When you think of “hair art,” you probably don’t imagine the beautiful, delicate jewelry of Melanie Bilenker, who creates tiny line drawings using locks of her own hair, then casts them into brooches, pendants, and rings. The new issue of Broken Pencil hipped me to Bilenker, whose inspiration lies with the Victorians, who “kept lockets of hair and miniature portraits painted with ground hair and pigment to secure the memory of a lost love,” she explains on her website. “In much the same way, I secure my memories through photographic images rendered in lines of my own hair, the physical remnants.”

One of the most striking things about Bilenker’s work is what memories she chooses to capture—“quiet minutes, the mundane, the domestic, the ordinary moments.” Moments like stepping into the bathtub, rifling around in the fridge, buttoning a shirt, tending to plants. It’s moving, somehow, to see such mundane moments so lovingly rendered.

Source: Broken Pencil

Images courtesy of Melanie Bilenker.

Right now I’m killing the third person. With this very blog post, I am contributing to the sneaky, first-person narrative trend that currently runs our written world (and by reading this, so are you). According to Nathaniel G. Moore in Broken Pencil, we’ve all been too busy talking about ourselves to notice the third person slipping beneath the pages of time.

Moore investigates the opinions of several literary aces and provides a multi-faceted look at why we're  so obsessed with “I” these days. Here are a few of their thoughts:

Writers don’t seem to want the excess baggage of a big, baggy, third person story or novel. The standard compulsions of the third person author seem outdated, less cheeky and immediate, than the prattle of a typical first person present narrator. —Spencer Gordon

Lately I have been seduced by the first-person siren song, because for some reason this point of view lets me write meaner people, which is exciting since I usually go for characters on the nicer end of the spectrum. —Jessica Westhead

When people write about what they know, they install themselves in the story with devastating first person results. It comes down to laziness. Pure and utter laziness. —Gradey Alexander

Source: Broken Pencil 

Image by My Buffo, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Alt Wire is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Broken Pencil editor Lindsay Gibb.

I started making zines when I was 15 and I stapled my last page when I was 21. A short run by comparison to other zine-makers who, when one zine is played out, start up a new title, and who foresee no end to the zine as their means of creative output. And while I read new zines on a daily basis, I recently when stumbled upon Teri Vlassopoulos’s blog and was brought back  to the days when I used to make my own. Vlassopoulos was the creator of Melt the Snow. It was one of my favorite zines in the ‘90s, and she uses her blog to talk about zine history, Canadian lit mags and books she’s recently dug into. She also writes about zinemaking in Shameless magazine’s new anthology She’s Shameless which is due out at the end of June.  

When I’m not reading or writing about zines I’m usually knitting. I’m relatively new to knitting—only 5 years in the game—but the obsession swelled quickly in me. Some of the best social networking sites I’ve found for knitters include Ravelry—where you can share patterns, organize your projects using the sites cataloguing tools and show your latest creations to other users and Men Who Knit—where male knitters can create profiles and blog about their projects. Church of Craft is, of course, a great example of a way to not only connect knitters and other crafters online, but also to lure them off the web and into workshops, craft retreats and stitch and bitch nights in various cities. And whether you care about knitting or not, Thread Banger's recent "DIY Roundup" of the funniest knitting patterns on the net is definitely worth a look.

Since I write about documentary filmmaking on the side, and I’m a David Lynch fan, those two things combined have me interested in Lynch’s Interview Project, in which takes a trip across America to meet regular folks and talk to them about their lives. As Lynch says “it’s something that’s human and you can’t stay away from it.”

I wanted to give an honorable mention to the sites I frequent when I really don’t want to be productive for a half hour: Fuck You Penguin, CakeWrecks and Totally Looks Like.

Bio: Lindsay Gibb is the editor of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. She is based in Toronto where she is also a staff writer for Realscreen, a trade magazine for documentary filmmakers, and an associate editor and co-founder of Spacing magazine, which examines Toronto’s urban landscape. Watch for Can’tLit: Fearless Fiction from Broken Pencil, to be published by ECW Press in Fall 2009.

Utne Reader librarian Danielle Maestretti shares the highlights (and occasional lowlights) of what's landing in our library each week in 'Shelf Life.'

Utne's library is abuzz with a steady flow of 1,300 magazines, journals, weeklies, zines, and other dispatches from the cultural front that are rarely found in big-box bookstores, or newsstands.

Featured in this week's episode:

- enRoute on Icelandic cuisine

- Science News on “The Dating Go Round”

- A special issue of Southwest Review featuring modern fiction by Arab women (not available online)

- Zine excerpts and Canadian tabloids in Broken Pencil (not available online)

- Nuclear Energy Insight on how a nuclear power plant became a “refuge” for sea turtles 

Sources: enRoute, Science News, Southwest Review, Broken Pencil, Nuclear Energy Insight

For film buffs dying to see a new documentary but short on change, the Canadian magazine Broken Pencil offers a fun little three-point plan for stealthily infiltrating film festivals in its Summer How-To Issue.

Fiona Clarke suggests that smaller film fests are more opportune for creating mock passes, but “don’t put yourself too high on the totem pole, someone might actually ask you a question.” She says the trick is to create an identity that is “simultaneously vague and with a hint of hyperbole to guarantee confused acceptance.”

If you can’t gain access with your “official pass,” why not try a disguise? Clarke suggests transforming into a tradesperson:

If you can pass as an electrician or plumber, use this. Get a small toolbox or equipment bag, look haggard and confused at the long line of people waiting at the theatre and walk up to the front. Dismissively inform the FOH manager of a “building issue” that the theatre management has called you in about and you were told you should be let through.

Plan B: You can be a courier that has “an urgent delivery of ‘paper-tape.’”

Clarke warns that building infiltration is highly tricky, but “most festivals in big cities rely on old, large movie houses for their screenings. These old theatres contain all manner of surprise entrances and hidden areas.” For additional tips, crack open a copy of All Access Areas, a book by the creator of Infiltration, a zine about “going places that you’re not supposed to go.”

But getting caught will come with a price (and it might be more than a festival ticket), so Clarke advises that it’s probably best to pony up for a ticket or else volunteer. We agree. While events like Sundance can spare a few lost dollars, your local film fest probably can’t.