Preparing for Dallas Art Book Fair (Re-Upping my Dragon Gocco Zine)
Preparing for the zine festival or art book fair is half the fun. Before I started participating in the zine or art book fairs myself, I would watch Olivia from Pindot Press make vlogs about the experience and it would be so funny because now that I am actually experiencing it, it's so relatable. She would say something like -
“It’s Thursday now, the book fair is on Saturday. My friend and I are going to be up printing all night, go to our day jobs Friday, and then Friday night stay up all night cutting, binding, and laminating so we can show on Saturday.”
I’m sad because I really like her videos and she doesn’t really vlog anymore… Olivia if you see this… I MISS YOU!!
The time crunch is too real and too funny.
Luckily I am able to work ahead of time a little bit more this go around for the Dallas Art Book Fair, so I won’t be up all night long the night before the actual fair. Buying a Cricket has really helped me speed my process along, so it was honestly really worth the investment. It also allows me to make more interesting edges for this restock of my Dragon Gocco Zine.
I also understand the printing process a lot better now, so my learning curve is nowhere near as steep as it was. I can just get in the assembly line zone, and enjoy the making process. The process that I use for this Zine in particular is a process called Gocco Printing, which is the Japanese word for make believe play - which I just love. Gocco Printing is a mini screen printer that’s great for making mini zines because of the B6 screen size. It DOES have some downsides, however. For example, the screens are mainly one-time use, so it’s best to do all your printing at once. It also requires single-burn bulbs, which are pretty toxic (as in they burn hella fumes) and kind of wasteful. Finally, the brand RISO no longer makes Gocco products so brand-specific screens, inks, and bulbs are hard to find and expensive. So don’t go trying to buy them all up because I need those lol. They are perfect for making tiny little zines, though and I love this process way more than the 1 page fold method.
I love getting to the point with stuff where you can do it as 2nd nature. But getting to that point is very stressful and takes a lot of perseverance with anything. People always say “omg art is so relaxing. Lol no its fucking not. It’s relaxing once you can get into the flow state, but that comes with lots of troubleshooting, challenging yourself, and learning new things FIRST!!!
