Portland is a paper-based town, maybe it's all the trees? We once had a huge paper-making factory in Oregon City marooned on a rock in the middle of the falls. There is still one in Washougal but no one likes the smell today.
Portland embraced the zine zeitgeist, DIY and open source, in the 1980s and 1990s. They were distributed from niches in book stores and music stores. They were passed by hand, friend to friend. The 1998 IPRC helped makers, rebirthed antique printing, and collected a zine library. Reading Frenzy was a zine Mecca.
As a result, zines never died in Portland. One of their continuous reanimators is the Portland Zine Symposium, since 2001. It is this weekend at PSU. The format is tables of zines with the actual maker. There is a different mix of zine creators each day.
Outlet PDX is a shop-gallery preserving a new antique printer, the mighty Risograph from Japan. It is an all in one master maker and offset printer with ink cartridges of many colors. Like multi-color woodblock printing, paper can be sent through with different image layers of different color. Outlet is helmed by illustrator Kate Bingaman-Burt. Saturday Outlet hosts a post Symposium meetup in their studio.
Pre-pandemic, both were creative community hive nodes, so check them now to see what's up. Many Portland art events are mask-y, so bring one.
Portland Zine Symposium https://www.portlandzinesymposium.org/ at Portland State University Smith Ballroom 1825 SW Broadway Saturday and Sunday 11AM-5 Free
Zine social at Outlet https://www.outletpdx.com/ 2500 NE Sandy Blvd E Saturday, September 17th from 6PM-9 Free, Registration Required https://www.eventbrite.com/e/zine-social-pzs-2022-afterparty-tickets-418382351877.
