Art, projects, living creatively, and an immeasurable number of staples
Celebrating two years of zines!!
One and all,
This is technically an issue preview post, wherein I will show you a little peek of the March and April print editions of Treehouse.
HOWEVER, while I was getting ready for this missive, it occurred to me that, with the completion of the March issue, we’re officially at two years of Treehouse zines. That’s alotta zines!
I want to give big, gushy, sweaty, dumb-smile, tearful THANK YOUS to everyone who has supported my effort of printing things on paper. It means a lot to me to be able to do this and it means even more that you are all here, participating, reading, maybe even collecting them. I said it would be tearful!
To celebrate two years of zines, I’m doing something I’ve never done before (…because my overhead is junk and the Substack backend is confusing). I’m going to split the cost of a paid subscription in two (get it?) for two weeks—also known as a honking 50% discount.
If you’ve been zine-curious, but cost-jumpy, here’s a good opportunity to come aboard and see what the fuss is about. Here’s where you go to claim the special discount!!
For those of you who have been here for two years, two weeks, two minutes: Thank you, thank you, thank you! Special honorable mention and shouts of gratitude to Risolve Studio, Lucky Risograph, and my girl Amanda at the Rockland Staples.
Now, let’s look at some zines…
March 2025
This month’s cover is from Midcoast artist Sophie Cangelosi. Last year, Sophie did the May cover and while we were sifting through options, this one appeared. It wasn’t right for a summer cover, so we squirreled it away until now. Well “March.” I just love it and the color separations for riso printing are just really fun.
Next we have an idea inspired by Joshua McFadden’s Six Seasons cookbook. It was there that I was first introduced to the idea of the “hunger gap,” which, when you’re eating seasonally, is this stretch once you’ve used up your winter storage veg (used up, or fed up?) and the spring stuff hasn’t come in yet. It occurred to me that windowsill microgreens could really rise to that moment.
Then, we have a project that was tricky to figure out, but once it was figured is really simple and I think came out so well: a folded paper lantern. I made this one from posterboard (from Staples, my favorite store), but you could really use just about anything with even a little bit of heft.
April 2025
April’s cover comes from the National Gallery archives and is a gorgeous landscape design drawing from the 1930s in graphite and gouache. Very fun to do these color separations as well!
Next, we have some really lovely photos of the basket-making process from Maine-and-Brooklyn’s own Underwater Weaving. I was lucky enough to take a workshop with founder Erin Pollard and her mother here in Maine at the Post Supply. I learned I am not a basket weaver and that I really admire those that are—and the work they do. If you are interested in the ways of the basket (recommend trying at least once!), you should definitely sign up for one of the many Underwater Weaving workshops this summer. If you’re farther afield than New York and New England, you can go ahead and order one of their kits (with all the instructions and necessary guidance) straight to your house. AND, if you’re already hooked on baskets, you can sign up for their basket club, which also includes little partnerships and extras throughout. And, AND, AND!! Erin has a basket Substack, for the real heads:
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Then, since it’s was April and we’ve got baskets, I thought we should broach the topic of eggs. Still holding firm at prices that are irritating to behold, eggs are not something we’re jumping to waste and How to Easter Egg was a real issue this year. My thought was to get back into the yolk-blowing practice—use the egg insides, paint the outside, and then save them for decades. Proving it is possible to do eggsactly that (sorry but): My own family. In this little photo essay, I show off some of our own decades-old eggs, still holding strong!
Them’s the zines! Keep an eye on your mailbox because they’ll be winging their way your way any moment now.
And don’t sleep on that 50%—what a wild and impulsive thing I just decided to do! Take advantage of my exuberance!
