What is A Lament? It's a unique-edition full-color flexagon zine housed in a Japanese portfolio. Digitally printed on Domestic Etching after a failed attempt at printing on cardstock, it uses collage, handwritten proclamations, and a Wizard-of-Oz color/b&w shift to explore the idea of how 'every other dimension is better than ours except for one.'
The portfolio, which includes a magnetic closure, is covered in black buckram with pastedowns featuring hand-watercoloring and pencil scrawls. The piece's zine-like composition and appearance of haphazard
construction contrast with its overbuilt case. I basically wanted it to look like a pile of trash inside a professional shell. Although not practical, it could be editioned, which
I might do in the future if there seems to be some unexpected surge of interest.
'How dining alone is a masculine act / and how Laura Riding said that "poet" is a lying word (it is a wall that closes & does not)'
'A weird, impenetrable jumble of morning glories & hedge bamboo. / Loss here is a desirable state.'
'A habitation let down from heaven on golden chains. / The sound of cicadas like a lemon being squeezed.'
A Lament was featured this last January as part of Peripheral Shifts, a UICB-focused group art show at Quad City Arts in Rock City, IL. I'm now trying to figure out how to settle its generic confusion—a non-editioned zine / an underwhelmingly crafted artist's book / a hexagonally-paneled comic / a poem interrupted by texture and color? And that ultimate question: how to make this something that's actually an accessible, readable thing here in this dimension, the one that's worst of all except one?
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