As the school year draws to a close, Whitman students and faculty say farewell to Catherine Gould Chism Professor of Music Dr. Susan Pickett, who will be retiring at the end of this semester. Pickett, who has taught at Whitman for thirty-seven years, has been a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend to many in the Whitman Music Department.Samarah Uribe

On Wednesday, May 3, a concert entitled “Friends of Susan Pickett” was held in her honor to celebrate her work and retirement from teaching. Organized by Whitman music faculty, Professors Amy Dodds and Jackie Wood, the recital featured some of Pickett’s favorite pieces, works by composers that she has researched, and pieces composed and dedicated to her.

Friends, students, and colleagues of Pickett filled Chism Recital Hall the night of the concert. Music ranged from upbeat jazz to classical pieces. Each piece was related to Pickett in some way, making for a meaningful spread of music. Music instructor and Pickett’s colleague Kristin Vining composed a baseball-themed operetta—baseball is Pickett’s favorite sport—performed by various Whitman faculty and people who knew her with enthusiasm and playful choreography. Pickett’s last violin student, Whitman graduate Anna Burgess Maberry ’17, flew back from studying at Indiana University to perform J.S. Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor, a piece Pickett had played for one of her graduate school auditions. Various other guests who have collaborated with Pickett in the past, as well as current Whitman Music Department faculty, performed as well.Samarah Uribe

The evening, which started with an introduction from Professor of Music John David Earnest, along with a reading of a commemoratory note from President Kathy Murray, ended with much applause and a standing ovation for Pickett.

Pickett, a violinist and musicologist, has accomplished much during her career. Her long list of accomplishments includes—but does not end with—textbooks she has written, forty editions of woman-composed music published by her, CD releases, serving as concertmaster of the Walla Walla Symphony from 1987-2006, and numerous honors awarded to her. An accomplished violinist, she now has been teaching music theory and her Women as Composers course, which she developed herself.

Dodds, who is a close colleague and friend of Pickett, studied violin with Pickett as an undergraduate and still considers her a mentor.

“She really has inspired several generations of violin and viola students like myself—but also quite a few of her colleagues,” Dodds said. “She had a long history with several others who were working here when I first came to Whitman, but since then she’s been the one of that group who stayed the longest, and has mentored many new faculty. This, her impact not only is felt among her own violin, viola, theory and music history students, but also is prominent among the next generation of teachers in the studio and the classroom.”

Pickett has served as an effective and inspiring teacher over the years, always striving to reach individual students in the classroom.Samarah Uribe

“Over the thirty-seven years, I have learned more and more about different learning styles and being able to tell more and more quickly what learning style might suit a student the best,” Pickett said. “This especially applies to music theory, which has quite a mathematical basis to it, and some students come in with a terrific fear of math and therefore a terrific fear of theory, so I virtually always on the first day of Theory 1 ask how many students have a fear of theory, and at least half the hands go up, and I said, ‘well it’s my job to turn you into a theory geek.’ And I think I’ve reached a number of students in a very positive way by doing that, by honing in on different learning styles.”

Along with teaching, Pickett has contributed a lot to the wider music world through her research of women composers, and has unearthed the music of many of these women. Her search for these composers began simply as a desire to look for new music to play. She came across Walla Walla-born composer Marion Bauer’s name in a dictionary of American composers in Penrose Library and was instantly intrigued; Pickett later went on to publish a book about Bauer. Following that, she went on to research more women composers.

“After I started my research about Marion, I started looking for other woman composers, and I thought I was sticking my toe into this little puddle of water, which is an ocean of material,” Pickett said. “I know now there have been over six thousand women composers throughout Western music history, few of whom have ever been talked about. So thus began my research, and there have been some moments of feeling terrific accomplishment in that. One was publishing the book about Bauer. The other was discovering the music of a nineteenth century French composer named Louise Farrenc who wrote some chamber music that I consider the equal in mastery to that of her contemporary Franz Schubert.”
Samarah Uribe

Pickett has indeed made great strides in bringing the names of forgotten women composers to light. At Whitman, she pioneered the Woman as Composers course, sparking students’ interest in women composers. One such student is Robby Boyer ’18, whose senior thesis focused on the work of composer Emilie Mayer. Pickett served as Boyer’s thesis advisor, and he went on to give a recital and lecture presenting Mayer’s work. Boyer, who has also taken several of Pickett’s classes, spoke highly of her.

