulled from that. Like zines as a medium, I feel like because they're so accessible and anyone can make them, I think they become this really cool little container where you can kind of experiment without pressure because, like, if you don't like the zine, you don't have to show it to anyone. You know, it's just this thing that you can make just for you, but yeah, you can play around, you can experiment, you can just kind of work things out, and in that in a similar vein, you can also work out like things that are happening in your life that you may need space to like. I don't know. I mean, I used zine, I got into zines when I was coming out as queer, and that kind of was a lot of processing for me via zines, and so like I relate to that um aspect of it. Yeah, I mean those first few zines that I made, I didn't share them with anybody. I didn't even like it didn't even occur to me weirdly to like put them out in some way. Um, I think mostly because like I don't have a computer, I don't have a printer, so like it just didn't yeah, I didn't even think about it. But there's now that I you say that, there's so many times where I use zines to process something. I have a zine about actually I'm bi, like processing my my my sexuality. I have a zine that you mentioned about um grief and and a lot of heavy things that I was reflecting on after I lost my last grant living grandparent. So yeah, zines are this really cool way to process your stuff, but also connect with others over that stuff. Absolutely. There's there's such a nice bridge between people who are this sounds so like just the very basic chord, but like there's such a good bridge between people who are figuring out things about stuff. That sentence actually doesn't make any sense, but like zines are such a good way to connect with people, I think is what I mean to say. Like, uh, and you can connect with yourself while you're making them um in that processing kind of phase of it, and like yeah, when other people connect with like your zines if you share them, like I don't know, like you were saying earlier, that it feels really great, like yeah, zines are so special in that way, I think. Yeah, well, and I think zines and art making, whether you're a visual maker or music, or there's so many ways you can create things, um, it's this like really inherently human thing, and it's this thing that wants to kind of come out of you, and if you listen to that and let it, you can connect with people in ways that you probably would not expect at the beginning of that making process. And it's always such a great reward to like have that response from somebody who says, Hey, something you made really made me feel something, it's the best feeling in the world. Absolutely. Um yeah, yeah, it really I mean that's like that's kind of part of what keeps me making zines is being able to like try to forge that connection with or try to forge that connection with people. Um but what I guess like what inspires you to keep making zines? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I'm an artist. I work mostly I do drawings, figurative stuff right now is kind of my focus. Um, but I also do paper mache and soft sculpture sometimes, and um printmaking sometimes and painting occasionally, and I like to kind of dabble in a lot of different things. Um, and part of my creative process to not to avoid burnout is to kind of jump wherever I'm being led and kind of keep moving, keep making. But if I get too focused on one thing, I do tend to get burnt out on that medium or that specific project. So um, scene making is like this kind of safe place where I can kind of always go back and jump to that thing, and I never feel burnt out by it because it is this like really playful place. So I I can I just have this sense of freedom in it. And you know, with with art making, it is my like if I stopped making things, I think I would like implode or something. I I need it, you know what I mean? Yes, I think you know it, yeah. But zines are just I don't know, it's just it there's so much of a sense of play involved in it, and I also have like this deep love of zine culture because it kind of bridges all of my favorite things. Like I love, you know, art and you know, politics, and it's alternative and it's really rooted in community, and it's like all of these great things that I love, and also I can make it a zine about anything that I love, so I mean, duh, you know, and also I think I'm just pulled back in over and over again because I don't know, I think there's like a rebellious spirit in me that's fueled by the culture of zine making. And I also like that I can offer zines as an aspect of my art that is cheap or even free, and I'm really a firm believer in art is for everybody, as Keith Herring says, and um yeah, I think that's really important to me to have something that I can offer that it's there's no barrier to access this type of art. So that's so important to me. And also, like, I mean, like you said, the or as we were just talking about, the um the thing you get back from somebody who engages with your art, and when you do get to hear those little like your zine made me cry, or just a couple days ago, I have a little free library in my yard, and it does not get a lot of traffic, but I do have a little zine shelf in there, and um this lady knocked on my door, and she was like, I just wanted to give you $10 for paper, because I'm so excited about uh the zines that that I've seen in your little free library, because I mostly stock that with political zines, like um I have a few