This collection is located on site.
This collection has no restrictions.
To access the textile/artifacts, please contact rbml@columbia.edu.
All original copies of audio / moving image media / born digital materials are closed until reformatting. Please email rbml@columbia.edu.
The collection also includes an extensive amount of digital material which has been preserved but has not been processed. Please contact the RBML at rbml@columbia.edu to discuss access options.
The collection documents Fly's personal life, artistic career, history of the countercultures, and the squat movement in the Lower East Side neighborhood in New York City. The papers consist of original comics, zines, illustrations, ephemera, printed materials, personal and house documents, teaching materials, journals and sketchbooks, photographs, textile art, memorabilia, born-digital, and videos and sound recordings.
Series I: Production materials, 1973-2022, bulk 1993-2011
Series consists of production materials for various comics, zines, publications, commissions, and projects by Fly.
Subseries I.1 contains original artwork and copies from Fly's comix, zines, illustrations, and other original works. Materials comprise original art and the creative process of her work including pencil, inked, or colored, and printed versions of her comics, zines, and illustrations. Fly's major work include Maggot Zine (monthly postcard zine), 1986-1996; In Doctrine Nation, 1991; You're in Your Urine, 1992; Meanwhile, 1993; In Doctrine Nation CalmIck, 1994; All Stressed Up with Nuthin to Throw, 1995; The Dystopiation of Sobriety, 1996; Italian Translation of In Doctrine Nation CalmIck, 1997; Puke Junk and Hit the Fan, 1997; Girl Gang (mini-comic), 1998; Dumpster Diving Flipbook, 1998; Fuck the Shut Up, 1999; CHRON!IC!RIOTS!PA!SM!, 1998; PEOPs, 2003. Fly's comics and illustrations were featured in various newspapers and magazine publications, mostly based in the New York City area such as the New York Press, Maximum Rocknroll (MRR), Village Voice, New Yorker, World War III Illustrated, Raygun, Bikini Magazine, Slug and Lettuce, $pread Magazine, Ugly Planet, Herizons, etc. Fly also illustrated for various books, CD Albums, and Music Videos for punk musicians and bands such as Roger Manning, Morning Glory, and Hungry March Band. Also see Series II. Printed Materials for published versions of Fly's comics and zines.
Subseries I.2 contains original art and zines by others in collaboration with Fly and/or collected by Fly.
Subseries I.3 contains production materials for flyers, handouts, stickers, and other ephemera created and collected by Fly for events, gigs, and shows. Materials emphasize on Fly's art circulated within the punk, squat, art community, and her interest and involvement in the counterculture communities, grass-root organizations, and political and social issues at the time. Materials also include flyers for political activism, social and community events, concerts, shows, parties, and protests within the Lower East Side neighborhood. Also included are flyers and posters for God is My Co-Pilot and other bands they toured with in Europe from 1995 to 1997. Materials also overlap with Series VI: Squat and House files since many of the flyers she collected and created were for the Squat community and neighborhood.
Subseries I.4 contains exhibition files of works by Fly. Many of the exhibitions were held internationally as well as in the United States. Exhibition at ABC No Rio, a performance and art center in the Lower East Side community was the most frequent. Materials include exhibition items from I AM FROM LOWER EAST SIDE, UNREAL ESTATE SHOW at ABC NO RIO, The politics of endurance: the art of fly, and others. Also see Series III: Personal, for loan agreements which documents materials used in other exhibitions. Additional exhibition materials can also be found in Series I: Production materials as some materials were grouped together during processing.
Subseries I.5 includes reference and research materials for Fly's artworks; they serve as inspiration for her comics, zines, and illustrations.
Series II: Printed Materials, 1965-2020
Series consists of graphic novels, comics, zines, books, newspapers, and magazines collected by Fly. Materials include her book publications, publications which she collaborated with others, contributed, and collected. Many of the publications are radical and underground periodicals featuring Fly's work or collected by Fly. Major topics and issues highlighted in the materials include counterculture movements, punk, underground music scene, sex work, socialist, anarchist, left wing politics, grass root organizations, region specific publications, incarceration, anti-nukes movements, anti-war, activists, marijuana legalization, protests, squatters, feminists, artists, and writers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Also included are neighborhood newspapers from the Lower East Side, such as the East Villager and Villager, both featuring Fly's PEOPs portraits in the collected issues, highlighting community individuals and news from the neighborhood.
Series III: Personal, 1987-2023
Series comprises materials relating to Fly's personal life. Materials include Fly's personal files, datebooks, address books, journals, sketchbooks, correspondence, writings, interviews, press files, and band files.
Subseries III.1 consists of resumes, business cards, awards, fellowship applications, contracts and royalties, consignments, financial records, to-do lists, records relating to sales and exhibitions, etc.
