Favourite Recipe Zines

I would like to say I have been taking the time to explore recipes and cooking a lot during this pandemic, but it would be mostly wishful thinking. I have cooked more meals than previous years but I mostly cooked the same favourites over and over. My sister-in-law is more creative and exploratory in the kitchen. Over the years she has introduced me to most of my favourite recipes. 

Because they come from multiple sources, I access these recipes online through blogs and websites. I have not found cooking from recipes online particularly fluid. There is lots of unlocking of the phone or iPad, having to touch the screen with dirty fingers and oh so much scrolling. For fun, I decided to make some 1 page zines of my favourite recipes, as a creative outlet and to serve a very real personal need (not spilling food on my expensive phone).

To test the idea I created one from a childhood recipe: Dumbfunyuns. A cross between a tea biscuit and a cinnamon bun, this recipe comes together quickly, with ingredients often on hand and as such was a boon companion during late night study sessions in university or last minute weekend brunches. The recipe was written in the margin of my mom’s copy of the Joy of Cooking and came from my aunt’s Grandma Rose. She was Scottish and would cook tea biscuits in her wood stove. Extra dough would always be swirled with cinnamon and sugar before baking. The origin of the name is more of a mystery, but I don’t argue with something do delicious.

This zine design is the simplest zine to make involving one piece of paper (8.5”x11”), some folding and a single cut with scissors. I folded a blank piece of paper into the zine and then drew the pages. 

This project started with a simple idea, but quickly became complicated as my mind swirled with ideas of drawings, patterns, backgrounds and the ever-present perfectionism that is the enemy of finishing any project. Things can remain unfinished because I don’t have the skill or the time to finish them, or more often because I fear not having the skill or time to finish them. The trick to most creative pursuits is to soldier through that fear and be okay with where you are now. Some projects are worthy of multiple revisions and 110% creativity, and others get a lesser percentage, and that’s okay. Finished is always better than left on the shelf for a decade cluttering both physical and mental space.

So, after a few drafts and talking myself down from making this small simple zine a masterwork requiring hours of fine detail work, I had a design I was happy with. I traced it on a light table to get rid of mistakes and scanned it into my computer. The result is an easy to follow recipe that won’t disappear if inactive for 10 seconds, and which can simply be reprinted if doused in milk. 

Head over to my shop to download your FREE zine to print and fold yourself, or roll with the idea and make your own! I have a tutorial on Instagram on how make the zine from your printout, or google “how to fold a single page zine” for a step by step.

Book Review: How to Write About Contemporary Art by Gilda Williams

Writing or talking about myself and my art is definitely one of the challenges of being an artist. I grew up being slightly uncomfortable with praise, afraid of being self-centred or drawing too much attention to myself and my accomplishments. Oh the irony that I have chosen a career where sharing of myself through my art and talking about it is a necessity. But perhaps it isn’t irony at all. I believe we call things into our lives that help us grow the most. To lead the adventurous live I dreamed of, I have had to tackle my shyness, and nothing has helped as much as the networking, talking and teaching involved in my art practice.

I sat down at the beginning of 2021 to imagine how to structure my year and what I wanted to accomplish. Another mixed blessing of being self-employed is the ability and the need to set your own schedule. I decided I needed to up my communication and marketing, finally following through with a blog and monthly newsletter. Having made that decision I was stuck on how to start.  

When unsure about how to start on a project, my first impulse is to buy a book on it. My family jokes that I use books as insulation in my house as they line many a wall in my house. I have bought a lot of books about writing in an attempt to figure out how to tell my story. A lot were entertaining and some more and less useful. On Writing by Stephen King was a great read and a window into his process, but as writing isn’t my primary art form, I found the suggestions took too much time away from my visual art practice.

I can’t remember where I came across the book HOW TO WRITE ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART by Gilda Williams. Sometimes I buy a book and it sits on the shelf for a while before I have the desire or need to pick it up. So when I was contemplating my goals for the new year and one of them was writing a blog and figuring out how to tell my story, this book finally had its turn to see the light. Even though not every section applied to my current needs/situation, I read it cover to cover as I found the subject engaging, simple and direct. It is a HOW TO, so the advice is practical and specific, but it also communicates that there is more than one way to achieve the desired end goal. 

Critics, journalists, academics, art gallery employees, and yes, artists can all find useful information in its pages. A short chapter on writing artist’s statements was probably the most helpful information on the subject I have read to date. It is a beginners guide, but offers enough good examples and an extended bibliography and recommended readings that it can be helpful for many levels. 

Williams makes a general distinction between Explaining vs. Evaluating texts. When and how to insert on opinion, and when to have a thesis/idea and how to back them up. She generally frowns on excessive use of “art speak”, an overly obtuse use of big words used to lend and air of mystery and importance. I also appreciated the attention to and distinction between many different writing formats from academic essays and journal articles to artist statements. 

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART is a useful manual and reference book for anyone that wants to write more proficiently about art, whether it is their own or someone else’s. It can also help with the appreciation and evaluation of other art writing. I hope to put some of the ideas and suggestions into practice in the coming year as I follow through with my intention to write and share more.