that are you know kind of like instructions how to resist the authoritarian regime and that along that those lines, and she was so excited that she would not let me refuse this ten dollars, and she was like, just keep doing what you're doing, and it's like those little moments just make you go, oh, this is why I'm doing this. I'm not screaming into the void, I'm actually, you know, giving somebody something, it's so cool. So, yeah, and it and also zine stars are a really cool uh group of people, it's kind of like a secret club, and you don't really know who's in the club until you come across a zine or connect with somebody at like a fest or through snail mail or whatever it might be, and it's like the most positive, joyful, creative people I've come across. There's like no ego involved, really. I think that's really unique to zine sters. Like, I've had really great connections with people in the art scene or like other spaces that you know I have overlap with people in. But zemsters are just like so joyful, and they're like, yep, everybody's invited, and I think that's really really unique to zensters. So yeah, and even just like how cool is it that we're participating in this thing that like the Harlem Renaissance or yeah, Harlem Renaissance writers did, and the white rose resistors, and like the feminist punks, and like there's this like all of these people throughout time did the same thing that we're doing. It's just cool, you know? It's just so motivating. I've never thought about that specifically, but that makes a like that does feel very cool that like we're all kind of we're continuing this legacy of like community and resistance and you know, finding joy in both of those things. Um yeah. Oh, that's really cool to think about, like isn't it? Yeah, like because like you know, I know like I've done zine workshops where it's like I kind of rattle off the history of zines, but I've never really stopped to think about like I'm doing the same thing that all of these people it's like a lineage of um cool shit. Yeah, it's so cool. It's like, oh yeah, I am a part of this thing. Like, you know, there might be the connective tissue might be kind of invisible or something, but like we are all connected in that in yeah, it's just cool. And I do really agree with you that like zine sters are just it's such a I I talk about the zine community a lot on this show because I just love it so much, and like so many of my close friends have come from zine making and zine spaces, and like there is no ego, it's very like everyone loves to share, whether that's knowledge or uh intimate details about their life, you know, like it's it's such zines are such a good way to get to know someone because especially through Persines, because you're just like reading all of these really tender and special moments that this person has taken the time to like commit to to paper and to memory and then you know they're just so nice about it. Like everyone like I don't I've met I can count the number of people I've met who have been like maybe not as chill through the zine community on like one hand, you know, like everyone that that I meet is just so nice and wonderful, and I love that about zines too. Yeah, for sure. I think and I'm again I I'm sure there's little moments that people have where maybe they they experienced something that wasn't overwhelmingly positive, but like as far as I have seen, heard, experienced it is I think different than many other, you know, people gathering because they're passionate about the same thing, like sports or comedy or artists or musicians, like there's anytime you've been in one of those spaces where you're like at a gallery show with a bunch of other artists, like sometimes there's egos involved or or whatever, and you just feel like weird about it, and like zines, I just I've never been with somebody else who makes scenes where I felt like oh I feel uncomfortable about that how this is going or how this feels or or whatever. There's no like, yeah, there's like not a lot of ego or gatekeeping or or anything like that going on, usually. It's just like love, joy, and and a lot of sharing and trading, and it's just cool. Yeah, I I love the zine community, like there and especially the lack of gatekeeping about zines, like, you know, anyone can make there there's no barrier, like you don't even technically need a piece of paper anymore to make one, you know, because you can do them digitally, but like there's no barrier to entry other than you have to have something that you want to share with other people, or even just kind of write down, you know, like you don't even have to share it with other people, you just have to have an idea, and that's that's the barrier for entry. Like, but people don't gatekeep, like, oh, what are the best tools to use, or like just all these tips and tricks. Zine sters love sharing information about we're all just weird nerds who love zines, you know, and we just want everyone else to be a weird nerd who loves zines. Yep. Yeah, I I feel like that's kind of my mission in life right now is to like spread zine propaganda, spread like making things yourself, trying new things. Like nobody's not an artist, like, don't say, Oh, I'm not artistic enough to try this or that around me, because I'll be like, oh no. Uh-uh, I'm gonna get you making something. So, yeah, like that's kind of my I think my mission in life right now, and um, I can use zines to spread that that message and that mission. So yeah. That's an admirable mission for sure. Um, so when you are making