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printed 50 copies of a small zine back in february. 12 pages, mostly the torn paper series, one page of scribbled notes I almost cut because they made no sense out of context. cost me about $180 at the local copy shop, which felt stupid at the time. sold 41 of them at $14 each. meanwhile two of the actual paintings from the same series are still leaning against my studio wall, unsold since november. I think people wanted the story cheap enough to take home without having to commit to a wall. or maybe the notes page did it, still not sure. either way I'm now the person who sells zines, apparently, and my gallery contact thinks it's a gimmick. he's wrong but he's also the one who'd know I guess

The zine is 24 pages, two colours, riso, edition of 150. I said 45 euro to the curator because it felt like a nice round number and I wanted the show to happen. Then I did the maths on the actual printing: masters, the paper, the fact that I reprinted nine pages because the registration drifted, the hours folding and stapling. Somewhere between 7 and 8 euro an hour. Here is what I keep circling back to. In printmaking the price of the object and the price of the work have almost nothing to do with each other, and I don't know which one I'm supposed to be charging for. 45 euro is roughly what a print costs. It is nowhere near what a print costs. The edition is the whole point, the multiple, the fact that the same image exists 150 times, and the market reads that as "so it should be cheap." I made the thing more available and it made me worth less. There's a logic there and I hate it. I'm not asking what to charge. I know I underpriced it, that's not the interesting part. I'm asking whether anyone has actually solved this for multiples, or whether we all just quietly subsidise the idea.

i have a folder. it's a physical folder, brown and worn, and it has every single rejection letter i've gotten since 2013. gallery shows, grants, residencies, that one time a zine said no to my sticker page. i don't open it. i don't throw it away. it just sits on my shelf like a tiny museum of my own mediocrity. my therapist would have a field day if i had one lol. but also there's something weirdly useful about it? like proof i actually tried. nobody writes back when you don't apply. the folder only exists because i kept sending shit out. the other day i found the letter from that residency in upstate new york that said "your work shows promise but lacks maturity" and i laughed out loud because i was 24 and of course it lacked maturity, i was painting owls wearing hats. anyway. keeping the folder. it's my version of a photo album i guess

Third time this week my Riso has eaten a master and crumpled it into a little accordion. I know it's probably the paper moisture or the master tension or whatever, but I've cleaned the drum twice, adjusted the feed, and it still decides to destroy every tenth print like it's personal. The worst part is the sound. That high-pitched mechanical scream when it jams. My studio mate in the next room doesn't even ask anymore, she just hears the noise and goes "again?" through the wall. I know this machine is supposed to be this beautiful imperfect tool and the flaws are part of the charm. I don't want charm. I want fifty zines by Friday and this thing is testing my commitment to the multiple as a concept.

opened the kiln this morning and every single piece on the middle shelf had slumped. not cracked, not exploded, just... leaned. like they all decided to take a nap mid-fire. twelve hours of waiting for that. the worst part is two of them actually look better slumped. one cup basically turned into a little melted creature and i'm genuinely considering keeping it. the other three are just sad puddles and they're going in the wastage bin which has honestly become my favorite shelf anyway. think i loaded the middle shelf too low in the kiln again. i always do this. i write myself a note, tape it to the kiln, and then the next firing i'm like "this time will be different" and it is never different. i've got a stack of these little notes now. might glue them into a zine at this point. anyway if anyone has tips for actually checking kiln shelves without a pyrometer made of vibes let me know. or just tell me about your best catastrophic firing, make me feel less alone in the clay chaos. vale, back to the wheel.