Foggybottom Press

title: White Rice Fish

creator: Wai Au

date: 2009

pages: 28

web: hois.evilsmile.net

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In her description of this personal, art zine, Wai describes the initial prompt that led to White Rice Fish. But it’s not a prerequisite for understanding the zine, so I’ll forgo that detail. The cover is block-printed, and the images inside are like zoom-ins of individual comic panels, dynamic and narrative. The words in this zine are few, with only a narrow sidebar allotted to them in each page.

The pages are flash images of her childhood, each square capturing the essence of that particular moment. The angles are varied and interesting, almost like candid photos captured askew by a kid. Wai’s lines are simple and clean while still filling a scene with detail.

For me, it’s very much a nostalgia zine, with a lot sights and sibling shenanigans familiar to me. The pages aren’t meant to be a continuous narrative, so the images that follow one another aren’t in any kind of sequence. They are as memories are, random and fragmented. But unlike memories, they’re not hazy. Each one is very acute and present in their depiction.

You can actually preview all the illustrations for this zine sans words in Wai Au’s web gallery. You’ll also find a link there to where you can get a copy.

sipping:  water
nibbling:  chocolate wafers