NORTHAMPTON — Forbes Library will soon come alive with the magic of winter as it hosts the Zine and Diorama Festival on Feb. 8.
Organized by the local Zine Club, this much-anticipated event promises to be a celebration of zines, books and print-based art that highlights the creativity of regional artists. The festival, which has been in the making since the club’s inception in 2017, was initially delayed due to the pandemic, but it’s finally coming to fruition.
“Although the pandemic altered our course, it also gave the club pause to reflect on how best to use our time and energy to engage with the community. When we came back to meeting in person, late in 2023, we began to consider seasonally-themed spectacles the banner of our welcome,” explained Steven Stover, a participant in the Zine Club. “After two years of eerily mild winters in the valley, where grey rains, sopping slush, and sight-absorbing fog replaced the pristine snows and picturesque icicle-adorned houses expected of the iconic New England Winter, we decided that we would use the format of a zine fest to honor the season we so missed.”
The event will feature 20 artist vendors and 12 dioramas, and host Western Mass Electronics electronic music open-mic from noon to 3 p.m. in an immersive winter scene.
“The dioramas are soon to be unveiled. Their makers have been toiling for many weeks, plumbing the depths of their hearts for a visual language conducive to translating, directly to the subconscious of the viewer, sentiments from past lives evocative of the season,” noted Stover. “The artists in attendance will be zine makers from the valley and beyond. Zines are a form of small-run handmade or self-published book art.”
The diorama exhibit will remain on display through February and more details about specific vendors can be found on the library’s Instagram page. The festival is still accepting signups for electronic music composers. Anyone interested can learn more information on the library’s webpage.
Attendees can take home a frost-flower anthology of winter musings entitled, Winter Exquisite, a nod to the parlor game called Exquisite Corpse, as well as to the season the event is honoring.
“There is a conviviality in the rosy cheeks of people when they’ve been out in the cold, and it shows when they meet each other and converse,” said Stover. “When we began to conceive of how the library interior would look and sound, adorned in flashing squalls and peopled with the gossip of market commerce, we became enchanted by the idea that those who attended this event would feel that they had entered another world. We hope you will take that away with you. That, and many many zines.”
Although it has mysterious origins, according to Stover, the Zine Club meets monthly at the library where participants “commune with copy machines, devise clever ways of encrypting poems of praise to nonsense and work like Frankenstein to reanimate recycled magazine clippings.”
The free event will, however, offer opportunities for those attending to purchase book art to add to their collections. The festival will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Forbes Library is located at 20 West St. in Northampton.
