Party Tarty
Shortpants would like you to meet Clip Tart:
Clip Tart is one of the best-constructed, best-produced, best-conceived zines that we've seen in a long time. Zinester Susan Boren contacted us after one of the Ouija comics made it into Best Zine Ever; she suggested a trade, we happily agreed.
Clip Tart isn't a perzine. It's not a punk zine. It's not minicomics. It's collage art at its finest, carried to its extreme, a marriage of image and text, a sort of found-materials sculpture in print format. Each issue has a generalized theme around which Boren builds layers of quotes, excerpts, essays, articles, short stories and poetry, as well as photo collages, pen and ink drawings, scans from other books, magazine and newspaper photos. This latest issue was all about magic.
What's especially impressive about Clip Tart is how seamlessly Boren weaves everything together; in the end, the zine has a startling potency that seems so much more than just the sum of its parts. It's as if she's managed to take everything that the human race has ever produced on the subject of magic and distilled out all of the extraneous materials, then assembled all of the drops of magic-concentrate in one convenient easy-to-use energy drink formula.
Boren's photo collages are well-composed and provocative. Her selection of imagery and context, like her selection of text excerpts, betrays a sharp judicious eye as well as an insight and sense of mischief that are hard to come by these days in any medium. No source appears off limits; there are clips from philosophy and high literature as well as quotes mined from pop culture, from movies and television shows and rock lyrics.
Boren's only made a handful of these so far (this latest is #4) but her stellar work has already attracted a community of interested (and interesting) readers, and she publishes most if not all of their letters. Near as I can tell, the only way to get an issue is from Susan herself, by sending her a few bucks or a decent trade. You want to get in on this! Email Susan for a copy at cliptart at gmail dot com.
Clip Tart is one of the best-constructed, best-produced, best-conceived zines that we've seen in a long time. Zinester Susan Boren contacted us after one of the Ouija comics made it into Best Zine Ever; she suggested a trade, we happily agreed.
Clip Tart isn't a perzine. It's not a punk zine. It's not minicomics. It's collage art at its finest, carried to its extreme, a marriage of image and text, a sort of found-materials sculpture in print format. Each issue has a generalized theme around which Boren builds layers of quotes, excerpts, essays, articles, short stories and poetry, as well as photo collages, pen and ink drawings, scans from other books, magazine and newspaper photos. This latest issue was all about magic.
What's especially impressive about Clip Tart is how seamlessly Boren weaves everything together; in the end, the zine has a startling potency that seems so much more than just the sum of its parts. It's as if she's managed to take everything that the human race has ever produced on the subject of magic and distilled out all of the extraneous materials, then assembled all of the drops of magic-concentrate in one convenient easy-to-use energy drink formula.
Boren's photo collages are well-composed and provocative. Her selection of imagery and context, like her selection of text excerpts, betrays a sharp judicious eye as well as an insight and sense of mischief that are hard to come by these days in any medium. No source appears off limits; there are clips from philosophy and high literature as well as quotes mined from pop culture, from movies and television shows and rock lyrics.
Boren's only made a handful of these so far (this latest is #4) but her stellar work has already attracted a community of interested (and interesting) readers, and she publishes most if not all of their letters. Near as I can tell, the only way to get an issue is from Susan herself, by sending her a few bucks or a decent trade. You want to get in on this! Email Susan for a copy at cliptart at gmail dot com.
