Alex Wrekk

Brainscan #24 and #25

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Putting one’s life on display is, in essence, quite a courageous act. Yet in this time of reality television, it is becoming more of a norm, infused with a sense of banality. Thank goodness for zines, where our need to know intimate details of strangers’ lives is a collaboration of intelligence between people who actually think about stuff, write with a purpose, and use their experiences to connect, grow, and reach out to their community.

Brainscan is an extremely personal zine. Its author, Alex Wrekk, is a zine superstar, and rightly so. Author of the popular how-to guide of zine-making, Stolen Sharpie Revolution, over fifteen years of zine-making under her belt, and the most intimate details of her life photocopied, stapled, and mailed around the world, this is a woman committed to taking her experiences in life and putting them on display in a way that is not for ratings or profit. Rather, she does it for the love of writing, creating, and sharing.

The most recent issues of Brainscan, #24 and #25, (which come as a set when ordered from Alex’s site Small World Buttons) are quite different from each other yet enjoyable in their own ways.

Brainscan #24 is a small collection of vignettes containing snippets from Wrekk’s life, such as her love for good beer and why her zine is called Brainscan. They are musings that give a good overview of Wrekk’s thoughts and attitudes without delving very deeply into any particular subject, making it a quick read and a nice sneak peak into someone else’s brain.

Brainscan #25, on the other hand, is much weightier, and concentrates on the story of Wrekk finding her way back to her true love, Paul, after being in an abusive marriage and growing exponentially as a person. Issue #21 of Brainscan is widely known throughout the zine community as it detailed the breakup of Wrekk’s marriage and is celebrated as a courageous story of overcoming abuse. This current issue touches on some of those subjects but is more of a celebration of finding the strength to love and being true to your heart.

The zine sometimes gets a bit painfully intimate to read, bordering on too much information, but it leaves you breathless with its honesty. It is constructed nicely, both visually and thematically, with flashbacks of Wrekk’s early relationship with Paul interspersed through a chronological telling of the dissolution of her marriage, and journey through learning to love herself and other people in new and radical ways.

Grammar and spell-check go out the window, on par with the zine making genre which rebels in both content and construction to mainstream publishing norms. Reading Brainscan is like you have gone into Wrekk’s house, sat on her bed, and read her diary, but she invites this intimacy, keeping no secrets. This style of writing is extremely feminist as it takes subjects women are told to keep hidden and be ashamed of and puts them out into the world, with a sense of acknowledgment and pride in personal growth, and the sharing of stories, in turn facilitating community dialogue.

Written by: Jyoti Roy, June 3rd 2010

Stolen Sharpie Revolution 2: A DIY Resource for Zines and Zine Culture

admin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:32:00 +0000

By Alex Wrekk

Lunchroom Publishing

First published in 2002, Alex Wrekk’s Stolen Sharpie Revolution has served as a resource for untold numbers of people both in and outside of the zine community. For the uninitiated, zines (pronounced like the second half of "magazines") are self-published and usually photocopied booklets focused on an incredibly wide range of topics, from politics to how-to guides to personal essays.

One of the great things about zines is that anyone can make one; you could get started today without a guide and figure it out as you went along as I did a few years back after I picked up a free zine at a local show and became inspired to create my own. However, it certainly helps to have a place to go for practical instructions on things like page layout and postal regulations, creative ideas for zine assembly and presentation, and information on how to distribute your zine and connect with other zine writers. That’s all here, along with an extensive resource list comprising zine libraries, websites, annual zine events around the world, distros (zine distributors), and publications that review zines.

Unlike the majority of zines, Stolen Sharpie Revolution 2 is a bound book, although it's anything but a normal book on the inside. On most of the pages, paragraphs of typewritten text have been cut out and pasted on different patterned backgrounds, which Wrekk tells us are from the insides of security envelopes. Some of the tutorials provided by other people are typed on a computer or handwritten, with drawings included. Stolen Sharpie Revolution 2 isn’t the best example of a professional quality, self-published product; there are numerous misspellings and grammatical errors, and one page appears twice in a row, with the following page nowhere to be found. However, the guide successfully embodies the do-it-yourself ethic and community spirit of the zine world, and provides a comprehensive introduction to both the nuts and bolts of zinemaking and the workings and etiquette of the zine community as a whole. It’s a staple for every zinester’s bookshelf, and will delight and enlighten writers, artists, librarians, and educators.

Written by: Kiri Oliver, August 17th 2009

Brainscan #23

admin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:47:00 +0000

By Alex Wrekk

This second printing of Brainscan #23 was released in September 2008, but don’t worry about it being outdated. While the events in this zine happened between 1995 and 2003, none of Alex Wrekk’s narratives has an expiration date.

Wrekk’s travel-themed vignettes are entertaining stories, told the way a friend would talk about the wild things that have happened to her. Not only is this zine an amusing way to kill some time while riding public transit or sitting in a waiting room, it also allows the reader to experience bits of one woman’s life. From trying to discourage unwanted suitors to exploring the urban legends of Salt Lake City and helping an unappreciative bike jock fix a flat, I felt I was right there with Wrekk through every adventure.