“She’s this really interesting mix of being extremely friendly and welcoming but also a really imposing legend,” Boyer said. “There’s also the facet of her having been this amazing violinist…but at the same time she feels completely approachable; she doesn’t come across as intimidating in any way, just inspiring.”

While Pickett is retiring, her work does not stop there. She is currently working on a biography of retired composer in residence of the Seattle Symphony, Samuel Jones, and is set to continue working on that. As for her teaching, although she is retiring from it, she has found her time at Whitman to be rewarding.

“It has been a great privilege to teach at Whitman,” Pickett said.

For many at Whitman, and those who know her outside of Whitman, it has been a great privilege to know and learn from her.

Students at Whitman and Walla Walla High School (Wa-Hi) shed light on immigrant experiences and seeks to raise awareness surrounding over-simplified misconceptions about immigrants through a joint art installation to be set up on both Whitman’s campus and at the high school in early May. Coordinated by Whitman’s Borders as Methods club (BAM) interns, Kimberly Moreno ’21 and Wa-Hi senior Pamela Lozano, the installation will take the form of a wall upon which artwork submitted by students addressing immigration topics will be attached.

Moreno explained the intent behind the art installation.

Carson Jones
Art and posters part of an art installation by BAM (Borders As Method) to be displayed on campus

“We’re really pushing for reclaiming immigrant narratives,” Moreno said. “We feel like there’s been a lot of negative discourse surrounding that building up. It’s been around forever, but especially now it’s been increasing and getting more criminalizing, so we want to offer a space for students and faculty members to come and reclaim it.”

The idea for the art installation came from a similar installation in New York, and Moreno and Lozano saw it as a good opportunity to contribute to the discourse surrounding immigration in the Walla Walla area. Examples of art to be displayed as part of the installation include paintings by two DACA recipients on crossing from Mexico into the U.S., and posters made during a poster-making session held by Whitman’s Multi-Ethnic Center for Cultural Affairs (MECCA).

Lozano described how art could be an effective way of reclaiming immigrant narratives.

“For some people, it might be easier for them to express how they feel through a piece of writing or a drawing or something, so we wanted it to be accessible to everyone, and I think through the art, it helps express your feelings in a way,” Lozano said.

In addition to the art displayed on the installation, the wall the artwork will be attached to also plays a significant role and potential conversation piece in its recalling barriers to immigrants who seek to enter the United States. Mayrangela Cervantes ’20, the treasurer of BAM, shared her thoughts on this.

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Carson Jones

Art and posters part of an art installation by BAM (Borders As Method) to be displayed on campus

“I see this [wall] is more of an impact thing because the purpose of the exhibit is not just to have art on it, but also the exhibit in and of itself,” Cervantes said. “Because it’s going to be on a wall, its purpose is to be somewhat inconvenient… So it’s all about impact, at least for me in terms of visually being impactful with the art, but also just physically in its existence being about impacting and preventing movement for certain people as they try to walk across campus where the wall is.”

Additionally, the installation is a way to connect Whitman to the high school and to Walla Walla in general. As BAM interns, Moreno and Lozano serve as liaisons between the Whitman and Walla Walla communities. The installation, being in two parts installed at Whitman and Wa-Hi, can therefore bridge gaps and show the two communities’ support for one another.

Through connecting Whitman with the wider Walla Walla community, the installation can also foster awareness and understanding about immigrant experiences in the area. Cervantes spoke to this aspect.

“Walla Walla is a significantly populated by Latinx people, and being in Whitman, in this white space and within the Whitman bubble, you don’t realize that there are people outside of this community whose lives are very much in danger in a daily basis,” Cervantes said. “So the installation is also very much a sort of shedding light on this community that being in Whitman we don’t associate with at all if ever… These people are here, we are surrounded by them, by their stories, and just because we don’t see them on campus doesn’t mean that they aren’t existing and their lives aren’t very much in danger, because ICE is active in Walla Walla–we just don’t hear about it.”

The BAM interns hope the installation will not only inform people, but that it will also show support for immigrants. It gives students a chance to share their experiences, but also lets them know they’re not alone.

