Jolie Ruin is a queer artist, zinester and zine archivist, collecting and selling classic Riot grrrl zines and new work. Loverboy’s Fallon Gold spoke with her about feminism, creative community and, of course, Mariah Carey.

A great deal of your work is about Riot grrrl. When did rg first enter your life and what does it mean to you now?
I used to read about Riot grrrl in Sassy Magazine in the early 1990s so I kind of knew about it from that. But I didn’t really get into it until about 94/95 when I started writing to people. I had lots of pen pals when I was in high school and they introduced me to Riot grrrl music via mix tapes. Some of them also wrote fanzines and I immediately fell in love with all of it. It made me want to do my own zine. So I did. I also had a small DIY cassette label/distro from 1996 until about 2004 called Ego Records. I released many spoken word albums and a few compilations and split cassettes.

Riot grrrl is still very important to me. When I first discovered it as a teen I feel like it changed my life. It empowered me and it inspired me to do my own thing. It may not affect me the same way or have the same influence on me that it did when I was younger but it really makes me happy to see young people who have just discovered it and see the things that they are doing now. Because that used to be me and it’s really cool to pass the torch to them.

How important is it to still create printed, analogue, paper zines?
I guess I’m ‘old school’ because I definitely love being able to hold a zine in my hands! E-zines and blogs are great but for some reason I prefer to have something that I can keep on a shelf. I feel the same way about books. I’m more likely to re-read something that I have in print, if it’s on the internet I feel like it kind of gets lost among everything else that’s being thrown at you in the media. It just makes it more concrete.

You’re keeping classic Riot grrrl zines alive through the Riot grrrl Press project. It’s a brilliant way to bring that activism to new audiences and those who were there at the time who may have lost their own copies over the years.
Riot grrrl Press was actually started in the 1990s but a friend of mine recently suggested that we try to bring it back! I have so many old zines from back then. She even sent me her old zine collection to put in the grab bags I have on Etsy.  About 10 years ago, I did give away/sell a big bulk of my zine collection. And I kind of regret doing that. It’s like a big chunk of my life is missing now! The zines I have on Etsy now are copies of copies.

There were a few zinesters I lost touch with many years ago that I found on social media recently and I asked if I could use their zines for this project and they didn’t want to because they don’t want that stuff out there anymore which is totally understandable. Many Riot grrrl zines were about trauma and it was trauma they dealt with and wrote about over 20 years ago. I get that they don’t want to bring that trauma back up and don’t want it back in print. So, some people are into it, some are not. But being able to get these zines out to younger people that weren’t around or just weren’t into the zine scene back then is really cool.

Are you still looking for contributions from that period?
Yes, when I first started trying to resurrect Riot grrrl Press I really wanted to focus on zines that were published from 1990-2000 but I haven’t received much of a response from that. Which I totally understand, not as many people want their old zines re-printed but tons of people out there still want to read them! That’s why I thought it was important to make them available again.

Do you welcome more recently created zines into the collection?
I definitely want to include more recent zines as well. I have done a few distros over the years and distributed zines, music, spoken word and books. It just makes me happy to get other people’s stuff out to other folks that may not know about it or have access to it. When I first started out in the 90s, there was no social media. The internet was nothing like it is today! Everything was by word of mouth. Every little bit helps and I like to support and promote other people’s projects. I like to feel like I’m doing my part. I like to feel like I’m part of something. I was there for some of the Riot grrrl history that others weren’t part of and I want to share it with everyone.

Tell us about your own zines.
I’ve been doing zines for 20 years so there’s been a lot of different zines with different titles! Lots of mini-zines and ‘one shot’ zines, many compilations and many split zines with other zinesters.  But the zines that I currently publish are Double Chinchilla, The Escapist Artist, sometimes I do Laugh Riot and I just started Riot grrrl Reviews.

Double Chinchilla is an art zine. I share my collages and doodles and things of that nature.

The Escapist Artist is my main zine. When I first started it, it was supposed to be a zine series where I write about my life year by year with the help of my journals that I kept when I was growing up. These zines include actual pages and excerpts from my diaries. I’m still doing that but TEA became more about my life in general. I totally strayed from the original idea. Right now I’m on issue # 51 and it is about the year 2001.