zines, do you I notice that you have a lot of your like illustrations are either hand-drawn or carved and then hand stamped. Um, do you have like a specific process for how you decide kind of what images will be done which way, or like tell me about how you decide on imagery for your zines? Yeah, so um I think it really depends on the initial idea. If I'm you know, it's like you'll you'll kind of always be. I think most zine sters are gonna understand exactly what I'm talking about when I say I'm always going, oh, this could be a zine. You know, you're always like writing little ideas down and seeing if it, you know, becomes something. Um so to get to the imagery part, I first need the idea, and maybe I'm kind of writing things out or doing really sloppy sketches and just kind of trying to plan like, okay, is this gonna be a mini? Is this gonna be a half size? A quarter? How many pages? You know, you're just trying to feel out like, is this a zine? Is this just an idea that's not gonna go anywhere? Um, and then it kind of depends on the subject matter, what I'm currently wanting to practice more. Like, if I haven't been drawing a lot, then I might go, okay, I'm gonna challenge myself to just do a hand illustrated scene just to get myself out of my funk and also not put a lot of pressure. It doesn't need to be perfect. I'm Just playing. Like I'm not, you know, trying to get myself to make my best work right now. Because it's okay if it's not. You know, if I'm making a drawing that I want to apply to a group show with or a series that I'm gonna be hanging in a few months, I there's a lot of pressure to go, I want this to be the best thing I'm capable of making right now. You know, but with a zine, I just go, I want it to be I want my zines to be good. I want to be proud of the work that I put out there, but I'm also let my I let myself play more with a zine. Um so yeah, it kind of just depends on where the idea is guiding me. And I have mono print zines, hand-drawn zines, collage zines, zines where I'm printing off photos from my phone at the library and then cutting and pasting them into the zine. Um so yeah, it kind of just it starts with with the idea, and I kind of let it sit and marinate until I go, okay, I'm ready. Like it needs to, it needs to get out of me. Uh so yeah, like I think my creative process is kind of like birth. Like, if you haven't given birth, it's like you just have this thing inside of you, and it's just like figuring itself out, and you don't really need to be hands-on with it right now, and then it's like, okay, there's nothing I can do to stop it. Like, this thing's coming, it's gonna come out of me, and then it's like active labor after that. You're like put you're in the push phase, you're like actually making the thing, you know? Um, yeah, and it's just like that labor of art making and zine making is like kind of like a moving meditation. Like, I really like the labor of making things because like sometimes you have to sit and struggle through a meditation. You're like, oh, what time is it? Uh I have to go grocery shopping, like you know what I mean, and then other times you're just like fully in a flow state and it's just like whoosh. Um so yeah, and I I do make my zines mostly the old-fashioned way, like I said, like kind of pays like just physically on paper because I don't have the knowledge or the tools to make them any other way, is really that's why. Like, I don't I'm bad at tech, so that's really the only reason why. If I had the desire or or the ability to learn how to do digital zines, I think it would have happened already. I think that ship has sailed for me. I'm just like, I don't need to know how any of that works because it looks too hard. Um, so yeah. I mean, I think most of my zines are probably pretty image heavy just because I'm a visual artist. I enjoy making making images, so yeah. And you have a zine about how to carve a stamp, which I thought was really cool. Like, yeah. That's part of my spreading the the art making propaganda thing, because I mean I think that like a lot of times at like community centers or like little like sort of community art workshop things, they're always teaching watercolor, and I'm like, hello, watercolor is so hard. Why are we you know making everybody feel bad that they don't know how to make like it's crazy to me? It's watercolor is like one of the hardest mediums. There's no arguing that it's it's nuts to me. Like everyone should be carving Linos, like that. I think it's it looks harder than it is. I think it's a pretty accessible as far as like the tools that you have for yourself to be able to make something. It's like, oh, I can't draw a stick figure. It's like, well, maybe, but you can probably carve your own stamp. As long as you like my mom has, you know, arthritis and a bunch of physical challenges that makes it difficult, and she still was able to, she's like, hey, I want to know how to do that. So we were carving, you know, the really soft pink lino together. So I think it's pretty accessible for most people, I would say. Um, especially people who think, oh, I I'm not artistic, I can't do that. I'm like, you should try, because it's it's actually really fun and not as hard as it looks. Um, the only barrier I would say is like cost. Um it's not crazy expensive. I say this as some kind of low-income person, but you know, art supplies, they're not cheap. So um, if you could take like a class at a local library or something like that, but um, and you know, you can if you buy a $20 carving tool and you have like a