“We want people to learn, and for those who already have a lot of knowledge on immigration, we want them to feel like they have a space here at Whitman, that they are supported and that they’re not alone,” Lozano said. “And at Wa-Hi and overall in Walla Walla, we just want people to know that we are providing, we are listening to them, so one of the biggest things we want to get out of this is just being able to provide support.”

VWRS: Whitman Reading: Thursday, May 3 at 7 p.m. in Kimball Theatre, Whitman students from the advanced creative writing classes will read selections from their poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

Spring Awakening: Running from May 3-6 and May 17-19 in Harper Joy Theatre, Whitman students will perform in “Spring Awakening,” an award-winning rock musical exploring teenage sexuality and morality, as well as initiation into adulthood. Tickets can be reserved online, in the box office and at the door.

Fruits of Your Labor: Friday, May 4 at 5 p.m. in the basement of Reid, the Mixed Race Club will present an open mic with special guest comedian Nathan Brannon. Acts include music and comedy, and food will be provided.

Whitsquatch: Saturday, May 5 from 4-10 p.m. on Reid Side Lawn, there will be a release party for Whitman’s annual art and literary magazine “blue moon.” Food and live music will be provided.

Mozart’s Requiem Mass: Friday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Cordiner Hall, the Whitman Orchestra and the Whitman Chorale will perform Mozart’s famous Requiem.

East Asian Food Festival: Saturday, April 28 from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Glover-Alston Center, the East Asian Cooking Club will provide an opportunity to eat East Asian food while learning about this cuisine.

Ubuntu Arts Festival: Saturday, April 28 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in Cordiner Hall there will be African food, music, dance and art hosted by WASA.

Junglepussy with Sassy Black: Saturday, April 28 at 7:00 p.m. in Reid Ballroom, rapper Junglepussy and singer Sassy Black will give a performance. Tickets are available this week in Reid and online.

Fruits of Your Labor: Friday, May 4 at 5:00 p.m. in Reid Basement, the Mixed Race Club will present an open mic with special guest comedian Nathan Brannon.

Mozart’s Requiem Mass: Friday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Cordiner Hall, the Whitman Orchestra and the Whitman Chorale will perform Mozart’s famous Requiem.

East Asian Food Festival: Saturday, April 28 from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Glover-Alston Center, the East Asian Cooking Club will provide an opportunity to eat East Asian food while learning about this cuisine.

Ubuntu Arts Festival: Saturday, April 28 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in Cordiner Hall there will be African food, music, dance and art hosted by WASA.

Junglepussy with Sassy Black: Saturday, April 28 at 7:00 p.m. in Reid Ballroom, rapper Junglepussy and singer Sassy Black will give a performance. Tickets are available this week in Reid and online.

Fruits of Your Labor: Friday, May 4 at 5:00 p.m. in Reid Basement, the Mixed Race Club will present an open mic with special guest comedian Nathan Brannon.

The 2018 Senior Art Thesis Exhibition has arrived with big, bold strokes. With 14 artists displaying work in Sheehan Gallery and four in the Fouts exhibition space, the exhibition provides an opportunity for senior art majors to share their work with the community.

This year’s pieces make great use of the two gallery spaces, with many large installation pieces and plenty that pop with bright colors. The artwork varies in medium, including ceramics and photography, and many artists have chosen to take a twist on traditional mediums in order to raise questions and subvert norms. Many of them invite interaction, such as senior Catalina Burch’s work, which features bright yellow footsteps gesturing for visitors to follow them into the installation and the written invitation: “What are you afraid of? Take a peek.”

While each piece is distinct, many are in conversation with each other in the galleries and work well as a whole. Senior Sabrina Salkind, whose mixed media collages titled “Genes Are Overrated” featured thought-provoking and imaginatively strange images, spoke to this aspect.

“There’s a lot of similarities,” Salkind said. “There’s a few pieces that are hanging from the ceiling, different installations, but they’re spread out nicely throughout the gallery, there’s a lot of conversation between different colors through different people’s work, so one corner’s really bright, and the bright balances well with the dark painting. There are some overlapping themes too: some people are working with animal studies, other people are working with found objects. It’s also very diverse — we all have different reasons for doing what we’re doing even if it’s similar. But I think visually … [it’s] working really well with the distribution of different materials and colors.”