Subseries III.2 consists of incoming and outgoing correspondence, dating from 1991 to 2022. Most of the correspondence is related to zine exchanges, art exchanges, fan letters, comic and zine requests, holiday cards, postcards, and letters from her fellow artistic friends and collaborators. Some of the highlights in the correspondence include drawings, exchange art on envelopes, and the correspondence zine collaboration with X-Dog and Jonny Melvin Reed, who worked with Fly on the comic, In*side*out, which was published in World War 3 Illustrated in 1996.
Subseries III.3 includes datebooks and address books that Fly has collected over the years. The datebooks and calendars include notes on her daily schedules and to do items. The address books include lists of people she has contacts to.
Subseries III.4 comprises journals and sketchbooks Fly created to document her personal and artistic life. The journals include writings about her daily experience, sometimes a combination of a written and visual journal with drawings, collages, paintings, scribbles, poetry, dreams, thoughts, stories, and other experiments. While Fly was traveling, she would constantly draw her new surroundings and write down thoughts and information about whatever she found interesting. Through the journals, many containing drawings and sketches, they document the progress of the building she was living in and the Lower East Side neighborhood. They also provide a space for Fly to visualize her life, experiences, hopes, and her living space with a bigger picture. The sketchbooks include drawings, sketches, ideas, and roughs of her production materials.
Subseries III.5 includes published and unpublished manuscripts written and/or collected by Fly, interviews, press files, and materials relating to her music career as a bassist and vocalist for God is My Co-Pilot during the mid 1990s and her solo band Zero Content. Materials include band publicity files, setlists, music notes, and so on. Additional band related materials can be found in Series I: Production Materials, Subseries I.3: Events, Gigs, Shows; Series II: Printed materials, and Series VIII: Born Digital and Audio and Moving Images for media content.
Series IV: Teaching, 2002-2007
Series comprises course materials on how to make DIY comix and zines, as well as comics and zines created by students from the classes. Starting in the early 2000s, Fly taught various DIY comix and zine-making classes at MOCCA Festival.
Series V: Lower East Side Girls Club Comics with Fly, 2003-2022
The Lower East Side Girls Club was founded in 1995 by a group of neighborhood women to address the lack of opportunities for girls in a community that has supported three full-service boys clubs for generations. Fly started teaching art, comics/zines, printmaking at the Lower East Side Girls Club from 2014 to 2022. The materials in this series include class materials, syllabus, sample art and zines created by Fly, and comix, zines, and art created by the girls at the LES Girls Club.
Series VI: Squat and House Files, 1977-2017
Series comprises ephemera, articles, historic and legal documents relating to squat houses, homesteaders, and community spaces within the neighborhood, and specifically house and meeting files relating to 209 East 7th Street in New York's Lower East Side neighborhood. Documents include materials relating to the construction, renovations, evictions, fires of the building she was squatting and the surrounding squat settlements in the Lower East Side neighborhood. Also included are materials relating to various organized events, activism, and other homesteaders.
Fly arrived in NYC LES in 1988 and permanently started living at 209 E7th street in 1990. Squatting community has developed along the same lines as a homesteading movement, idea of long term occupation and permanent housing. 209 is a homestead style squat, meaning DIY renovating the building as a long term commitment. Fly also squatted a space at ABC No Rio at 156 Rivington Street in 1990 for about 6 months. She was heavily involved with advocating for ABC No Rio, as it serves a space for all ages punk and hardcore shows, community exhibition space, workshops, and an essential part of the punk community. Also see Series VII: Photographs for additional materials.
Series VII: Photographs and Slides, 1986-2006, undated
Series includes photographs, digital prints, negatives, slides, and polaroids. Some of the photographs were portrayed in her artworks and illustrations. The photographs mostly depict Fly's personal and professional life, her friends and family, her travels to Germany, Grenada, Toronto, Vancouver, Portugal, as well as her tour with God is My Co-Pilot, performance shows, and her band Zero Content Tour. Most importantly, many photographs depict the lives of the people and the community in the Lower East Side during the 1990s to 2020s, including community activists and documentation of various protests, C-Squat, a Punk Homestead group, and the mass eviction and fire in the neighborhood. A large portion of the photographs also document the DIY constructions, stairs, walls, floors, cement work at the 209 East 7th Street building, where Fly resides. There are also photos depicting events at the community art studio, ABC No Rio, exhibitions and presentations, art performance, ABC No Rio Street festivals, events at Tompkin Square Park and CBGB OMFUG.