pink eraser in your house somewhere, you can at least give it a try. So and that zine is fun because it's a reversible mini, so you can open it up, flip it over, and then it gives you the instructions for printing your stamp afterwards. So um, yeah. I after I made it, I was like, should this have been a quarter-size zine? Is this hard to read? Is the font is it too small? Is the text too small? So sometimes I'll do that and I'll go, oh yeah, this might be hard for some people to read. And then I feel bad. But um, yeah, I like that one. It's kind of a popular one in trades and things, so I like that one. I opened it at the right or I like got it at the right time. I carved a stamp the other day for the first time in a really long time, and I like you were saying, I have I think I put it away actually, but um, I've got the like speedball kind of like carver tool, but I just use pink erasers, like yeah, because I just happen to have three, and so I like carved three stamps, and it was so easy and fun, and I was like, wow, if this like doesn't work out, it you know, I'm out three dollars, like yeah, it's not a big deal. Um, I can just go get more erasers, and it was it was really fun, and it's cool to have art that you can kind of constantly reproduce, and like again, I like it because you can kind of uh you know throw a stamp on a piece of scrap paper and send it with with your snail mail zine trade. You know what I mean? It's it's cool to be able to do that, and you can put it on clothes, you can just go nuts with your stamp. It's it's cool. I made mini zine tote mini zine mini tote bags, um, and I carved stamps that say iHeart mini zines. Um, so I stamped them. I love that. I have them. I'll just show you one since I have it right here. There's just little little tiny tote bags. Um you can do anything with a stamp, and yeah. This isn't a podcast about stamps, but like you can do anything with a stamp. Yes, okay, and I love that tote bag so fucking much. It's so cute. I love that. Okay, fantastic. So easy to make too. Um, I traced a CD case just to have something else to have on my table at an upcoming zine fest. Oh, that's such a good idea. Yeah, I I do like upcycling clothes and I do some hand sewing stuff, and sometimes I'll do little like felt stuffed animal type things, like for my daughter when she was a little bit younger, and I really enjoy that. But something I would like to get better at is just learning to sew, making my own clothing, that kind of thing. Um maybe one day, me and the bobbin, we don't like each other, we don't get along, I can't figure it out. So maybe one day. I'm laughing because I've been there. Um yeah, yeah. But I believe in you. It's once you get the hang of sewing, it's life-changing, it's amazing. You can just say, especially making your own clothes, you can just be like, I want this article of clothing, and I have fabric laying around, or I have something that I can make into that, and then you just do it, and then you I made a pair of shorts last night after work just because I was bored. Like, okay, that's so cool. And now I just have shorts, like, like sewing is so magical, and like zines, it's something that everyone should give a a try, I think. Yes. Okay, I'm I'm gonna make it happen someday, hopefully sooner than later. I'm gonna go back and and battle the bobbin and I'll we'll be friends. And like, like, because you've got um, it's like I'm trying to look for is it scrap? It's somewhere on my desk right now. I sent you a lot. Scrap. So it's there's like embroidery stitches on here. So like, and like you hand sew. So like you could you could hand I mean hand sewing clothes would take a really long time, but like that seems really rewarding. Yeah, well, I will do like hand sewn upcycling stuff. Like I turned a vintage tablecloth into a shirt. I, you know, do a lot of patchwork on my clothing. So I've been doing that forever. Like I have these jeans in high school where I like, you know, made three-dimensional roses and patched them and did some bead work on them, and like that was the first time where I kind of just tried stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing, I was just having fun. And so from that point on, I've always kind of tried to rework things or, you know, I can shorten a skirt and hand sew the hemline, and it doesn't look that bad. Like, I have some, you know, little things in my arsenal that I can kind of bring out, but I'd love to be able to just like whip through a sewing machine and get get stuff done, you know? That's the next step. I need to I need to do it, so I have some sewing zines um that I will send you because I was gonna send you a trade anyway. So I would love that so much. Coming your way soon. Yay, I'm so excited. Um, there were other other than scrap, there were a couple other zines that I wanted to talk to you about specifically. Um one is one that got mentioned earlier, Ephemera. Um, the subtitle is A Diary of My Feelings Around Grief, Ancestry, and the Junk I Can't Throw Out. This one was I was like reading it during work, and I was just like like as I was starting my work, I was like waiting for something to happen on my computer, and I was like, oh let me just pull out the zine and start it, since this is the one you said was like your favorite. And then I just like was like crying, and I'm like praying that nobody would call, like, like at for work. Uh and it was just it was so sweet and so powerful, and it made me really think about like you know the stuff we inherit, like the the physical things that we