As a part of Trinity’s Hispanic Heritage Month celebration and the Trinity Art Collective’s (TAC) “Zine Night” series, David Elizondo, class of ‘78 and ‘86, hosted a zine workshop on Sept. 19. Since his time at Trinity studying art, Elizondo has contributed to the San Antonio art community, with works ranging from large-scale paintings to one-page zines. 

During the two-hour session, Trinity students and staff worked to create “zines,” handmade photo collages, using magazines, postcards and other miscellaneous materials that TAC and the library provided. The theme that Elizondo chose for the session was “controlled chaos,” reflecting his personal artistic process.

“I approach zines like I approach any type of work that I do. I have an initial concept. It can be a general concept. But when I start working on it, I don’t think about [that concept],” Elizondo said. “I don’t plan as I go. In other words, I just react. I pin myself into a corner and try to get out of it.”

Elizondo said that he’s been creating zines since he was a student at Trinity. These early experiments with collage and photocopying predate the “digital ease” of today’s collages, which he said was contrary to the original purpose of zine-making.

“Zine artists can’t really live off it unless they make a business out of it, and nobody wants to make a business out of it,” Elizondo said. “We would do it for the sake of the art and the self-expression, but that was all before the internet. Now the internet takes care of everything.”

To Elizondo, the workshop served as a resistance to the “flattening” of zine-making. Participants assembled and improvised collages in a way that Elizondo said transforms and revives the practice.

“The people who are working right now are hands-on making zines, with their own controlled chaos, because of the workshop,” Elizondo said. “[Zines are] something that came and went. Like the phone landline, it was very useful, until it wasn’t.”

Participants at the workshop varied in their exposure to the zine-making process. Sierra Withers, archives associate at Elizabeth Huth Coates Library, said that she enjoyed applying her critical eye to an artistic project.

“For archives, you don’t do the research yourself. You get to read everything, and you get to say what it’s about,” Withers said. “When you get to create a zine like this, you get to put these things that you absorb into something. I think art does take research.”

Abby Wang, sophomore art major and TAC member, said she has loved attending the Friday “Zine Night” every other week. Usually, the event’s theme is a free-for-all, but Wang said that working around Elizondo’s “Controlled Chaos” theme was a welcomed artistic challenge.

“It was very interesting to get into the mind of another zine artist and … hear what he had to say about the medium,” Wang said. “My mind went straight to finding ways to make it chaotic, but then also put in bits of identifiable information. It’s a big ‘Where’s Waldo.’”

Wang, who also goes by “Bunny Girl” on the anonymous social media app Fizz, said that this persona inspired her zine project. She wanted the zine to articulate her reaction to the backlash she’s received for her Fizz comments and outfits on campus.

“It’s the outline of … the Bunny Girl, and it says ‘no one cares,’” Wang said. “It’s basically to say that everyone is trying to live their own life, and you shouldn’t care what people think about you, because the only opinion that matters to you is your own opinion.”

While Wang said this message is personal for her, it also broadly applies to the overall art of zine-making.

“Zines are a questionable art form. Some people even question whether it is really even art,” Wang said. “But to that, I say ‘no one cares,’ because you shouldn’t care what other people think. You should just do what makes you happy.”

As an art major, Wang said that sometimes art can feel like a chore. Through the zine workshop, she said that she was able to return to art as a creative outlet, not a grade.

“Zine-making has taught me to have fun. I do art for assignments. I know what it’s like to do things that you love, but not for a very fun purpose,” Wang said. “There are rules of painting and drawing, but with zines, there are no rules. You can make whatever you want, and it is still called a zine at the end of the day.”

The Trinity Art Collective hosts a zine-making workshop every other Friday.