Many senior art majors have taken the show as an opportunity to work in mediums different from what they’re used to. Christopher Belluschi ’18 worked on a larger, more minimalist scale than he usually does. His piece, “Consumed, Assumed, Resumed,” features large pieces of wood he has collected from the Oregon Coast, along with other found objects such as glass bottles, hanging from the ceiling. Behind it is a colorful backdrop. Belluschi explained the thought behind his work, that is installed in the Fouts exhibition space.

“My work’s inspired by a place on the coast that I go to, on the Oregon Coast, called Manzanita,” Belluschi said. “I’ve been going there my whole life and just collecting pieces of wood and interesting objects that wash up that I’ve found, so as the semester — or really year — progressed, we had to make our thesis, and I kind of realized that I wanted to be blatant and represent that place.”

Casey Poe ’18 also branched out this year in terms of the medium she worked with. Poe has been working more with digital drawings this year than in previous years, and her thesis reflects this. Displayed in Sheehan Gallery, it consists of a collection of digital drawings, which pop with color and feature the faces of Poe and her relatives.

“My piece is on identity, on my personal identity, but it’s also about hybridity of identity,” Poe said. “I do digital drawing — my focus is drawing — and I did a lot of digital prints that I printed and mounted, and I work with layers. So my whole theme is about myself majority, but basically about multi-ethnic people or multi-ethnic backgrounds, or about how your layers of ethnicity make your identity, and your identity’s not one fixed thing but a mixture of layers.”

In her pieces, Poe has not only created an exploration of her identity, but also artwork that may resonate with gallery visitors who are also invited to reflect on the layers of their own identities.

Slideshow • 7 Photos

Elle Pollock

Svetlana Petrova ’18 also created a piece influenced by her identity. Titled “27th of May, 1703,” it is a collection of canvases with a combination of oil paint and embroidery, making for colorful, abstract work.

“I was kind of trained as a painter, but at the same time my family’s kind of big on craft and embroidery and that kind of thing, especially since my mom studies ethnography a lot, so I grew up with knowing traditional Russian craft, that kind of thing,” Petrova said. “So [my piece] turned into this processing or melding of the two things because I’m an immigrant and I moved when I was young.”

As these senior art majors’ times at Whitman draws to a close, displaying their work invites them to reflect on the value of art in their lives or in the world.

“To have this creative guidance as an art major really helps you to see your potential and see how art can function in the real world,” Belluschi said. “I think art as a whole is necessary to balance everything else you see in the world, and I think everyone likes to either be creative and express themselves in some way or another, and certainly in museums and gallery spaces people get a sense of enjoyment and freedom from seeing other people’s creative freedoms. It’s kind of similar to taking a walk in the forest; it’s kind of an escape from everything else to see these things that people put forth in the world.”

Ultimately, the Senior Art Thesis Exhibition provides a professional gallery space in which senior art majors have the opportunity to show their work, see their peer’s work and gain experience working with a gallery. While not all of these students will go on to pursue art as a career after graduation, the exhibition serves as a rewarding capstone to their visual art studies at Whitman.

The 2018 Senior Art Thesis Exhibition has arrived with big, bold strokes. With 14 artists displaying work in Sheehan Gallery and four in the Fouts exhibition space, the exhibition provides an opportunity for senior art majors to share their work with the community.

This year’s pieces make great use of the two gallery spaces, with many large installation pieces and plenty that pop with bright colors. The artwork varies in medium, including ceramics and photography, and many artists have chosen to take a twist on traditional mediums in order to raise questions and subvert norms. Many of them invite interaction, such as senior Catalina Burch’s work, which features bright yellow footsteps gesturing for visitors to follow them into the installation and the written invitation: “What are you afraid of? Take a peek.”

While each piece is distinct, many are in conversation with each other in the galleries and work well as a whole. Senior Sabrina Salkind, whose mixed media collages titled “Genes Are Overrated” featured thought-provoking and imaginatively strange images, spoke to this aspect.

“There’s a lot of similarities,” Salkind said. “There’s a few pieces that are hanging from the ceiling, different installations, but they’re spread out nicely throughout the gallery, there’s a lot of conversation between different colors through different people’s work, so one corner’s really bright, and the bright balances well with the dark painting. There are some overlapping themes too: some people are working with animal studies, other people are working with found objects. It’s also very diverse — we all have different reasons for doing what we’re doing even if it’s similar. But I think visually … [it’s] working really well with the distribution of different materials and colors.”