inherit, like what do we do with them, especially when like if you I mean you got all these boxes of ephemera, like how did you do you want to talk about like how you decided kind of what you used like how did you how did you make the zine, I guess is what it all boils down to. Um talk us through making ephemera and like that whole process. Yeah, um, I think this is my most personal per zine. Um it's the zine I'm most proud of. And yeah, so when my last grandparent died, it was my paternal grandfather, and he was a very sentimental person. I'm a very sentimental person. Um he just saved everything. He really loved sports and travel and music, and he was a little bit um like a I don't know, I think he just he was a little bit of a dreamer, a little he was sentimental, and he kept everything. Like, not everything as in like he had a lot of stuff, but when it came to like memory collecting, he was definitely one of those people. So all of these boxes that I ended up taking because no one else in the family was gonna take them, and I felt so sad at the idea that they would just be thrown away. These, you know, scrapbooks that he made when he was a little boy on a farm in South Dakota, like he would make his own kind of zines, a little bit magazine, like sports magazines, where he would cut things up and paste them into his like own handmade magazines. I didn't even think about that as a connection until right now, which is crazy. I'm like gathering stuff from these boxes of things, and I'm holding what is essentially a zine that he made without realizing that that's kind of what he was doing. Um yeah, just like travel itineraries or postcards that he sent to his parents that he collected after they died, um, planners and Bibles and books and uh my grandma's sheet music and just all of that kind of thing, you know, just paper ephemera. And it just got me reflecting a lot about, you know, I am also somebody who has a lot of paper ephemera. I'm an artist, I work mostly on paper. What's gonna happen to this stuff when I die? Like, there's just so much that it brought up for me, and I felt like, what do I do with this stuff? Because some of it feels really like something you want to hold on to, and a lot of it is stuff that I'm like, I don't know if I want to keep this, but no one else wants it. And he went his whole life, this is like the stuff that he wanted with him till the end, and it just brought up all this stuff for me, and I I just started writing and reflecting on do I make art with this thing? Like, what does it mean if I cut up this stuff and make art with it? And I eventually decided, um, yeah, I'm gonna cut it up, I'm gonna paste it into a zine, and I'm gonna make copies and share it with people. And um it became more than just what do I do with this junk? And the zine just is sort of this sort of meandering, almost diary-like entry, reflecting on, like you said, grief, ancestry, this paper that I got, all these boxes of things, and also like love and how we love uh our parents and our children, and how complicated that gets, and no one in my family, including me, is perfect at loving their children in the way that you really want to, you know. But it's just yeah, there's a lot of feelings in this in this scene. Yeah, it's it made me think a lot about like my see if I can get through this without crying again. Uh it made me think a lot about like my paternal grandparents have both passed away, and I just remember their house having a lot of like newspaper clippings and all that stuff, and like when my grandma passed away in 2020, I just have been think I've been thinking about this since then, but I've been like, what where did all that stuff end up? Like, did my dad keep it? Did his siblings keep it? Like, I this zine made me really kind of wonder, you know, what happened to all of that stuff because I would love to see it. Like, my grandma had so many newspaper clippings of just different things that were like important to her, and it made me think about like my parents' stuff and kind of what they've been collecting their whole lives and kind of where that will end up someday, and like it made me think about my stuff and like all the things that I've been all the memories that I've been like physical memories that I've been collecting up until this point in my life, and like the wall, so the wall that I'm facing, the one that you can't see, is just covered in postcards and photo booth strips and just all of these like special tiny things because I love putting that stuff like on my wall and just looking at it all day. It feels like a like in The Simpsons when it's like do it for her, and it's like Maggie Simpson uh on Homer's billboard, like that's kind of what it feels like when I sit at this desk and work, it's like do it for all of these things that you love. Um yeah, and so it just made me think a lot about the the stuff that I have and the stuff that my parents have and the stuff that my grandparents had, and like what will become of it someday, which is a really heavy thing to think about at 9 a.m. But it was really nice to think about. And that's on me, you know. That's on me for choosing that specific time to think about all of this, but it was great. Yeah, I mean, it's yeah, I think grief is also something that it's such a universal human experience to go through, but it's also one of those things that people get so weird about, you know. Um, like, oh, I don't I don't want to see your grief, like, don't show it to me. Or there's a lot of these sort of like push it aside comments that