Pikes Peak Zine Festival celebrates artistic freedom at Berger Hall

Berger Hall came alive with colors and creativity as it showcased the talents of artists from Colorado and beyond at the annual Pikes Peak Zine Festival on Oct. 5. 

The three-hour festival featured 43 table exhibitions that highlighted work that was for sale, for free or just for display. Along with zines, artists offered a variety of other work, such as stickers, earrings, figurines and other crafts.  

A couple of tables also traded zines rather than sell them. A piece of mint gum swapped for a zine from a miniseries called “Books on my shelf that I have not read” by Anna Feri, which gave short summaries on books at Feri’s house.   

The festival’s artists reflected the joyful and creative spirit of zines through various styles, while also using them to illustrate more serious ideas and concepts. Some artists used their zines as a method of activism, such as putting them in little free libraries as political education in different neighborhoods.  

Denver-based artist Giselle Cummings has been making zines since high school. She has attended the festival for the past couple of years, but this was her first time tabling and selling her pieces, although she offered some for free. Her zines ranged from serious to silly, including some that focus on “[supporting] people through grief” and one that she wrote from the perspective of her dog “hanging around the house … doing whatever he does.”  

Zines appeal to Cummings because of how “accessible” she finds them to make. “You really just need like a pen and paper, and you can make a zine about anything, and I think that’s kind of the magic of zines,” she said.  

Cummings at her booth next to fellow artist Bell Hoss. Photo by Ellie Myers.

This year’s festival was organized by professional artist Kels Choo, who had a table at the event, former UCCS librarian Jennifer Eltringham and Kraemer Family Library Outreach and Instruction Librarian Liz Brown. Brown said that this is the first time UCCS has hosted the festival, and her table featured work from the library zine collection.  

Choo said that the festival began in 2019 after they were approached by Eltringham at a convention. “She came to my table … and then I saw her again, and she was like, ‘hey! Would you want to start a zine fest?’” Choo said.  

The two of them saw a need for a larger zine event in the Pikes Peak region, and, after an exciting start, they had to conduct the 2020 and 2021 festivals virtually because of the pandemic. Choo credited Eltringham’s connections as a librarian around town with helping the festival begin.  

According to Choo, some artists at the event are based in Kansas City. She added that they used to have a table for national and international mailed-in zines, but it got to be too much effort, so this year they did not include that table.  

“It’s all about kind of just building community in analog ways,” Choo said.  

According to Brown, the first use of the word “zine,” from “magazine,” was recorded in 1946, but some historians added earlier pieces to the definition, including self-published pieces during the Harlem Renaissance. One of the first zines was called “Comet,” which Brown described as a “sci-fi fan zine.”  

Brown added that during the ‘60s and ‘70s, people in the punk community and queer spaces were drawn to the freeing nature of the art form and started to categorize their work more widely as zines. Zine culture “really [started] to flourish in the ‘80s or the ‘90s,” and zine artists started calling themselves “zinesters,” according to Choo.  

“Basically, they were a way for communities to communicate … or share work or information before the internet was popularized,” Choo said.  

Zines are open-ended in terms of appearance. Many of the zines at the event resembled paper-bound books ranging in size from an inch to a foot, although artists at different tables played with the form and material by using scraps of cloth sewn together or with origami fortune catchers. Some were hand-bound, and some were copied.  

According to Choo, zines are defined by being self-published, typically to a small circulation of readers, and the style emphasizes an analog rather than digital method of creation. At the same time, none of these are formal requirements for a piece to be considered a “zine.” 

“I think that’s part of the beauty of the zine is that it’s pretty open-ended,” Choo said in agreeance with many of the artists at the festival. “In terms of form and content, it can be really anything, which is the fun part.” 

Pikes Peak Zine Festival. Photo by Ellie Myers.