Many senior art majors have taken the show as an opportunity to work in mediums different from what they’re used to. Christopher Belluschi ’18 worked on a larger, more minimalist scale than he usually does. His piece, “Consumed, Assumed, Resumed,” features large pieces of wood he has collected from the Oregon Coast, along with other found objects such as glass bottles, hanging from the ceiling. Behind it is a colorful backdrop. Belluschi explained the thought behind his work, that is installed in the Fouts exhibition space.

“My work’s inspired by a place on the coast that I go to, on the Oregon Coast, called Manzanita,” Belluschi said. “I’ve been going there my whole life and just collecting pieces of wood and interesting objects that wash up that I’ve found, so as the semester — or really year — progressed, we had to make our thesis, and I kind of realized that I wanted to be blatant and represent that place.”

Casey Poe ’18 also branched out this year in terms of the medium she worked with. Poe has been working more with digital drawings this year than in previous years, and her thesis reflects this. Displayed in Sheehan Gallery, it consists of a collection of digital drawings, which pop with color and feature the faces of Poe and her relatives.

“My piece is on identity, on my personal identity, but it’s also about hybridity of identity,” Poe said. “I do digital drawing — my focus is drawing — and I did a lot of digital prints that I printed and mounted, and I work with layers. So my whole theme is about myself majority, but basically about multi-ethnic people or multi-ethnic backgrounds, or about how your layers of ethnicity make your identity, and your identity’s not one fixed thing but a mixture of layers.”

In her pieces, Poe has not only created an exploration of her identity, but also artwork that may resonate with gallery visitors who are also invited to reflect on the layers of their own identities.

Slideshow • 7 Photos

Elle Pollock

Svetlana Petrova ’18 also created a piece influenced by her identity. Titled “27th of May, 1703,” it is a collection of canvases with a combination of oil paint and embroidery, making for colorful, abstract work.

“I was kind of trained as a painter, but at the same time my family’s kind of big on craft and embroidery and that kind of thing, especially since my mom studies ethnography a lot, so I grew up with knowing traditional Russian craft, that kind of thing,” Petrova said. “So [my piece] turned into this processing or melding of the two things because I’m an immigrant and I moved when I was young.”

As these senior art majors’ times at Whitman draws to a close, displaying their work invites them to reflect on the value of art in their lives or in the world.

“To have this creative guidance as an art major really helps you to see your potential and see how art can function in the real world,” Belluschi said. “I think art as a whole is necessary to balance everything else you see in the world, and I think everyone likes to either be creative and express themselves in some way or another, and certainly in museums and gallery spaces people get a sense of enjoyment and freedom from seeing other people’s creative freedoms. It’s kind of similar to taking a walk in the forest; it’s kind of an escape from everything else to see these things that people put forth in the world.”

Ultimately, the Senior Art Thesis Exhibition provides a professional gallery space in which senior art majors have the opportunity to show their work, see their peer’s work and gain experience working with a gallery. While not all of these students will go on to pursue art as a career after graduation, the exhibition serves as a rewarding capstone to their visual art studies at Whitman.

This year’s David Nord Award, an annual prize given to students for projects addressing problems that queer communities face, went to junior Colleen Boken and alumna Anna Zheng. Each chose a creative project to pursue: Boken curated an art exhibition called “Perspectives: Binaries in Disruption” and Zheng wrote a collection of poems titled “Embodied Viscera.” The 2017-2018 David Nord Award Recipient presentation took place on April 6.

Boken’s exhibition, located in the Olin Breezeway from March 27 to May 20, showcases a diverse range of mediums, with all artwork created by queer Whitman alumni. The exhibition explores the problem with binaries and shows that identities are much more complex than how definitions might paint them.

“The goal of this whole show was to show the problems of simple definitions,” Boken said. “Someone might be trans, yes, but that doesn’t really define them in a lot of ways, so I really hope people who come to the show see that experience is really what matters.”

The pieces in the show range from comic book excerpts to photographs. When asking for artists to submit their pieces, Boken also asked them to answer a series of questions, including how the artist would describe their identity, and how art can bring about change. Answers varied, as did the artwork submitted, bringing an abundance of identities to the forefront.

