Zine Fest Houston

Don't miss the hands-on Houston event at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft this Saturday!

🌽MUD+CORN+STONE+BLUE🌽
CLOSING CELEBRATION
with & Friends!
This Saturday May 2, 2-5PM!

Mark your calendars for a festive afternoon celebrating the closing of "Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue" at Lawndale Art Center!

🌽 Check out the exhibition, then join Zine Fest Houston for a special one-page zine making activity inspired by the materials and ideas in the show!

🌽 Stick around to groove the afternoon away with tunes from , and enjoy FREE food and coffee (while supplies last) from .semillas and !

🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

It is with GREAT pleasure and giddy excitement that we announce our Featured Artist, JOSH RYAN!! A wonderful artist and designer, longtime friend of fest and valued community member, and an absolute gem of a human, we KNEW with all our honkin' hearts that he'd pick up the prompt and run with it. 🤡🎠🎪⭐

More about Josh: Josh Ryan is a designer and illustrator based in Houston, Texas. He creates products and visuals that connect people through shared experience, emotional vulnerability, and quirky humor. His work has been featured in the , , , , and on his mom's refrigerator.

When we tell you we all SCREAMED when we saw what he sent us... Y'all, it is gonna be a GOOD HONKIN' YEAR!!
🎈🎪🔴🧑🏻‍🩰🪭🪩🎠🎡🍿🎉 🌈

SOUND OFF IN THE CHAT WITH YOUR CLOWNSONA NOW 🫵🏻

🤡SAVE THE DATE!🤡


Saturday, November 21
12-6pm


With spring in full fling, we've already got tons of activities and events going on, so we wanted to be sure everyone had November 21st on your calendars for ZFH 2026! We will open registration in late summer, so stay tuned! :)

More exciting announcements and events to come!!!!

⭐ANNOUNCING THE ZFH 2026 THEME⭐

With 249 votes cast, the winner of the theme is….

🤡🍿🤸🏼‍♀️CIRCUS!!!🎪🎠🍬

Fun! Scary! Sad! Throught-provoking? Circuses as we know them have haunted our collective imagination and conscience for centuries. From the dazzling spectacle of the big top to the amusing (or disturbing) antics of clowns, strongmen, and acrobats, to the historically seamy underbelly of circus culture, this theme is FILLED with opportunities for excitement, joy, delight, and visual splendor!

The etymological ties to the round, open-air arenas of the Roman Empire seem timely, too. Histories often point to the increased use of circuses during the late Empire as distraction during times of turbulence, or political decay.

Interest in circus and carnivalesque themes has ebbed and flowed throughout history: from mummer shows of the medieval era to iconic French mimes to the down-and-out clowns of the Depression-era United States.

Today in 2026 we are in the midst of a new clown renaissance! Everyone from MUA influencers and artists, all the way to the most chronically online denizens have caught circus fever, and the only cure is THE HONKPILL. 🪿🤡

So let’s embrace the circus this year, with its transcendent liminality, its chaos and overstimulation, the sad and sorrowful histories that define it, and the collective decision to seek joy, and self-mastered amusement in the midst of a world trying its best to beat us into full fu***ng submission.

�LET’S CLOWN THE F**K OUT Y’ALL

.. And stay tuned for upcoming announcements about our 2026 festival date (as always at Orange Show Center for Visionary Art) and featured artist! honk honk!

It's that wonderful time of year again, y'all! The polls are OPEN for our theme! We've got some return categories and a new contender; which vibe do YOU want us to bring to this year's events?! The choices are:

👻 Spooky
🦖 Dinosaurs
🎪 Circus

VOTE NOW: https://forms.gle/Euh32MmpBmUBNo9V7

Points to those of you who can guess the references in the graphic... 😉

🎭 𝐋𝐨𝐅𝐢 𝐏𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐬 + 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐟𝐟: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐟𝐟-𝐎-𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜

𝟏 𝐏𝐌 | 𝟏𝟏/𝟏𝟓 | 𝐒𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐤 | 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬

A traveling variety show with plenty of puppets and all kinds of stuff. The audience picks the order of the pieces in the show so no two shows are fully identical. Watch us build the theater, do a fully unique show, then be on our way…all in around 45mins.

"Lo-fi puppets + stuff” is the result of the artistic partnership of Greg Cote and Alli Villines. As Main Maker of Stuff + Nonsense and Executive Whimsist respectively they create a great many pieces of home made short form puppetry. Their #1 goal is to make cool stuff with cool folks; at home and abroad.

Yeehaw!!!!the wait is over y'all!!!

🌵 Here’s the full Zine Fest Houston 2025 program! 🐴

🤠 Workshops, panels, performances, and a fashion show!

Stay tuned this week as we highlight each program!

For more details please visit our website!

YEEHAW! We are over the moon to finally release our Zine Fest Houston 2025 Vendor Roundup! 🤠🗺️🐴

Just about two weeks remain till we all gather 'round once again at the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art for , and it's gonna be one heckuva hoedown!

Stay tuned for more info on the upcoming festivities, and make sure to visit our website for the most up-to-date info and a full-size version of our festival map!

https://www.zinefesthouston.org/2025-vendor/