you get if you are when you're grieving. I mean, you could, you know, be at a funeral for you know, the love of your life, and people would be like, they're in a better place. Like, don't talk about it. You know what I mean? Like, so there's a lot of I just I kind of think about it a lot, like these things and all of that, even though some of my big feelings around grief in general aren't in the zine. I think um, yeah, it's just it's it was this thing that I needed to make to process my grief, even though um it's mostly focusing on my paternal grandpa. It's also a little bit about my grandmother and my mother's parents, who I didn't really know. It's still kind of about and it's a little bit about my parents, it's a little bit about my sister, it's a little bit about, you know, yeah, ancestry and legacy and what's gonna be the thing that feels heavy to my daughter when I die. What thing is gonna, you know, is is she gonna have a stack of boxes in her basement that she doesn't know what to do with that makes her cry when she looks at it, you know? And I think that's kind of beautiful in a way and sad, but it's just a part of living a life and whatever I leave behind, like I I hope it's gonna be a great estate sale. That's all I can say is like I hope people have fun because I love a good estate sale. I hope they're going through my closet and they're going, oh my gosh, look at all this vintage, and they're buying up all my art supplies I never used, and I hope people are having a good time. That's that's what I hope. I have that thought so frequently when I'm like looking through all of my art crap and like yeah, whenever I acquire like an uh fun, new to me, like vintage trinket, I'm just like, oh, this is gonna kill at an estate sale someday. Which is like it feels morbid to think of to think of it in that way, but it's also like, no, I'm going through my life collecting things that spark something in me. And I plan to have them for a really long time, and I hope that someday someone is because I haven't gone to many estate sales, but I've really found really cool stuff with the ones that I have been to, and I'm just like, I want my stuff to be the cool stuff that someone finds someday. And to have it like continue on in the world, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's like even our zines, like we're putting them out into the world, and we don't really know what path they take. We don't really know a lot of the times like who's picking that up and what it might mean to them. At least that's the case for me, because I leave them all out, you know, random places around town, or we have a few little free zine shelves at a coffee shop, at a local bookstore. Um and it's just fun to think like I don't know where this thing is gonna go or who it's gonna connect with, but I hope it means something to somebody, and if not, they'll pass it on to something to somebody and maybe they'll connect with it. Yeah, like it will you you're putting it out in the world, and like where it ends up, it'll find the right home. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that a lot, and I did indeed start crying. Um well at I did um Madison Print and Resist. That was that my daughter is also a zinester. We both went and we tabled together, and um it was so fun. It was it was great to connect with people and just be like constantly trading. Um, but that was one thing that just really yeah, gave me that sense of like human connection, you know, where was this woman who came through and she picked up the zine and she was sort of just casually flipping through my zines, and when she picked up ephemera, she read a random page and instantly got teary-eyed, and she just went, wow, okay, I need to get this now. And it just yeah, it just makes me feel good that I can make somebody reflect on something or someone in their life that means enough to m to them or meant enough to them to get that reaction. Like that's that just makes me feel so good that I'm making them think about somebody they love, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Um, there was another zine I wanted to talk to you about, but I'm also now really interested in the fact that you're raising a zine star. Oh, yeah. Um, that's really cool. Do you want to talk about that and then I'll ask you about herbal medicine, or do you want to talk about herbal medicine and then talk about that? I'll talk about my my zenster kid. Cool. Um, yeah, so she's just awesome. She's like such a creative force, and she loves making things, all kinds of things. I mean, just she got into stop motion like completely on her own, started making her own stop motion videos. Um right now she's writing a short story inspired by her favorite uh book series. Like she just starts doing things on her own, and it's so cool. She also carves Lino and sells her own stamps too, or her prints. Um but she started making zines and they're really cool. And uh yeah, I'm just she's cool. She's so cool. She's like, yeah, this like creative force, and um yeah, I'm just proud that she's making zines and sharing them with people, and also inspiring some of her friends to give it a try, which is cool, you know. Um but yeah, she makes she's got a couple of zines about like her favorite cozy Switch games. Um, she's got some collage and poetry zines. Uh yeah. Her zines are awesome. How old is she? Gonna be 13 this year. Yeah. So it's like she kind of started, you know, early too. So she's like, you know, she's just a cool kid. She makes cool shit. And she's kind of the same way where