The Zine

"People want to read something and hold it in their hands."

by Lauren F. Friedman

[ classes/workshops ]

Gregory Pizzoli wants to be clear: "Zine isn't a derogatory term." It's not a magazine's ugly stepsister or a book's malnourished kid brother, but rather, "zines have a feeling of something that's been produced by hand."

Beyond that, they're difficult to define. Pizzoli, who will be teaching UArts' first course on zine-making, explains that "the content can be anything: a recipe book, a bike map, a list of the people that have been murdered in Philly so far this year."

Creating a zine — even if it is just a map of bike-friendly streets — also isn't easy. "There are all sorts of steps before you can make something worth stapling together," says Pizzoli. A successful zinester needs to develop a diverse skill set, and several Space 1026-ers will visit as guest presenters to round out Pizzoli's expertise. The hands-on, interdisciplinary class will teach students to write content (there will be exercises almost every day), illustrate, fold paper correctly (who knew there was a wrong way?) and sew bindings.

Pizzoli admits that all of this painstaking labor leads to a question that wasn't so relevant 10 years ago: "Why go to the trouble of making a zine when, for free, you can create a blog and have your ideas out there for more people than would ever see your zine?"

Sassy's Zine of the Month Club may be long gone (along with the magazine), but Philly artist Mark Price kicked off his Zine of the Month Club just last year — blogs and MySpace be damned — and Pizzoli argues that well-made zines still have a place.

"People crave that tangible object," he says, hopefully. "People want to read something and hold it in their hands."

Every Thu., June 4-Aug. 6, 6-9 p.m., $470-$620, University of the Arts, 320 S. Broad St., 215-717-6095, uarts.edu.