Grace Herndon
Grace Herndon shares with us her work with the archive, both real and imagined.
Mixtape Zine
Welcome to The Casserole Series! I love when friends of friends join us. Can you tell us who you are?
GH: Hi, I’m so excited I was introduced to The Casserole Series by my friend Katie. My name is Grace and I’m a designer and photographer. I recently graduated from NC State with a master in graphic design and am not working at a design studio called Studio Science.
I often scroll through the Prelinger Archive and the Library of Congress Archive for fun. I was excited to see how you reworked the archival footage into a modern mode - the gif.
GH: I do this as well! Libraries are such an interesting overlap between collective memory and public access….there is really endless inspiration there. Online archives like the Library of Congress website are also such a weird and fun way to interact with the past.
The Wingdings in these images, an archival piece in and of itself and the precursor of emojis, oscillates between warning and censoring. I am thinking specifically of the couple dancing paired with the bomb and the tree trimmer with the solid circle.
GH: The symbols definitely walk that line. What I love about these little “repurposings” is that there are a few layers to read: the nostalgic imagery, the symbol, and the motion itself, all coupled with the made-for-instagram formatting which begs to be interpreted and consumed quickly and by many. Your interpretation of the bomb and the couple as a warning, maybe ominous, draws on the collective understanding of this pairing. I hadn’t thought of these symbols as censoring the clip behind them but it’s a really interesting thought...sort of a question of what you are missing vs. what you are being told. I like that.
The Mixtape Zine is such an incredible project! How did these collaborations come about?
Thank you! The best part about Mixtape is how organic it came to be. I started keeping a list on my phone of band names that came up in conversation...like when you’re trying on your friend’s ring and you say, “damn, it doesn’t fit because I have a chunky knuckle…” and it just hits you that “Chunky Knuckle” is the greatest two words ever put together and you have to write it down. A few months into the pandemic I realized I had a pretty long list of band names and that using them as design-prompts could be a really cool way to collaborate remotely and encourage people to make something!
What I find fascinating about the pairing of the two works, the gif and the zine, is your play with the archive: one real and one imagined.
I think it’s so great that you naturally saw a thread of “the archive” between these projects because I think it’s a thread that is present in most of my work that I don’t always even see myself. These projects sort of represent my personal push and pull relationship with the collective. First pulling and repurposing and then being able to collect and contribute. Haha, like I am always working somewhere between an old photograph and a homemade zine.
Recipe of the Week :
Great-Aunt Ruth Meredith’s Apricot Cheeseball
“From my grandmother, Jackie, from her sister, my great-aunt, Ruth Meredith. In her handwriting.” - Grace
