Jaina Bee Zinester Ephemera Collection

Jaina Bee (1969-), also known as Baba Bee or Executrix Jaina A. Davis, is a zinester and self-publisher from Lopez Island, Washington heavily involved in the Bay Area and West Coast zine, comix and alternative press scenes from the 1990s onwards. Bee attended the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) beginning 1988 as part of the performance and video or New Genres department for two years before dropping out, though not before meeting future zine collaborators Christine Shields, Dame Darcy, Kate Fenker, Jason Mecier, Mari Kono, and Christina Buckingham.

Dame Darcy introduced Bee to her roommate Lisa “Suckdog” Carver of Rollerderby, who encouraged Bee to start making zines, alongside their zinester peers Seymour Glass of Bananafish, Bill Callahan of Dirt, and photographer-musician Cynthia Dall, who were all also enmeshed in the same alternative art scenes. Bee soon self-published the first issue of eir compilation zine Flatter!, producing nine issues between 1992 and 1997; Flatter! grew in readership when Glass distributed copies as order bonuses from his independent record label Tedium House.

In 1994, Bee was invited by Sarah Jacobson, Diana Mars, and Alicia Rose (a.k.a Miss Murgatroid), who had recently self-published the comix anthology Hardcorn, to table alongside them for the inaugural Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Diego. The following year, e was joined at APE by Sean Tejaratchi of Craphound and Chloe Eudaly, co-founder of the Independent Publishing Resource Center and owner of the independent bookstore Reading Frenzy, both in Portland, Oregon. Bee would later co-host events with Eudaly at Reading Frenzy, an epicenter of the city’s zine scene at the time.

Bee moved to Boston for a brief period in 1995 before returning to the West Coast to live with then-boyfriend, creative partner and em first Flatter! subscriber Phil Milstein of What Goes On.

Following an inheritance windfall, Bee began printing and distributing em friends’ and pen pals’ zines, as well as em own, under the informal publishing moniker “Around and Around Productions,” tabling at zine fests and comics conventions in the West Coast. Christine Shields’ comic Blue Hole Comics came about these efforts, as did other works by frequent Flatter! contributors. In 2008, Bee became a zine review contributor to Zine World: The Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press through friend Gordon “Zola” Edgar whom e had met on the organizing committee of the inaugural San Francisco Zine Fest seven years prior. E stayed on as a contributor to the magazine until its dissolution in 2012.

In 1997, Bee purchased a home in San Francisco, inviting artists to transform the space as a livable art piece; the home is now known as “Granny’s Empire of Art,” and is open to tours by the public. Bee now lives in Portland, Oregon.