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Afton Weaver

Alumnae Maia Watkins, Brie Strom and Emma Rust submitted a zine-like book that they had created together, and in that collaboration their own complex identities showed through.

“Colleen’s show was a welcome opportunity to make new art for a familiar audience, so Emma, Brie and I decided to collaborate and see what happened,” Watkins said. “We wanted to make a piece of art that was like a conversation while acknowledging subjectivity (in this way continuing to mirror the way that the show was curated by Colleen). The way each of us think about identity is different…so my own take on it is that each of us were putting forward our own narratives in a way that seemed right to us in the moment, and in that way sort of portraying a collaborative identity that I think is unique to queer spaces.”

Boken hopes to continue to curate exhibits like this in the future.

“Museums and spaces like this have the power to change culture in a lot of ways,” Boken said. “This exhibit kind of aimed to challenge culture a little bit…I think really the rewarding thing is it’s giving a voice to people…who may not have as easy of a way to do it.”

Boken spoke about what the exhibit means to her personally.

“There’s a part of me that still doesn’t believe this is happening, because when I started here at Whitman, I wasn’t sure if I was going to come out as trans,” Boken said. “I’m still not out to my parents; I was just not sure if I was going to come out here. Three years later, I’m not only fully out, but I have my name up on a show that’s just queer artists, and I think this is one of the biggest capstones to my journey here…That’s been really powerful for me in a lot of ways because it’s giving everyone else a voice, but at the same time, I think it’s my voice coming through as well for the first time in the truest way.”

Zheng’s “Embodied Viscera,” a book of twelve poems, is about their experience as a queer Asian Pacific Islander at Whitman, and it also aims to put forth a truth in queer identities.

“It [the book] functions as a mindworld in a sense—I allude to that term in the book—and that’s basically just the stories and narratives and worlds that we create in our bodies that is speaking its own truths,” Zheng said. “So ‘Embodied Viscera’ is really about just the bodily experience, the experiences of colors within these multiple identities that I hold, so it’s super intersectional, and it talks a lot about just what it means to love in a racialized body and the politics behind it, and it talks a little about diversity and queerness. It’s basically a big chunk of the embodied experiences I’ve had at Whitman that I wish that I had something like that to look for as a first year, so it’s…a statement of being authentic and being able to speak your own truths.”

Zheng commissioned artist Emma Rust to illustrate their book.

“I wanted it to be a book because I wanted a way for me to be able to commission a queer artist of color and also a Whitman alum, and I knew that the best way to do that was to do it in a book form,” Zheng said. “And also, I just love books—I love things that are physical, and I just wanted to see if I could actually produce something that I would be proud of and that was physical…I think the words that I use and the phrases that I decided on using really kind of encapsulate the bodily experiences.”

Zheng, who graduated this past December, currently lives in Portland, where they work and is also planning a book release party for “Embodied Viscera,” of which they had around 235 copies printed. They plan to donate some of the profits from that to the Equi Institute, a clinic that provides healthcare to queer patients.

VWRS presents Kaveh Akbar: On Thursday, April 19 at 7:00 p.m. in Kimball Theatre, poet Kaveh Akbar will read selections from his new collection of poems, “Calling a Wolf a Wolf,” and answer questions in the following Q&A session. A book signing will take place afterward.

49th Annual Renaissance Faire: Saturday, April 21 from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. on the Memorial lawn, the annual Renaissance Faire will feature vendors selling food and crafts, as well as activities and performances such as unicycle jousting and live music.

Move Your Phi’t: Saturday, April 21 at 3 p.m., this 3K color run/walk will be held with a route going around the Whitman campus, starting on Ankeny Field. Tickets can be purchased at Reid Campus Center or online. Proceeds go to Trilogy Recovery Community.

Race and Identity in Classical Music Performance: Wednesday, April 25 at 7:30 p.m. in Chism Recital Hall, singer Reggie Mobley will present “Race and Identity in Classical Music Performance.”

From art to prose, recipes to photography, and lists to quotes, zines have got it all. Since their resurgence in the 1970s stemming from punk culture, zines, which are small, low-budget publications—the countercultural cousin of the magazine—are a popular mode of expression, whether they aim to get a message out there or to just have fun. Various Whitman students have been making zines on campus throughout the years, with the content and format varying widely; in short, the possibilities are endless.

