Eulalia #3
Hope Amico
Gutwrench Press
2020

4.25 × 5 in. closed
32 pages
Binding: Dos-à-dos sewn with a 3-hole pamphlet stitch
Letterpress cover and laser insides

Eulalia #3 is the third in a series of zines which center on the generative constraint of Amico’s practice – the content for each themed issue is completed in a single sitting. In reality, the series is less rigid than it sounds. Issue two came out twenty years after issue one, and this third issue is a double issue. The zine’s dos-à-dos structure accommodates two themes, a Before side dealing with grief and healing and an After side about new love and friendship. Although these two sections were produced in two different sittings, Eulalia #3 retains a key feature of the series – a stark yet complicated division between the initial content creation and the subsequent production of a publication to carry that content. This manner of production, in concert with the zine’s form and content, speaks to the importance of storytelling as a way to make sense of life.

Amico works to emphasize the division and juxtaposition inherent in the dos-à-dos structure. Though each section has its own title, the colophon refers to them as Before and After, which clarifies the sequence for the reader and connects the spacial and temporal functions of the book form. Both sides feature a framed 2.5 × 3-inch composition of text and image on each page, but they are visually opposite. Before is printed in black and white, After is printed in color. Compositions in Before are framed by white borders, while the pages in After are black. Both sections use hand-written text, but the image-making varies from mainly drawing in Before to collage in After. The decision to gather these two sequences in a single publication only to then play up the contrasts between them calls attention to the role of the author, to the way Amico’s reflections on themes and events construct the narrative that is ultimately available to the reader.

The straightforward chronology of before and after is challenged by the letterpress-printed titles on each cover. The title on the front cover (Before) is if i could tell my then self something now…, and thus reverses time as well as the roles of author and reader. The zine’s actual reader is left to eavesdrop on the cryptic confessions and consolations of Amico’s past and present selves. Yet the intimate pull of the second person address is powerful, and the reader can almost forget over the course of sixteen pages that they are not the you to whom Amico is speaking. This voyeuristic tension is heightened by the recurring theme of public displays of emotion in regard to grief, heartbreak and healing. One spread reads, “in the silence, all I had drowned resurfaced. / IF YOU’RE NOT CRYING AT WORK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY YOU MIGHT BE A MONSTER / it’s all too much.”

Of course, we don’t give advice to our past selves to change anything; we do so to reflect on the trajectory of our lives, to find patterns, identify critical moments and learn for the future. We use narrative because there is a difference between story and plot, and meaning lies in the latter. The second section of Eulalia #3 references another way of doing this – Tarot. The social media sign-off of writer and Tarot card reader, Michelle Embree, serves as the title: BIG LOVE. BE BLESSED. Equally intimate, the After side is far more hopeful than Before with themes of new love and friendship. Still Amico focuses on the gap between the story (what is) and the narrative (what we notice): “Something dormant awakened. / A SURPRISE / LAID BARE IN HINDSIGHT.” Elsewhere references to numerology and life’s great questions place Amico’s personal experiences in dialogue with more universal manifestations of the same challenge, to make meaning out of events we cannot control.

The sense that the narrative is pieced together from separate moments is furthered by the consistent and self-contained compositions. The margins around each page and the undisturbed gutters between them nevertheless permit a sophisticated approach to sequence and rhythm. The visual content remains firmly on one page or another, but ideas can play out within a page, across a spread, or through the turn of a page. There is always a relationship between the verso and recto, but it is never the same. Amico achieves as much variety as the relatively short sequences can unify into a cohesive expression through simple formal devices. Among these, the timing of the writing and the sense of depth in the drawn and collaged imagery are especially effective. Together text and image create a relatable experience for the reader within the psychic space of the artist’s interiority.

The zine’s materiality however testifies to the constructedness of this experience. The juxtaposition of black and white and color printing reminds the reader that Eulalia #3 resulted from two distinct art-making events, and that its pages offer only mediated access to the original thirty-two compositions. In the After section, the dimensionality of Amico’s collages is visible but absent to the touch. Nowhere is this more apparent than the inclusion of pink thread sewn into the collages, echoing the book’s pink pamphlet stitch. This detail quite literally ties together the book even as it widens the gap between its creator and its reader, between reality and facsimile. The covers play with the same tension by placing paper and print production at odds with one another. The letterpress-printed titles imply an edition of multiples, while the pink patterned paper evokes a scrapbook, a private object rather than a publication intended for distribution. These material contradictions ultimately raise questions about what constitutes the work and who it is for. Is the finished zine the primary work or merely documentation of the durational performance in which Amico generated the content of its pages?

In either case, the clarifying power of narrative is central to Eulalia #3, for the reader and the artist alike. Just as the zine synthesizes a cohesive reading experience from two separate art-making sessions, so too do those sessions bring thematic and chronological order to the artist’s disparate memories and emotions. That Amico returned to Eulalia for a second issue after twenty years shows the value of structuring one’s thoughts through a publication. The dos-à-dos structure of this third issue elegantly inhabits the messy space between life and narrative, embodying both linear and cyclical time. Eulalia #3 fully engages the ways that grief and friendship and romance color one another despite the bargains we strike with our past and future selves.

Zines are ideal for exploring such deeply personal themes because they bridge the public and private, magazine and diary. Amico seems comfortable breaking down those barriers, whether crying at work or publishing Eulalia. Readers will no doubt be grateful for a place to turn to when it’s all too much.