The tales are not laid out in chronological order, which keeps the zine from feeling like an autobiography. Arranging the episodes out of sequence emphasizes them as brief glimpses of Wrekk’s life away from home. The fact that each short-short story is independent of the others, coupled with the booklet’s small size perfect for tucking into a backpack or purse, make it easy to read on the go. Readers can open to any page and dive right in without having to keep up with a plot or remember what they read last.

This black and white zine’s old-school cut and paste design is a delight. Nearly every page features an appealing background pattern, and vintage photos are scattered throughout. A variety of fonts, point sizes, and white-on-black printing keep the pages visually stimulating.

In her introduction, Wrekk writes that the first version of Brainscan #23 was “literally thrown together in the fits of a fever haze,” but it doesn’t seem like she did much editing before printing more copies. Missing words, typos, and grammatical errors plague this zine. I realize paid copyeditors don’t correct anything self-published, but I found the multitude of mistakes distracting. A single careful reading should have easily brought the most blatant of the needed revisions to Wrekk’s attention.

Overall, spending two dollars for theses thirteen tales from Wrekk’s journeys is a great entertainment value. At fifteen cents each, these stories are bargains! This is a zine I will pull from the shelf again and again when I’m stuck at home but want to get lost in the saga of the road.

Written by: Chantel C. Guidry, June 16th 2009

Brainscan #22

admin — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:18:00 +0000

By Alex Wrekk

As a lesbian with an incredibly regular menstrual cycle, I generally don’t ever really think about birth control. It’s not something that affects my life, and other than the random conversations about birth control that I have with my friends and loved ones who do use it, I don’t usually find literature on the topic particularly interesting. With that said, the zine _Brainscan #22 _ not only discusses a type of birth control called Intra Uterine Device (IUD), but also presents the facts and personal experiences of the use of this device so well that even I took immediate interest in the topic.

In the first half of Brainscan #22, author Alex Wrekk describes what exactly an IUD is and how it works. For a quick overview, the IUD is a small T-shaped device that “is inserted through the vagina through the cervix and into the uterus as a form of birth control.” One type of IUD is wrapped in copper wire and acts as a spermicidal and ovicidal that works for up to twelve years. Another type of IUD is not wrapped in copper wire, “but instead contains low doses of hormones similar to birth control pills. The hormonal one can last up to five years.” The easy-to-understand information presented in this zine comes from all of the facts that Wrekk gathered from different pamphlets, doctors and nurses who know a lot about the subject, and any other information that she got on it while visiting Planned Parenthood for the insertion of her own IUD. After a quick discussion about the political aspects of getting an IUD in the United States, the second half of the zine veers away from a medical description of the IUD, to Wrekk’s personal experience. She describes the occurrence of pain from the insertion, and also the relief from knowing that she was pretty much set on birth control for the next ten to twelve years.

I was completely unfamiliar with the IUD prior to reading this zine. My friend who works for a feminist healthcare clinic read the zine and said that most of the medical information was right on, with a few variations in detail here and there. But the overall honesty of Wrekk’s experience, the simple language used to describe what an IUD is and why anyone would want one, as well as the appealing layout and concise gathering of information, makes this little zine a strong packet of good and accessible information. I only wish that _Brainscan #22 _could become available at every gynecologist’s office across the country.

Written by: Chelsey Clammer, February 9th 2008

Brainscan 21: Irreconcilable Differences

admin — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 01:59:00 +0000

By Alex Wrekk

In her riveting zine, Alex Wrekk writes in raw and powerful detail about her marriage to a man named J who dominates the relationship and systematically chips away at her self-esteem until she feels like a big zero, like she's the one who is crazy. (Projection and gaslighting are tactics of choice used by the cowardly abusers, but victims don’t usually "get it" until they are in way over their head.)

I believe no one can fully understand what a Herculean task escaping and recovering from abuse is unless they have traversed a twisted relationship personally. And emotional abuse is particularly insidious because of its lack of visibility. There are no black eyes and no scars to tell the tale. The scars are psychic and horrifically alienating—unless the victim talks to a good therapist and reads about this type of abuse pattern.

When I received this zine to review, I figured I’d read a few pages before going to sleep, but I couldn’t stop until I finished the whole story. This woman went above and beyond the call of duty and obligation to her marriage vows in trying to work things out, but, as with these cases, emotional abusers don’t really change. She finally gives up and sets out to save herself, and I wanted to shout “Yay!”

It’s a great story, very well paced, and Alex gets extra special reader points from me because of her guts in putting it out there. I also believe that as a writer, Alex benefits from her experience. In the process of excavating herself from the ruins, she wins the prize of a deeper, wiser soul.

Written by: Cheryl Reeves, August 11th 2007