what is ‘landforms’?
landforms is a self-published zine/journal, curated and designed by hannah ladesic, with contributions from community.
this publication is a space to explore how our creative ways of life (craft, foodways, medicine ways, song, dance, etc.) are shaped + informed by, and built with + around, our landscapes. or, how [connection to] land forms creative pieces + practices.
landforms is a self-published zine/journal, curated and designed by hannah ladesic, with contributions from community.
this publication is a space to explore how our creative ways of life (craft, foodways, medicine ways, song, dance, etc.) are shaped + informed by, and built with + around, our landscapes. or, how [connection to] land forms creative pieces + practices.
how can I engage with this project?
issue one is in the works and will hopefully be completed by the winter solstice. if you’d like to contribute to future issues, please sign up for the email list below.
1. if you’d like to stay in the loop, sign up for an email list here. in an effort to keep the publication as analog as possible, I don’t plan to have a social media or web presence (beyond this site). I promise that emails will be very infrequent.
2. share this with people you think may be interested!
if you have other thoughts on ways you may like to be involved, or have questions about contributing, send me a message and I’ll be in touch.
issue one is in the works and will hopefully be completed by the winter solstice. if you’d like to contribute to future issues, please sign up for the email list below.
1. if you’d like to stay in the loop, sign up for an email list here. in an effort to keep the publication as analog as possible, I don’t plan to have a social media or web presence (beyond this site). I promise that emails will be very infrequent.
2. share this with people you think may be interested!
if you have other thoughts on ways you may like to be involved, or have questions about contributing, send me a message and I’ll be in touch.
thoughts / questions as jumping off points for possible contributions:
how do rituals of making influence your connection to the landscapes around you? how do the landscapes you move through influence your rituals of making? reciprocal dialogue between place and your creative practice.
how would you talk about / write about your connection to the land on which you live or work or steward?
as craftfolk- what is your relationship to the materials you work with in your craft practice? what does it mean to be an artist residing in a particular place / landscape? a sort of “artist in residence” of your landscape.
wisdom / resilience in practices that come out of deep connection to place / indigenous land teachings
how does seasonality play a role in your creative practice? what is your relationship to the seasons?
the flipside of many of these things: what do we lose when we live our lives disconnected from the landscapes around us? what does this disconnect mean for our creative work?
how capitalism / globalization / consumerism / american imperialism has made much of the “modern” built/created world more or less the same – certain amount of loss of regional specificity.
re-situatuating / re-localizing ourselves + ways of life
loss of connection / reconnecting ourselves to processes behind the tools/objects/things we use + eat + wear
connecting what we may think of as just “objects” back to their roots as once natural materials
contributions could take the form of:
short essays, short stories, poems, series of questions, observations, artwork (comics, drawings, prints, etc.), photo series, album or book recommendations, other fun stuff that I can’t think of, but you can...
as this is a new and micro-scale project, I don’t currently have funds for monetarily compensating contributors (perhaps that will be part of the picture someday). I do want to make sure contributors feel their time / skills / pieces are valued! If you contribute, you’ll definitely receive a finished copy or a few.
why ‘landforms’?
I don’t think there has to be a particular reason for the name, beyond liking it, though it does mean a bit more to me. and sharing might help round out the picture of my vision for this project.
for a while I was thinking of the phrase, “ how [connection to] land shapes [fill in the blank]” [craft, music, foodways, medicine ways, rites and rituals, etc.]−folkways, more broadly. I didn’t like “land shapes” or “landshaped,” though it didn’t feel far off.
i’ve also been thinking about the french concept of “terroir”− which Eat Like the French describes as “the unique combination of environmental and human factors that give food and wine their distinct flavor: soil composition, climate, topography, farming traditions, and, crucially, the skill and care of the people producing it.” my hope is that this publication captures that same idea with a broader lens beyond food to also include craft traditions (which I am thinking of as things people make−baskets, buildings, spoons, songs, the like).
at some point the word(s) landform(s) came to me and felt like it could be right. Wikipedia desribes landforms (think mountains, valleys, hills, plains, plateaus) as being “categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as their creating process, shape, elevation, slope, orientation, rock exposure, and soil type.” how fluctuations in the environment and atmosphere create distinct physical manifestations of earth. I wish to pull on the same threads, to explore how distinct attributes of place inform / shape what people make in the places they are connected to.
and i like how it sounds, so landforms it is.
land forms craft. land forms ritual. land forms us.
will the issues have themes? they might, eventually. for the first issue, I’m keeping it pretty open-ended to see what will emerge. I’m excited to see what throughlines might show up in the submissions, and for the process of finding them. run wild with the prompts!
