Zine Library Highlight
Like the blooming gardens out front of the Owens, our Teeny Tiny Zine Library is also always growing.
Taking inspiration from lifecycles of plants and the botanical works in the current exhibition Endless Return, these tiny (but mighty) publications allow us to connect with nature, bouquets, seedlings, indoor and outdoor plant friends.
Madeleine Leonne
2021
In A Beginner’s Guide to Comfort Magic: 2 (Plant Magic), cartoonist and “amateur comfort witch” Madeleine Leonne shares an introduction to “Plant Magic”. Accompanied by illustrations of beginner friendly herbs and succulents, Madeleine explains how caring for these plants can be used to create comforting experiences, calm anxiety, and help purify the air around you.
Laura Watson
2016
Hints of green peak through the illustrations of house plants found throughout Laura Watson’s Spell Book for an Attic Gardener. Filled with poetic spells for growth, rooting, resurrections, wealth, salvation and more, Watson’s writing bring magic to everyday moments, if you choose to look for them.
Manny Travers
2022
For the indoor gardener, All of the Plant Friends in my Apartment by Manny Travers documents just what the title describes, the long and the short, the tall and the small. String of Hearts and Pothos vines dangle from the tops of the pages to the bottom, a Variegated rubber plant grows from a ceramic scull, Pepromia and Golden Child Ivy grow widely in all directions, and a small Pepermia Hope begins its first tendril on the green pages.
Cathleen and Connor Stechschulte
2012
Mother/Nature is a collaborative book between Connor Stechschulte and their mother, Cathleen Stechschulte. Made up of drawings of plants, trees, flowers, and leaves, the right-hand pages by Cathleen are paired with left-hand pages by Connor. Through close observation of plants found both indoors and outdoors, these drawings capture the varied forms and textures found across several species.
Tia Blassingame
2021
After none of her seedlings flourished in 2020, Tia Blassingame made Darkness Aids in Germination. A meditation on loss, resilience, and growth, this zine, made for the Quarantine Public Library, offers words of advice for self and seedlings after the unprecedented year 2020 turned out to be.
Nic Wilson
2019
A collection of short essays, Nic Wilson’s Still Life with Dying Flowers explores the limits of longing, grief, and looking. Part historic, part poetic, the essays explore the intertwined histories of flowers as symbols of both love and mourning, fragile beauty, and canvases for human manipulation and control.
Read these zines, and spend more time with a selection from the Owens Teeny Tiny Zine Library. Currently on view in the lobby.
