Art is a struggle between the personal voice and language, with its apparatuses of culture and ideologies, and art mediums with their genre laws—the human voice trying to outshout a roaring waterfall. Art is a sneak attack while the giant sleeps, a sleight of hands when the giant is awake [;] moving so quickly [,] they can do their deed before the giant swats them.
Our survival depends on being creative.
-Gloria Anzaldúa, “Haciendo caras, una entrada," The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Reader
Our survival depends on being creative.
-Gloria Anzaldúa, “Haciendo caras, una entrada," The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Reader
GlitterWurst Zine Distro
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View a sample of All In Your Head issue #2: Impairment here:
https://issuu.com/glitterwurstzines/docs/aiyh_complete Read Broken Pencil's review of All In Your Head issue #7: Queer Crip Futures here: https://brokenpencil.com/news/all-in-your-head-addresses-the-lived-experiences-of-chronic-pain-and-a-world-of-barriers/ 
Above left - Sam at a zine-building workshop hosted by Southern Feminist Collective in Denton, Texas. Summer 2015.
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Sam Schmitt founded GlitterWurst Zine Distro in 2014, a DIY zine collective that elevates the artistry of LGBTQIA+ disabled and neurodivergent creatives, and currently serves as the head zine artist/layout artist. GlitterWurst is a response the inacessibility of the global zine community and an effort to collectivize trans and queer disabled artists and creatives.
To date, GlitterWurst Distro has published over eight issues of the collaborative zine, All in Your Head: Queerness, Neurodiversity, and Disability and two issues of FAT ASS: Fat Queer and Trans Activist Zine. Other zine titles include: Trans Media Revolution Ultra Mini Zine, Queer Crip Media Revolution, SNAPSHOTS, and RoundRough/ThickThin perzine. Sam's work asserts that a "good artist"/"good writer" is a deeply classist, racist, sexist, ableist concept that must be transformed to expand our artistry and social justice praxis. Sam's zines appear in many notable zine archives and collections such as Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP), Barnard College, McNabb Archive, Hennepin County Libraries, Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC), Indiana University, Hampshire College, Marriott Library and more.
Above right - Cover art for RoundRough/ThickThin #2: Writings about Fat Trans and Queer Pregnancy; Detail of drawing for a perzine "Northbound 394: What Was in My Backpack When I Left Home."
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Mixed Media Art Samples
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When not making zines, Sam enjoys tinkering with bold patterns, acrylic paints, textiles, cut-n-paste collage, lost-and-found junk, and whatever else interests them. Common themes in Sam's art include: gendered embodiment, chronic illness, queerness, trans identity, queer ecologies, and art-as-activism. 
Top left: "Like Glass," mixed medium (acrylic, recycled clear glass, orange and blue costume rhinestones, aluminum keys, nylon, latex), 2014.
Top right: "Training Bra," mixed medium (acrylic, cotton, plastic flowers, brass locks, aluminum-alloy safety pins), 2014. Middle left: "Fat and Trans Self Portrait," watercolor, 2019. Middle right: "Power to the People," embroidery, 2015. Bottom: Sample Images from the Queer Cat Tarot Deck (forthcoming, 2022). |
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