Vancouver’s annual Canzine Festival was held Nov. 2 at the Ukranian Hall in East Vancouver.
Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts, presents the CanZine West event, where independent writers and zines and comics creators gather to showcase their work and sell it to admirers of indie culture.
One of those was Beth Wagner, comic creator and illustrator. “I was the only child and wanted to entertain myself, so I started telling myself stories to keep myself company. And it goes from there. That’s what I do: I use it as a method of entertaining myself,” Wagner said.
She added that CanZine Festival is a great way to network with other people; to get to meet new people, exchange ideas. “It’s really great that way. There are a lot of like-minded people with the same sort of energy.”
Kevin Spenst writes and self-publishes short fiction, poems and journal zines. “This is my second year here and it is good for meeting interesting people,” he said.
Carina Piccioni does autobiographical comics and says that her work is self-reflection. She started drawing at university Emily Carr and continued at UBC while she was getting her teaching degree. “I always wanted to do this. This is the way to keep busy,” said Piccioni, who teaches full-time and draws during school breaks.
CanZine festival is more than just self-promotion. It is a way to show for the artists to show their unique way of reflecting on life, and an opportunity to explore creativity. “You meet lots of people. You may even sell something. Maybe,” said Piccioni.
Jackie Klobucar added, “It’s a good opportunity to show people what you are doing at home. You can put some of your stuff at the local bookshelves, but it’s nothing like being able to talk to people, to communicate to people what you are doing.”
One of the event’s sponsors is Langara College. Greg Blue, the manager of the Fine Arts program at Langara said, “When they came to us about the content of the festival we didn’t hesitate to sponsor it. CanZine is two or three years old, but we are fairly new to this event. Our programs are still new to graphic novels. We offer publishing illustrations program, also film and photography programs.”