Series VIII: Born Digital and Audio & Moving Images, 1989-2016
Majority of the materials are relating to Fly's production materials such as UNREAL ESTATE and PEOPs, recordings of punk gigs, parties, book release events, community events, her performance art titled Unspoken Words, commercial media, recordings of Fly's punk band Zero Content and God Is My Co-Pilot (GodCo) where she was a bassist. Some CD albums include Fly's cover art for the bands. Materials include born-digital materials, video and sound recordings, such as audiocassettes, vinyls, CDs, CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, DVDs, floppy disks, and videocassettes.
Series IX: Memorabilia, 1991-2015
Series consists of garments, artifacts, and objects created/used/collected by Fly. Materials include buttons, badges, jewelry, polaroid camera (which she used for PEOPs portraits), Fly's dreadlocks, and textiles including clothing, shirts, hats, with Fly's original art on them including the Blabcoat. For Graphic T-Shirts and tank tops designed by Fly, graphic also exists in Series I: Production Materials for reference.
Collection is in 9 series.
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.
This collection is located on site.
This collection has no restrictions.
To access the textile/artifacts, please contact rbml@columbia.edu.
All original copies of audio / moving image media / born digital materials are closed until reformatting. Please email rbml@columbia.edu.
The collection also includes an extensive amount of digital material which has been preserved but has not been processed. Please contact the RBML at rbml@columbia.edu to discuss access options.
Single reproductions may be made for research purposes. It is the responsibility of the user to secure permission for publication or use from the appropriate copyright holder.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Fly Papers; Box and Folder; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Fly Zine Archive, The Mary and Robyn Campbell Fund for Art Books and gift of funds from Mary and Bob Mersky. Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Purchase, 2022. Accession: 2022-2023-M051; 2023-2024-M047; 2022-2023-M051
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Processed by Yingwen Huang, 2024.
Materials were grouped together as much as possible during processing. However, many compiled folders with mixed contents are kept together physically and only described in the finding aid during processing. Oversized materials were rehoused in flat boxes.
Fly is a comic artist, textile artist, "crust punk," musician, feminist, squatter, illustrator, muralist, chronicler, teacher, and community activist. She has documented the Alphabet City/Loisaida neighborhood in comics, zines, photography, and more over the course of more than three decades.
Fly (née Elen Orr or Helen J. Orr) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on February 19, 1963 to Ruth and Thomas William Orr. Fly spent much of her youth moving with her family as her father was a Lieutenant commander in the Royal Canadian Navy. Fly attended York University to study graphic design and art history and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1986. She was a production assistant at the Georgia Straight Weekly in Vancouver, Canada from 1987 to 1988 and at the Vancouver Canada Metropolis Weekly from 1988 to 1994. She also worked on book design and production at Mangajin Books Toronto Canada, 1990-1994.
Fly arrived in New York City in 1988 but permanently began living in New York's Lower East Side in 1990. She was stationed in the Gargoyle Mechanic Lab (performance and art space in the lower east side in the late 1980s-90s). She was squatting in the 209 East 7th Street building starting in 1992 and assigned to her space since 1995. At the same time, she was the bassist and singer of a queercore band, God Is My Co-Pilot (GodCo) and toured with the band internationally in 1995. She also worked at Kinko's East Houston street location from 1995 to 1998, then as a fashion illustration model at FIT, Parson, SVA, and Pratt from 1998 to 2002, and as a clerk at St. Mark's bookshop from 2003 to 2010. Fly created many of her artworks and music during this time and collaborated with other like-minded artists on various comics, zines, including cover art for music albums and books.
Her major comics and zines include: Maggot Zine (monthly postcard zine), 1986-1996; In Doctrine Nation, 1992; You're in Your Urine, 1992; Meanwhile, 1993; In Doctrine Nation CalmIck, 1994; All Stressed Up with Nuthin to Throw, 1995; The Dystopiation of Sobriety, 1996; Italian Translation of In Doctrine Nation CalmIck, 1997; Puke Junk and Hit the Fan, 1997; Girl Gang (mini-comic), 1998; Dumpster Diving Flipbook, 1998; CHRON!IC!RIOTS!PA!SM!, 1998; Fuck the Shut Up, 1999; WW3 Illustrated, 9-11 Comic, 2001; Total Disaster, 2003; PEOPs, 2003; Ali and the King's Tears, 2003. Her comics and illustrations also appeared in various magazines, anthologies, and newspapers such as New York Press (1996-2002), New Yorker, East Villager (and Villager Express), Villager, Juxtapoz, The Comics Journal, Village Voice, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Raygun, The Bradleys (Fantagraphics), World War 3 Illustrated, Punk, Maximumrocknroll, MonkeySuit, Slug and Lettuce, and other collaborated zines and underground publications. Fly was also the recipient of 2013 Acker Award for Excellence Within the Avant-Garde.
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