E R I N Z O N A

Erin’s Big Idea: An Illustrated History of Fantasy Projects I Am Never Going to Finish is a dark and humourous memoir touching themes like love, family, grief, art history, pop music, and mortuary science. The book outlines 14 ideas for projects I have had over the years and never followed through on. Some, I had every intention of making, others were just a funny story or a punchline delivered while socializing with friends. The ideas in this book are open source. If you make any of them I only ask that you send a copy to me.

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The audio book is available here:
https://vimeo.com/1014054756

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This physical book is available here: https://www.erinzona.com/shoparound/erins-big-idea

These drawings were created using a compass, ruler, and Koh-I-Nor Rapidograph pen on pages of a Moleskine A3 16.5” x 12” sketchbook. The act of making them coincided with a personal period of loss.

My grandmother passed away in December 2022. At her open casket, I felt the impulse to capture a photograph with my phone, but I hesitated. I feared the judgment of my family and felt uneasy about where to appropriately store the digital image and whether it should exist at all. Instead, I stood there in silence, trying to burn the details of her into my memory—her red suit jacket, her long hair, and the muted purple floral pattern on the black dress shirt they had put her in. Over time, the vividness of these details, through repeated moments of recall, has softened and blurred.

This collection of drawings became a time-based diary—an abstract record of grief. Through vibrant patterns and geometric shapes, I’ve processed and internalized the emotions of that period, transforming raw memory into a quieter, more contemplative visual language.

P.S. The first page of this book features the label from a bottle of water at the funeral home. It bears the words “Every detail remembered™” and “Dignity®”

Dear Reader,

When I imagine the end of the world, I wonder who I will be with as the meteor appears on the horizon. I will turn to the person next to me and say, “It’s the end of the world and neither of us are where we are supposed to be...”

I started these drawings about a comet prompting transformation on Earth without realizing my own life was about to profoundly change. In the few short months after the completion of these drawings; I observed the death of a loved one, experienced romance and heartache, faced illness and my own mortality, underwent surgery & had my closest friends coach me through recovery.

The world ended and we survived.

~EZ

P.S. I made a playlist. Here is a link. Thanks for listening.

P.P.S. These drawings were made using a compass, ruler, and Koh-I-Nor Rapidograph pen on plate finish Strathmore 500 Series Bristol. The tail of the meteor is a wall drawing made with grey Oracal 631 exhibition vinyl and the framed gravestone rubbing is a screenprint in an edition of 50.

The round drawing is a 60” diameter circle. The triptych is 30” X 120.” Overall dimensions are variable.

These drawings were exhibited in 2022 at Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, Mo. Link to Catalog.

Caption reads, “Header Beam over the front door of the original 1692 Salem Jail. Property of Salem Witch Museum.

40” X 60”
pen and ink

For this exhibition, I proposed to transform the Kansas City gallery Front/Space into a small fully operational museum.

Much like the exclamation “Eureka!” the phrase “She was right!” is meant to be associated with an act of discovery.  Through museum simulation, this show aims to question the hierarchies of authenticity and to alter our notions of time, fact, and fantasy. 

At the center of the gallery a small black stone is placed in a museum vitrine designed as a "zig-zag" to signify forward momentum, the passage of time, and to undermine the presumptive form and authority of typical museum display. 

Accompanying the stone are sixteen drawings of "historical fiction" which document the stone's passage through time in chronological order. The stone is depicted in each drawing, beginning with an abstract representation of Earth's explosive creation in the drawing titled "The Garden." The viewer is invited to follow the stone through this fabricated history and to question the authorship of historical record.

This show aims to expose the artificial value systems imposed on art and historical objects through collection, exhibition, and presentation. "She Was Right" intends to empower its participants to see new ways in which to navigate within expositions of so-called "truth."
 

SHOW REVIEW LINK:
"She Was Right is Totally Correct" by Annie Raab


All photos by Libby Zanders unless otherwise noted.

Constructed entirely from lumber, white cardboard, and some electrical components, this octagonal schoolhouse is meant to be an architectural apparition; a physical manifestation of my own idealism, personal nostalgia, faith in community, and desire to build optimism and opportunities for artists in the changing landscape of my city.   

The spire of this construction was designed to barely touch the ceiling of its exhibition space. This crux is meant to represent change and optimism. These two objects (the spire and ceiling) are not inert, but rather, something just about to happen.

See also:
http://ghost.printeresting.org/ghost-project-zz-school/

Photo Credit: Libby Zanders

In 2014, I started a project called The Zz School of Print Media.  The Zz School (pronounced "zee") is a printmaking focused education initiative based in Kansas City, Mo. We aim to promote print-based public art, to encourage exchange between artists and the community, to create opportunities for artists and educators, and to expand the role of printmaking in the visual arts.  

In addition to technical services and equipment access, Zz School rounds out artist opportunity with community based projects and conceptual courses. We aim to enable artists diversely, creating opportunities for artists to grow the content of their work in tandem with technical ability. 

