Meet Dan Varenka: artist, educator, printmaker, publisher, visionary. His path from teen zine creator to indie book fair organizer makes logical sense, though it is hard to fathom how he has time for all he does. Read on to learn more about his cool projects, including the upcoming Rochester Small Press Book Fair.
In case anyone isn’t familiar with the term, zines are self-written, designed, and photocopied publications, usually dedicated to a certain topic or point of view. Dan, tell us how and when your interest in zines started.
I was a teen in the ‘80s, and zines were part of punk and new wave. Living outside of New York City, I could take a train into Manhattan for three dollars and go to shows where folks were selling zines. Or I’d make my way to See/ Hear, a remarkable/improbable alternative print store that focused on zines and pick up Maximum Rocknroll and other titles.
When did you start making your own zines?
In high school, my writer pal Mike enlisted me to help with the design and layout of a one-sheet music zine called New York Grime. My snarky solution for a logo? Cut out the masthead of The New Yorker, slice off the “er,” scrawl GRIME after it, and done! Mike printed out the text on a dot-matrix printer, I pasted in the columns and added doodles in the empty spots, and then a friend who worked at a copy shop printed it for us. It was barely legible, but it got us into shows for free, so we were happy.
Are you still making zines?
Yes. For me, zines offer a nice way to get something finished quickly. I get inspired by something, do some research/writing/photographing/drawing on a theme, and then lay it out and print it.
What other kinds of projects are you working on?
I love printmaking. I primarily screenprint but usually only make time for it when I’m teaching a class or hired to print a bunch of shirts or totes. I’d like to make some time to play around with printing on paper more. I’ve been experimenting with wax paper stencils and would like to take that further with more colors and more details.
When did Zaftig Press come into play?
Zaftig Press (zaftigpress.com), by name, has been around for just a couple of years. But since 2005, I was printing and making zines under the moniker Hey Buddy! Why’s Your Car So Big? It served me well for a long time, but shortly after the pandemic, I wanted to focus more on publishing and less on selling t-shirts. I thought a refresh would help in that.
How has Zaftig evolved since it began?
I work very slowly creatively, but I get so much satisfaction from making things I decided to try some collaborations to fill in the gaps of my own output. I enjoyed reading Nia Shea’s poetry on her Instagram (@babe_im_onfire), so I approached her to see if she’d like to do a print version. Serendipitously, she was wondering how to go about doing that, so we immediately started collaborating on a small chapbook of her poems. She chose the works, and then I played around with the format. A few months later intimates (zaftigpress.com/intimates-nia-shea-zhmhqq) was in our hands.
Zaftig has more collaborations in the pipeline, right?
Yes, working with Nia was so rewarding that I wanted to find more collaborators. I put out a request for proposals on my website and got a handful of responses. The two that intrigued me the most were local. One of those was from (585) managing editor Christine Green (christinejgreen.com), who submitted a lengthy memoir manuscript. Christine had many of her pieces published in magazines but wanted to see them as a whole. I had never laid out a more traditional text-based book and liked the challenge of that. Sometimes you just get a feeling that working with someone is going to be fruitful or a project just “clicks,” and this was one of them.
And the second manuscript?
The other project I chose was submitted by Michaela Chan (michaelachan.com/DrawingsAndPaintings), who is a writer and visual artist. Her proposal was a bit abstract, and it’s been evolving as we work on it, so I’m not sure where we’ll end up. I do know her stark black-and-white imagery is going to look great printed on my vintage digital duplicator!
Now tell us how the Rochester Small Press Book Fair (SPBF) came to be?
I started the SPBF in 2013 when I was working at Visual Studies Workshop (VSW). I saw a poster for an art book fair VSW had in the ’80s and decided we needed to bring it back. We called it Pub Fair, then changed the name to SPBF in 2018 to help get the right people in the door. It seems to have worked. It’s been a great representation of what visual artists, writers, and small presses are up to in Rochester and Western New York. In 2023, the VSW auditorium wasn’t available, but I found an apt collaborator with the RIT City Art Space. It’s a beautiful, open gallery with lots of natural light in downtown Rochester.
And are you still into egg sandwiches?
Haha, yes, of course, I wouldn’t be me without the quest for a great egg sandwich! In case anyone’s wondering why you’d ask, for three years I did a blog reviewing the various egg sandwiches I came across (breakfastallthetime.blogspot.com). It’s also a bit of a journal of those three years, or at least as much as I was willing to hare publicly. Reading through it, I noticed that a huge portion of the places I tried are closed now, so I think I’m going start it up again. It’s not like I haven’t been out eating egg sandwiches, I just haven’t been reporting on them!
Meet Dan in person at the ninth Rochester Small Press Book Fair—and bring him an egg sandwich while you’re at it.
Rochester Small Press Book Fair
Saturday, September 28, 2024
11 a.m.–4 p.m.
280 East Main St.
Sibley Tower, First Floor
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