she just wants to like share and inspire other people to make things, and yeah, like we just need more of that. So I'm proud. Hell yeah, that's awesome. I'm proud to like know her, you know, because I'm like, you're so yeah, she's just this creative force. That's amazing. Next generation of zine sters is already here. They're here. Um, okay, the other zine I wanted to talk to you about is Herbal Medicine. Um, I thought the zine was beautiful, like beautifully illustrated, and just so much information. Um I learned so much about different plants and what they can do for you, and it one thing I really appreciated about is you talk a lot about reciprocity, and so it's like it's not just what you can do or what the plants can do for you, and like, but it's also like what you can do to kind of give back to the plants, um, which I think maybe people who do dabble or like practice with herbalism like understand that already, but like myself as someone who doesn't, I was like, oh yeah, like you've gotta you can't just be like you know, ripping off leaves and taking stuff to use for your own gain. You have to like kind of nurture it back. So what was your pro all of that said, uh, what was your process for making this scene? Yeah, um, well, that's another one of my little passions in life. Uh I just wanted to make a a zine that was accessible, that I think would be a good kind of entry point if somebody was just starting to learn, or maybe wasn't planning to learn more about herbalism, but stumble across it in, you know, a little pre-zine library or whatever. Uh, because this is one that I do like to leave behind because I think this is information that we should all have access to. It is kind of geared to plants that grow in my local area, but all of these plants are easy to find and I think a lot of different places, uh, either growing wild or at a local um herb shop. Um I wanted to kind of cover, yeah. I just I think that herbalism is something that everybody can kind of get into. You don't have to know a hundred plants to call yourself an herbalist. I think if you have, if you build a relationship with the weeds that grow in your backyard, then you can be a folk herbalist. And it's also something that there shouldn't be any gatekeeping around this, because this is kind of knowledge that everybody, if you go back far enough in your lineage, no matter where you're from, there's some relationship to the plants and to plants as medicine. Um so I just wanted to make something that was accessible and still really inform like packed with information. Um, for being only 24 pages, I feel like I did a decent job with that. And I also wanted to show all the different ways that you can make medicine, if that's you know, a tea, which is what most people would be familiar with, or a tincture or infusions, you know, there's so many different ways to work with the plants. So yeah, I just wanted to be able to share something that I care a lot about and and make it easy, you know. Gathering this information over the years, you're pulling from so many different places, and not everyone's approach to it makes sense or resonates with with you as you're learning. So you kind of create like your own set of ethics, your own set of, you know, maybe tied in with your spiritual practice. For me, I think connecting with the plants is something that's not, they're not something that I extract and use. You know, that's very connected to how I see the world and my sort of developed over time sense of spiritual practice that's very earth-based and yeah, rooted in reciprocity. And so yeah, I think if you wanna if you're if you've been doing herbal medicine for a long time, or if you're kind of curious about it, you should hit me up and I'll send you one. I also thought it was really cool that the back page is uh for notes. So if you have notes on anything that you learned, or I guess like how to kind of transfer what you learned into your life, you can like make notes and refer back to it. Yeah, I kind of want it to be something that people use a lot and go back to a lot, you know. Um, I have my favorite herb books on the shelf that are really highlighted and dog eared and I wrote in, and um, I think if if this could be something that somebody, you know, throws in their backpack or you know, refers back to over and over again, and it gets kind of like stained and ripped up a little bit because it's their companion in learning. Like, that's cool. I hope maybe somebody, you know, this finds their way, this thing that I made finds its way into somebody's life in that way. That would be really cool. So yeah. Yeah, liked this scene a lot as well. Um I liked every zine you sent me, honestly. Like oh good! Yeah, I really I really enjoyed all of them. Um, so many fun minis. Um just like I really liked um sketches and studio scraps, which I'm assuming is exactly what it sounds like, and it's just things from kind of your different art practice mediums. Um it was very cool. Thanks. Yeah, that's exactly there's really not nothing else to say about it. It's just there's no words, there's no, it's just glued a bunch of random shit from my studio floor onto a piece of paper and folded it up and made copies. Yeah. And I mean scrap I sent just for you because I've seen seen your stuff in your newsletter, and I was like, oh, they're gonna love it. And I did, yeah. I I I feel like I've been talking about fiber art, fiber arts more on the podcast and how it kind of relates to zines, but I really liked scrap. Um I love scanning fabric too, like that's one