My Life Is an Open Book | Exhibit

I Made This Zine at Work! by Carrie Colpitts

Courtesy of the University of Chicago Library

As the name “My Life Is an Open Book: D.I.Y. Autobiography” suggests, transparency is a valuable commodity when practicing the low-budget, often extremely intimate art form of zines. This excellent exhibit at the University of Chicago Regenstein Library, consisting of eight glass cases and a corkboard, showcases the wide range and can-do spirit of the zine world. The zines selected-—called perzines for their personal, raw content—are cheeky, their positioning random. A moldering first-edition collection of Michel de Montaigne’s essays shares case space with Lynne Monsoon’s “Shit I Didn’t Tell You” (2011), which sits mere feet from a cluster of counterculture narratives influenced by ’70s punk and ’90s riot grrrl.