Laugh Riot is a comedy zine. I write about and review comedy shows that I go to and sometimes I interview comedians.

Riot grrrl Reviews is going to be reviews of zines, music, movies, books, etc, written by different people. The first issue is due out in November. ‘Riot grrrl Review’ was created in the 1990s by Kristy Chan. I’m doing my own version of it and I added an ‘s’ to the name! It’s the same but different. I think she only reviewed projects done by women. We are including everyone.

I adore your art, as you know. Collage and printmaking are such powerful mediums. What inspires you to create a piece?
Inspiration comes from everywhere. Sometimes I’ll just think of something and I’ll create it. But other times inspiration just pops up out of nowhere and I’ll try to make it into art. I mostly do collage art, so if I’m looking at something, sometimes I’ll suddenly just start to envision it as an art piece and then try to make it happen. It doesn’t always work! I guess I don’t really know how to explain it very well!

Art is hard to explain! Why we work visually, I guess. 🙂 I adore your pin up cat face series.
Honestly, when I first started the Pussy Pin Ups series I did it because it made me laugh.  It was supposed to be funny because I put the silliest cat faces on the naked bodies of beautiful women. I had a few Playboy calendars from the 1960s and that’s what I created with them. A lot of my art is inspired by feminism and Riot grrrl, but comedy is also a big part of my life.  I’m friends with a lot of comedians and I go to several comedy shows every month and having a sense of humor is very important to me. I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression all of my life so being able to also be funny in my art is a huge thing for me. So sometimes I express that in my art as well. The Pussy Pin Ups are nice to look at but they also kind of make me laugh.

I love that too – if my art doesn’t make me laugh then I feel it’s not really working. DIY merch is a fab way to get messages and work out there – practical, ornamental, or whatever. Selling online gets a worldwide market but you also sell locally. How important are both these methods in terms of personal reach and for creating community?
I sell more stuff online than I do locally. The local art shows are something that I only do every once in awhile, to be honest. There is a local art community but I’m not really a part of it. And to be quite honest, the last art show my husband and I did wasn’t as successful as they have been in the past. There’s an ‘Arts Walk’ every month where we live. My husband Jamie is a tattoo artist, so we host the art shows at the tattoo shop. The crowd used to swarm into the place a few years ago and now people turn their noses up at us and our ‘offensive’ art. Nudity and blood and tattoos offend these people now. It’s unfortunate that that’s how I feel about the local art community. But I do well on Etsy. I reach a lot more people that way, I think. And zinesters and other artists are very supportive and I do feel a sense of community through social media.

What’s it like working with your partner?
We mostly have our own art projects but we share an Etsy store. I do collage art because I really can’t draw or paint very well and he can! Most of the time when we collaborate it’s something that I have an idea for but I am unable to draw it myself so I have him do it!  One example is the ‘Support Each Other’ design. I had that idea for awhile and I had him do a small painting of it because originally it was just a sticker and an art print. But it’s one of the most popular/favorite designs that we’ve done together so it’s also available on t-shirts and tote bags.  We’ve been married for 12 years (on Halloween) and have been best friends for almost 16 years so we work well together.

Tell us about the book, Mrs. Noggle.
Mrs. Noggle was a zine that I did from 2006 until 2011. The book is just a collection of writings from those zines. I did the same thing with my zine that I did in the 1990s. It was called Babelicious, it was a personal zine and I did that zine from 1998 until 2002.

I want to do a ‘The Escapist Artist’ book but I want it to be more of a collection of essays instead of just re-printing zine pages like in my other books. I’m still working on that at the moment! But I would really really like to finish writing that and put it out sometime next year!

Lastly, what’s your favourite Mariah Carey song?
I’ve never been a Mariah Carey fan but any of her songs from the early 90s, especially ‘Emotions’ reminds me of when I was in junior high!  It definitely makes me feel emotions! 🙂

Buy Jolie’s zines, merch and awesome affordable art on her etsy, The Escapist Artist

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