Last week we had the total pleasure of hosting two friends from Australia, Vanessa and Simon. Vanessa Berry is a writer and artist from Sydney who Katie met through zine-making, years ago now. All this time they’ve been pen-pals, trading letters and zines through the mail and collaborating on a few projects, too. This was the first time they met in person, and they got along famously, as you can see.
Katie and Vanessa looking witchy on the morning of EastFalls Fest
We all did a creative project together as well, making this visit something of a writing residency. Vanessa and Katie took a long walk one afternoon, letting their conversation wander. Afterward they chose four topics they’d covered—blue sky, aunts, nests, and falling leaves—and wrote short meditations on them. Then we made a recording of K & V reading their pieces and right away began cutting the recordings onto vinyl. It was so gratifying to conceive of and completely execute this project over the course of Vanessa and Simon’s visit; the resulting records (and accompanying zines) stand on their own as objects of literary interest, and they also serve a kind of artifact of this brief moment in time. We feel lucky to have had the chance to do this.
The record and zine, which is called “Hour of Blue Sky,” will debut at the Philly Zine Fest next week on Saturday, November 9th. Please consider stopping by to check out this popular event, which has grown even larger in recent years. There will be lots of interesting work to check out.
Vanessa, Katie, and Joe cutting the records and making sleeves for them