of my favorite things to do for like a zine background or like a flyer background, and so I was like, Yeah, ooh, yeah, I love that. It's so fun because you're like, hmm, how's this gonna turn out? And then when you scan it, you're like, oh, it actually looks pretty cool. There's a lot of texture that it's picking up, and it's just exciting to see it in a different in a different way, you know? Yeah. Um, are you the answer probably yes, but are you working on anything currently? Or like what are you currently working on? Yeah. Um, well, the zine that I most recently finished was that Threat Detected. I think I maybe sent you that one. Yes. Um, so I'm trying to make more kind of political stuff right now, obviously, because everything sucks right now. So I'm trying to kind of churn out stuff, but it's hard when you're, you know, you feel really motivated and you want to put out information, but you want it to be accurate and you want it to be helpful. And um, I don't always feel like I'm the best person for that job, but I'm like, this is what zines are. Get over yourself, like get to work, you know. Um, so trying to do more political zines. Um, I'm I've been working on an anti-AI zine for what feels like forever, but it's overwhelming because there's so much information and it's rapidly changing, and um I just want to get it right and I want it to be in depth, and I want to be unwavering in my argument about it, but I don't want to be shamey, I want to be empathetic because I understand the pull to use something like this. Um, but I just yeah, I'm very much against it, and I I want to give people information that maybe would make them question engaging with it. Um so yeah, I don't know when that's gonna come out because it's just it's a lot. Right now I have a big giant sheet of paper with like maps, like linking little circles linking to other little circles with like notes and between it's just chaos right now. So I'm just trying to figure out like how do I even organize this thing? So hopefully, hopefully I'll get back to that and and get to work on it. It kind of gets pushed aside while I work on other things, and then I'll go back to it, and so it's just taking longer than than most. And then uh my daughter and I are going to be at Rochester Zine Fest in June. So that'll be fun. Minnesota, not New York, Midwest girls over here. Um, so yeah, that'll be fun because we only did our first fest last month, so it's been fun to just, you know, sell for her, she sold before at Farmers Markets, but for me that was my first time selling. Um so that was just fun because for years now I've just been giving away and doing zine trades, which is my favorite. I'm that's always gonna be my favorite thing about zines. Um but yeah, so that's kind of it for me right now. Just making, making lots of things, always making. Is there anything else uh zine-related you wanna chat about? Um just I love snail male traits, and people should reach out via my art website and ask for zine trades because I always say yes. And where can people find your art website? Yeah, it's Tiana Traffisart.bigcartel.com, which is pretty clunky, but it's a free website and I'm thrifty and cheap. So it's just my first if you just like search engine my first and last name, it will come up because I'm lucky enough to have a unique name, so I'm easy to find. But I'm not on social media, so that's the only place you can kind of find my stuff. So I'll include that link in the show notes um in case people don't want to search engine for whatever reason. Um, but I'll put it there as well. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, um, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been really fun. Um it's really, really fun to chat. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I can't wait to get your uh zines, your sewing zines in the mail. It's gonna make my day. Yay! And maybe change my life. I don't know. Fingers, finger that's a lot of pressure, but also fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. Um, yeah, Tiana, thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening. Um, this has been season eight of Long Arm Stapler, which is um kind of crazy to think about. Um, I was actually talking about this with my boyfriend slash editor the other day, and I was like, I've been doing this since 2017, um, like end of 2017, but that's like a long time, like I admittedly took a long break, but like that's a long time to be doing anything. Um and I'm really proud of that. So thank you everyone for listening. Um, this is fun to do, and I'm always looking for more people to chat with. Um so if you are interested in talking to me about your zines or your zine fest, um, or if you know anyone who you think might want to talk with with me about their zines or zine fest, um hit me up. There's a link in my uh link tree, which I'll also put in the show notes. Um and also thank you to my monthly Kofi podcast supporters. Um, it it really means a lot. It it adds up and it helps um subsidize the cost of production um and hosting. So if you've been enjoying the podcast, um, or if you found a new zine maker you like from the podcast, you can also you can support me for as little as a dollar a month, um, which in this economy unheard of. Um, but there's a link in the show notes um to my Kofi as well. Um thank you for listening. And again, Tiana, thank you um for being on the show and for being the final guest of season eight. Um yeah, everyone enjoy enjoy um whether that's your day or whatever. Uh thanks for listening. All right, bye.