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Natalie Godfrey ‘18 created “A Zine of Good Things,” which is based around gratitude. Zuhra Amini ‘18 put together “Process,” a multimedia zine featuring voices from people of color. Devon Yee ‘18 distributed her zine around campus before this year’s Power and Privilege Symposium to diffuse misconceptions surrounding racism at Whitman.

Natalie Godfrey ’18, a zine maker and collector, explained the appeal of zines.

“Usually these [zines] will be cheap, low-quality, get it out and get it to a lot of people, so I think it’s really accessible in that way for not only people who want to get their voice out, but also people who want to hear about other stuff [from zines],” Godfrey said.

Godfrey’s most recent zine is called “A Zine of Good Things,” which is centered around the idea of gratitude. She asked 110 people to submit lists of good things and compiled them together.

“A lot of zines that I’m interested in are either some sort of information zine, like you’re explaining a concept to someone—I’ve done one on mindfulness—or a political edge, or a how-to guide, which is kind of the ones I’ve been interested in,” Godfrey said. “I think a lot of mine come out of mindfulness and wanting to just engage people in any sort of mindfulness practice.”

Zines can come in many different forms with different intents behind them. Devon Yee’s ’18 zine, “A Brief & Incomplete Recent History of Racism & Activism at Whitman,” leaned towards the political side. This zine, that gave a timeline of various racist acts, the activism reacting to that and the subsequent change achieved, stemmed from a frustration with inaccuracies in the story of how the Power and Privilege Symposium was started. Yee noticed that the often-repeated story was that the college decided to give the day off, that erases the work students and faculty have done to start the symposium.

“The reason I made this zine is to honor and acknowledge the work of students of color, especially women of color and non-binary folks of color, and to have that history be known,” Yee said. “In the writing of it, I could really see how student action has driven change on campus … Another thing is of course that as a first year I was really frustrated to hear some of my white friends in my section be like, ‘oh, well these issues don’t really affect me’… and the thing I feel that people often forget is that racism is very much alive and it is very much here and white people are very much implicated in racism, but just kind of not acknowledging their position in all these things, and so it’s [the zine is] also kind of a ‘look, this is here, this exists, and this is what actions students have taken to combat racism.’”

Yee distributed her zine widely, placing copies in the library, Reid and the residence halls before the 2018 Power and Privilege Symposium, ensuring that the word was spread.

While Yee’s zine was created for a specific, one-time purpose, zines can also be ongoing. Zuhra Amini’s ‘18 zine “Process” is an annually published zine, now on its second edition, that aims at creating change as well as a community. The zine is put together by people of color and all submissions come from people of color. Amini explained the premise of the zine.

“‘Process’ is a multimedia zine that focuses on the theme of being in the process of,” Amini said. “It’s about realizing the importance of going through things and not just the end goal.”

Amini sees the zine as not only a publication, but also as a community space for people of color to create art.

“To me, ‘Process’ as a zine is the publication, but I also think of ‘Process’ as a collective as well, and I’m hoping that it grows more to be a collective in the coming years,” Amini said. “It’s been a really important space to have with other students of color who are also doing art, and just encouraging each other and pushing each other to create art, giving feedback about art, critiquing it, it’s just been really productive to have that space because and that’s what I felt like was lacking before I made ‘Process.’”

Zines can also just be a great way to have fun and collect memories. Seniors Elise Feider and Lucy Skugstad are in the process of putting together their first zine, “Bomb.” The zine will include submissions from their friends and classmates, with content ranging from collages to cocktail recipes. As seniors, the two wanted to have an achievement like this zine to look back on.

“It was kind of an opportunity to make a capstone Whitman experience, something with all of our friends in it,” Feider said.

Both Feider and Skugstad emphasized the opportunity to exercise creativity that making this zine gives people.

“[It’s exciting] seeing that people are putting some effort into it and expressing something that they’re probably thinking about, but considering school and stuff, they don’t really see a reason to work creatively in whatever medium they like to do,” Skugstad said. “So I know this kind of instigates someone to think about, ‘oh, I’ve been wanting to do some more writing outside of class, like it would be awesome if I could do it for something.’”

Whether they aim to make change or to just have fun, zines remain a creative mode of expression for students at Whitman.