I’m really interested in the ways this project will be formed by the people who participate in its creation.
what will the printed piece look like?
still TBD, though I already can’t wait to create it. I want to keep it as minimal waste / environmentally conscious as I can, which I’m thinking may mean one ink color for the content on recycled paper (which may be important to keep in mind with visual submissions). I may get them risograph printed at a local shop. I am a tactile / analog person by nature, and in my own practice have played around a lot with handmade papermaking, letterpress printing, natural pigment making and bookbinding−I’m not yet sure how these techniques may or may not show up in the first issue. I’m thinking on it, since I’d like to incorporate some of them, somehow. I really want the finished piece to be relatively financially accessible to folks, which will likely mean something simpler, with some possible add-on ephemera. I dream about some sort of blend of Country Women Magazine (a rad feminist magazine from the 70‘s made in
Northern CA), Emergence Magazine, and The New Farmer’s Almanac−highly recommend checking all of these out if you haven’t read or interacted with them.
to be honest it feels a little odd to have a webpage like this for what I hope to be a very tactile project, though I know it’s necessary to get the word out and collect contributions. the design of this page is intentionally sparse as I don’t feel like ‘landforms’ has much of a ‘form’ / identity yet, and I don’t want to define it very much at this stage. this page will change as the project takes shape!
expectations:
I expect the making of the first issue may be a clunky process as I learn how to take this from concept to printed piece. I have never made a collaborative self-published thing before! though I have written quite a few things and designed quite a few things. I am excited about how much I’m bound to learn through this process, and will take very good notes for any subsequent issues (which I hope there will be...) I expect this project may evolve quite a bit over time, and look forward to the many forms it may take. I expect that when I’m holding the collaboratively made printed piece in my hands (ah will this moment happen? I can only hope!) the piece will be much more wild and magical than anything I could have concocted alone. I hope the creation process and finished piece will spark a conversation, or many.
to be honest it feels a little odd to have a webpage like this for what I hope to be a very tactile project, though I know it’s necessary to get the word out and collect contributions. the design of this page is intentionally sparse as I don’t feel like ‘landforms’ has much of a ‘form’ / identity yet, and I don’t want to define it very much at this stage. this page will change as the project takes shape!
expectations:
I expect the making of the first issue may be a clunky process as I learn how to take this from concept to printed piece. I have never made a collaborative self-published thing before! though I have written quite a few things and designed quite a few things. I am excited about how much I’m bound to learn through this process, and will take very good notes for any subsequent issues (which I hope there will be...) I expect this project may evolve quite a bit over time, and look forward to the many forms it may take. I expect that when I’m holding the collaboratively made printed piece in my hands (ah will this moment happen? I can only hope!) the piece will be much more wild and magical than anything I could have concocted alone. I hope the creation process and finished piece will spark a conversation, or many.
what will your (hannah’s) role be in this project?
right now, I am envisioning that I will coordinate + curate submissions, design the publication, and coordinate printing and distribution. I am very open to / excited about the possibillity of this changing into more of a collaborative and community-made project. I’m also planning to contribute a piece of my own to each issue :-)
right now, I am envisioning that I will coordinate + curate submissions, design the publication, and coordinate printing and distribution. I am very open to / excited about the possibillity of this changing into more of a collaborative and community-made project. I’m also planning to contribute a piece of my own to each issue :-)
who are you?
who are you? I’m genuinely so curious who this might reach other than my friends ;-)
who are you? I’m genuinely so curious who this might reach other than my friends ;-)
my name is hannah ladesic (I use she/her pronouns) and I am a craftsperson + designer + farmer + occasional writer + community organizer + old-time musician + aspiring carpenter + incessant question asker + experienced rambler + a lot of other things shaped by many people and places. I am a recent transplant to the Piedmont of North Carolina, doing a combination of the previously listed things.
I have been dreaming up some sort of collaboratively made printed publication for a long while now. the combination of some new life circumstances (living in a new place I am loving getting to know), the frankly quite terrifying direction the country I live in seems to be going and a feeling of wanting to double down on creative work + skill sharing + systems interrogating + world building as those in power wish to distract / numb us and lead us to despair, and being on the cusp of turning thirty have together made it feel like the right moment to offer this idea out into the world. I think about Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “I live my life in widening circles....” very often, and creating something like this feels like a new circle which encompasses many smaller circles of curiosity/interest in my life−design, publishing, printed works, ecology, connection to place, collaborative creative processes. I am (in)famously known for starting many things which sometimes / often are sort of one-off things−though I’m curious if this might be something that sticks around a little longer... we will see what forms it takes.
I have been dreaming up some sort of collaboratively made printed publication for a long while now. the combination of some new life circumstances (living in a new place I am loving getting to know), the frankly quite terrifying direction the country I live in seems to be going and a feeling of wanting to double down on creative work + skill sharing + systems interrogating + world building as those in power wish to distract / numb us and lead us to despair, and being on the cusp of turning thirty have together made it feel like the right moment to offer this idea out into the world. I think about Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “I live my life in widening circles....” very often, and creating something like this feels like a new circle which encompasses many smaller circles of curiosity/interest in my life−design, publishing, printed works, ecology, connection to place, collaborative creative processes. I am (in)famously known for starting many things which sometimes / often are sort of one-off things−though I’m curious if this might be something that sticks around a little longer... we will see what forms it takes.
I hope to get to know you, whoever you are.
do you have thoughts or questions? I would love to attempt to answer them. email me here.