Liz Denys

I've been testifying at local public meetings for safer streets and more housing and affordable housing, and sometimes people ask me how they can do the same and what to expect. I decided to make a mini-zine that tries to demystify speaking up at public meetings:

All text in the zine is my own. I want to extend a huge thank you to Courtney Eckhardt for encouraging me to make this mini-zine!

This zine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, so you can copy and distribute this zine for noncommercial purposes in unadapted form as long as you give credit to me.

Check out the So you want to make a public comment! zine on the web or download the pdf to print here!

I've been biking in Brooklyn for a few years now! It's hard for me to believe it, but I'm one of the people other bicyclists ask questions to now. I decided to make a zine that answers the most common of those questions:

Bike Brooklyn! is a zine that touches on everything I wish I knew when I started biking in Brooklyn. A lot of this information can be found in other resources, but I wanted to collect it in one place. I hope to update this zine when we get significantly more safe bike infrastructure in Brooklyn and laws change to make streets safer for bicyclists (and everyone) over time, but it's still important to note that each release will reflect a specific snapshot in time of bicycling in Brooklyn.

All text and illustrations in the zine are my own. Thank you to Matt Denys, Geoffrey Thomas, Alex Morano, Saskia Haegens, Vishnu Reddy, Ben Turndorf, Thomas Nayem-Huzij, and Ryan Christman for suggestions for content and help with proofreading.

This zine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, so you can copy and distribute this zine for noncommercial purposes in unadapted form as long as you give credit to me.

Check out the Bike Brooklyn! zine on the web or download pdfs to read digitally or print here! Happy Earth Day!

I found inspiration for this pitcher's glaze design in the night sky.

Whenever I feel lost, I know I can always look up and be under the same night sky, no matter where I am. Whenever I feel alone, I know I can always look up and feel connected to humanity, everyone else looking up at the same sky. Whenever I feel all is lost, the vast darkness in the night sky reminds me there are so many possibilities out there that I haven't even thought of yet.

My studio practice is on a partial pause for an unknown amount of time right now; every piece I make is stuck in the greenware stage as I continue to save up to buy kilns and build out the glaze and kiln area. In some moments, this pause feels like a rare opportunity to take time to make more experimental and labor intensive pieces, but in other moments, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that pieces without a completion timeline on the horizon are just not worth doing.

It's easy to bask in fleeting bursts of inspiration; it's harder to push through the periods where nothing feels worth doing. It's especially when the waves of anxiety about the unknown future of my studio practice and the waves of anxiety about the direction of the US government and the future of my country come at me at the same time.

I try to ground myself, to keep myself from spiraling. I name things I can see, smell, hear.

At night, I look to the dark sky. When I can, I reread Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark:

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don't know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It's the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.

May we all find hope in the dark and choose to act.

When I was glazing this v60-style cone, I was thinking of rising sea levels, eroding beaches, and melting ice caps.

Trying to tackle large challenges like climate change is overwhelming in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. There are many things we can personally do to reduce our carbon footprints and fight climate change, but If we want to have any chance to succeed, we need to join together and organize. If you're new to organizing, connect with local groups already doing the work you're interested in, and don't forget to look for groups pushing for change outside of just the national stage.

Creating more dense walkable, transit-oriented communities is one of our strongest tools for a sustainable, climate friendly future. Generally, the bulk this work in the US happens at the state and local levels. In addition to the climate benefits, it's essential work to keep communities together and fight displacement.

I personally spend a lot of my spare time organizing locally around this issue to help ensure NYC and New York State stay places everyone can thrive. I focus especially on pro-housing policies and improving transportation options and reliability so climate-friendly, less car-dependent lifestyles - and New York's relative safety - can be for everyone.

Clay shrinks as it dries and even more as it's fired, so it's useful to have a way to estimate the final size of in-progress work - especially if you're making multiples or trying to fit pieces together. One way to do this is with shrinkage rulers. I figured I'd design my own shrinkage rulers and provide a way for folks to make them themselves since ceramic tool costs can add up.

To make your shrinkage rulers:

1. Download the shrinkage ruler set you need:
   • colorful set for letter size paper
   • black and white set for letter size paper
   • colorful set for A4 size paper
   • black and white set for A4 size paper
2. Print at 100% size. (These files are all 400 dpi.)
3. Verify that the 0% shrinkage standard ruler at the top matches the size of an existing regular ruler you have. This quick calibration step will make sure nothing got out of scale during printing!
4. Cut out your rulers.
5. Optionally, laminate or cover in packing tape to help them last longer.

To use your shrinkage rulers:

1. If you're using commercial clay, look up how much your clay is estimated to shrink. If you're using a blend of clays or custom clays, you'll have to calculate how much your clay shrinks. An easy way to do this is measure the length of a wet piece right after you form them and again after it's been through its glaze firing. You can then calculate the estimated shrinkage rate:
   
2. Pick the shrinkage ruler that corresponds to your clay's shrinkage rate. If you're between shrinkage rates, you can estimate with a nearby size. Remember that shrinkage rates are estimates, and a piece's actual shrinkage depends on many variables, including how wet your clay is and how close it is to it's original composition (this can change with repeated recycling).
3. Measure your wet piece with the shrinkage ruler! The length shown is the expected length your piece's dimension will be when fired.

The fine print:

1. Reminder that shrinkage rulers only give estimated lengths!
2. You're welcome to print these shrinkage rulers for yourself or your business. You may use the printed shrinkage rulers privately, even in commercial applications (I hope they help your ceramic art and business!), provided you do not redistribute (you can of course link to this page to tell people about them!) or resell the shrinkage rulers themselves in any form, digital or physical.