For more info, visit the Zz School website:
www.zzschool.org

Check out the Zz School Archive for a list of all past courses and projects:
http://www.zzschool.org/archive/

Support for this work is provided by a Rocket Grants Project Award, a program of the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. Funding is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

In Fall 2014, I created a fieldwork course in Kansas City called Kansas City Object Lessons. In this class students visit, view, and discuss often unshared archives and collections within Kansas City.

Meeting each week in a different location, students have the very special opportunity to view objects, art objects, and works on paper that exist in local personal and private collections as well as "hidden" within well known Kansas City institutions.

To view these types of objects, removed from the traditional museum display, allows the viewer a unique experience, including insight into the wide functions of art and the ways in which art and collecting are reflective of Kansas City history.

As this is an experience based course, the issue of documentation and tangibility became very important to me. I want my students and our tour guides to leave class with something material. So, each week I would customize a laser-cut relief block (or stamp) as a gift for our tour guide. At the end of each visit, I would ask our tour guide to personally stamp a paper record or “passport” for each participant in the course.  

Fall 2014 Collections Visited:

Belger Art Center
Tour Guide: Mo Dickens

LaBudde Special Collections and GLAMA
Tour Guide: Stuart Hinds

The Museum of Funeral History
Tour Guide: Lee Ward

KU Spencer Museum, Print Study Room
Tour Guide: Stephen Goddard

John and Sharon Hoffman Collection
Tour Guide: John Hoffman

Leila's Hair Museum
Tour Guide: Linda

In the Summer of 2012, my Grandmother revealed to me that her father was an "old time spiritualist" and that he would hold seances at their kitchen table using a "talking trumpet."  This prompted personal research into various instruments used during the Spiritualist movement to communicate between planes of existence. (The most well known being the Ouija Board or planchette.)  

The 1939 MGM film, The Wizard of Oz is dear to my heart.  Likely, ALL of my work can be traced to have visual or conceptual connection to this film.  As we ALL know, Dorothy is transported from one world into another via tornado.  I am interested in the threshold between our physical world and the spiritual world. The doorways, portals, entrances, exits, inner spaces and outer spaces of the invisible world.

My Grandmother was five years old when her Father was holding his seances, so her memory is vague.  I asked my Father for more information and he said, "My Grandfather may have had a talking trumpet, but you should keep in mind, he was an engineer... and a trickster." 
 

I am scared in the dark. In the dark of my bedroom, a towel draped over a door can easily become an enormous - possibly threatening - face. Vivid imagination coupled with irrational fear has had substantial impact on my work. A few years ago, I found an image of a cave painting in which the painter added pigment to the natural geography of the cave wall to create an abstract face. I imagine the artist inside the cave 10,000 years ago, seeing the illusion of a face on the surface wall and helping it along with a bit of pigment. I see myself exactly this way.  We can only speculate why that artist chose to make those marks. They may have been made in worship, out of fear, or perhaps boredom. These are similar to my motivations as an artist.

The drawings in this series aim to describe the abstract relationship between the visible and the spiritual, the material and the supernatural. The night sky, specifically the asterism known as Orion’s Belt, has always existed to me as a powerful emblem of the divine. The order of those three stars could be incidental, but this could be strategic design and consequently made to seem like chance.  A trick?  I am not trying to say that my drawings are an attempt to recreate the power of god or to even be about concrete religion at all, but these drawings are about our world not being what it seems. 

These drawings are representative of my desire to discover - or more likely, to fantasize about what invisible truths our world may embody.

Whoop Dee Doo (WDD) is an artist-led project that creates installations and live performances internationally at universities, festivals, arts organizations, and museums. Each project engages the immediate communities of the organization with which they partner, and they work closely with youth and non-profit groups to research, conceive, and create programming. The WDD process emphasizes collaboration and seeks to initiate a cross-generational dialogue.

During the three years I worked with WDD, I wore many hats; artist, volunteer, set-designer/builder, cardboard manipulator, prop master, sound effects, stage manager, education liaison, and "Grandma."

This project is very dear to me and largely instrumental in my growth as an artist, educator, and life long friend. 

Follow the links, watch the videos, and find Whoop Dee Doo in a town near you!

:-)

https://www.whoopdeedoo.org/

In the Summer of 2004, I moved to Chicago for a year.  This was a time of loneliness, productivity, and personal growth. I started this series of drawings in the Winter that year.  Your Planet Has Not Seen Its Golden Age is an unfinished graphic novel.  It is the story of two sisters who uncover an alien artifact while digging a grave for their beloved dog named Flower. Within the alien capsule, they find a VHS tape.  The tape includes footage of Earth as it is forming to our present day including; sea monsters, volcanoes, ancient civilizations, and more.  I have always wished that photography were invented earlier - even just 100 years.  

In May 2012, my partner Rachel and I dug a grave for the actual dog named Flower. Unfortunately, we did not uncover any mysterious objects.

Throughout 2005-2007, I self-published parts of this series in a zine format of the same title.

These drawings can also be viewed on their website:

www.ablackbox.org