Artist Profile: Ashley Hartman Annis
Ashley Hartman Annis (they / she) is a birthworker, fertility/reproduction educator and somatic practitioner in Madison, WI. She has a zine-of-the-month club to share reproductive health information.
1) What is one of your first memories of engaging with a zine?
Honestly, I can’t really remember my first zine encounter, but it was probably at Rainbow Books in Madison when that was still around. Seeing other people's zines has always made me feel like, “Oh I could totally do that." Not that I could say/make what other people are saying/making, but the messy/DIY/sometimes thrown-together vibe of zines has always helped in sidestepping my inner critic/perfectionist. I think I felt really relieved to encounter something that was published and "done-enough" out in the world.
From Ashley’s site: a zine issue about boundaries.
2) What led you to decide to make and share out a zine exploring the topics you do? How did you land on the form?
When I started teaching classes on menstrual cycle tracking in 2015ish, I was trying to figure out a way to organize all the info and diagrams I was using in my classes. I’ve always been a hard-copy-kinda-gal, so I typed up a little booklet (the sort of standard zine size: 11.5 x 8 inch paper folded in half and stapled) for my students. It was tricky for me to get the layout and formatting right though (= this was before Canva. Because things never quite lined up on the page how I wanted them, I ended up re-doing the whole booklet and drawing everything by hand. This allowed me to move things around the pages exactly how I wanted them. Since then, I’ve pretty much always hand-drawn all my zines!
At some point, I realized there were a lot of other topics/info I wanted my students to have access to, but didn’t necessarily want to teach in my classes. I then started making some more ‘stand-alone’ zines. At the time, I was also going back to school to finish my undergrad degree and made a few zines as final projects for some classes too — from there, I just kept going!
I can’t remember when I made my first mini zine (one piece of paper that ends up as an 8-page zine). I do know it was a little thank-you note to include when people ordered things from my Etsy store. Eventually, I realized I loved this format—it was so easy to print; didn’t require staples; the layout was always consistent — It just felt really good. I started turning all my favorite fertility/reproduction topics into these bite-sized mini zines and was getting some good feedback from clients and friends. I started my zine of the month club in 2019, and since then. I’ve made a new mini zine each month! Having a list of subscribers who are waiting for a zine every month is good motivation to keep making them.
I love how simple the mini zine is, but how there’s still so much you can say. It's also helpful for me to have the hard boundary of 8 pages—I can organize my thoughts more easily that way and it also forces me to cut out anything that isn't essential. Now I pretty much only make mini zines.
From Ashley’s Body Books site.
3) In what other ways does art overlap with the work you do in reproductive care and somatic practices?
In some ways they're inseparable for me at this point. Birth, abortion, miscarriage, trauma, body-tracking…these topics can be a lot for people to integrate amd process and I think art/zines help to make that information more digestible. In trauma/somatic work, we talk a lot about titration — the idea that there's only so much info our minds and bodies can take in at one time, and that it's important to take breaks and pace ourselves appropriately to keep our nervous system from getting overwhelmed. Using art and zines as a way to teach, plus talk about, these topics is a way of titrating, I think. It's like it can sorta seep in slowly and gently versus getting smacked in the face with a bunch of info. It's just more fun that way too.
4) What are 2 to 3 exhibitions, concerts, books and/or book talks, spoken word events and/or films you're hoping to check out this spring in Wisconsin or virtually?
Madison has an awesome zine fest every April called Print & Resist. I'm excited to have a table there, as well as have a chance to check out what everyone else is making and doing.