EDITOR’S NOTE: COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION AMID TIMES OF DREAD

In April, I had the pleasure of attending the launch of The Walldog, a new local online outlet. This is a critical arts project, one that focuses on the creation of cultural memory and imagination for the future. 

“The Walldog reads public art, ghost signs, murals, textiles, protest aesthetics, and vernacular design as openings into potential histories and yet-to-be-imagined futures, […]

https://www.communityedition.ca/editors-note-community-and-connection-amid-times-of-dread/

PARENTHOOD AFTER LOSS: ELLIE ANGLIN’S FIRST MEMOIR

On Mar. 14, 2026, local art space and small-scale risograph print shop, Dirty Work Studio, hosted a book launch event for Kitchener artist and writer, Ellie Anglin, for her first book, Reproduction: Death, Birth & the Turkey Baster, published by Publication Studio Guelph.  

The book is a graphic memoir and practical guide that traces Anglin’s pursuit of parenthood in the shadow of profound loss.   

Anglin describes her attempts to conceive a child with her wife, while navigating the fertility industry, which is interrupted by overwhelming grief after losing her parents. The couple’s struggles push them away from institutional practice and toward home insemination, affectionately known as the Turkey Baster Method.  

While the subject matter is heavy, Anglin emphasizes the underlying warmth of the work.  

“Although death and birth are very painful and dark subjects… there’s a lot of joy and humour in it as well,” Anglin said. “All of these things are only so important to us because they’re all about love.”  

Anglin is a multi-media visual artist and writer based in Kitchener. She takes inspiration from feminist and queer art traditions, and her works blend different motifs and elements such as collage, memoir and self-publishing practices that explore identity, magic, pop culture and the collective imagination.  

The publication of her book marks a major milestone for Anglin, who has long been a staple of the local do-it-yourself (DIY) scene.  

“I have been making zines for probably over 20 years now, and I’ve self-published 35 zines,” she said. “So, to have my first official book publication is a big honour.”  

Shalaka Jadhav, Kitchener-based curator, writer, cultural strategist, co-founder of Dirty Work Studio and a long-time collaborator of Anglin’s, noted that independent spaces are crucial for first-time authors who often face significant barriers in the Canadian publishing industry.  

“It can be really intimidating,” Jadhav said. “So, it’s really important to have the space where you can invite family and the general public and allow for people to mix.”  

The book launch was hosted at Dirty Work Studio, which is located at 100 Park St.  

“I’m so, so excited to have a studio like this in downtown Kitchener,” Anglin said. “Such an awesome arts community here, and then this studio is just like the cherry on top with so much celebration of DIY queer and women’s art.”  

The event transformed the studio into an immersive gallery, featuring Anglin’s surrealistic collage work and looping video remixes of the book’s illustrations.  

Jadhav explained that the goal of the night was to help the work burst out of Anglin’s book.  

“We want to be a space where artists can realize all kinds of projects and to sort of experiment,” Jadhav said. “Having a DIY space where things can be a little bit more experimental and loose means that Ellie can try new things and expand her practice.”  

The highlight of the evening was a live performance involving costumes and props, a project Anglin developed over the final weeks of her three-year journey to bring the book to life.  

Anglin said that the visual components from the event were a natural extension of the book’s creation.  

“I kind of took the collage fragments but then reassembled them into different collages to create new meanings,” she said.  

The reach of the project extends far beyond Kitchener due to Publication Studio’s unique open source model. As Jadhav explained, any of the studio’s sister locations worldwide, from Guelph to Brazil, can download, print and bind Anglin’s work locally.  

Ultimately, the launch served as a testament to the resilience of the local creative scene.  

“This is a total labour of love,” Jadhav said, noting that the studio is a self-funded effort by its members. “The more people show up to our events, the more we see it as a show of support that this space should exist.”  

#100ParkStreet #20Zines #35Zines #book #dirtyWorkStudio #diy #DowntownKitchener #ellie #ellieAnglin #gallery #Illustrations #kitchener #localArtists #localWriter #queerArtist #ShalakaJadhav #turkeyBaster

DIRTY WORK STUDIO BRINGS RISOGRAPH PRINTING TO KW

Waterloo Region now has its first risograph print shop, thanks to the team behind Dirty Work Studio.  

The four studiomates, Sid Drmay, Elise Glaser, Shalaka Jadhav and Natalie Vuong, came together through what they describe as a mutual interest in creating a space where visual artists can gather to develop their printing and publishing skills with peers. 

The initial idea for Dirty Work Studio came about when Jadhav and Drmay attended a studio sale put on by the previous tenants—a pair of artists who have since moved out East. 

“Sid and I, at different points in the afternoon [had come] by. We saw the space, sort of had the same idea and got really excited about the potential,” Jadhav said. 

Around the same time that the studio space became available, Drmay was also in the middle of acquiring a SF5130 risograph printer via a connection in Montreal. 

“Risographs are a print method that uses an ink drum and soy-based ink, that basically uses a stencil method to push ink through the stencil and print onto the page, and you can do a lot really quickly,” Drmay said.  

“It’s really popular with art prints, because you can do so much to add depth to your print,” they said. 

“For example, with inkjet printing, it combines the different colours as it’s putting it on, whereas with [risograph printing], each [ink] drum is the colour. So, you can get really vibrant colours that you wouldn’t get with traditional print methods,” Vuong said. 

Outside of Dirty Work Studio, all four studiomates are heavily involved with local arts organizations and community groups within the region.

Glaser manages the independent magazine collection at Disko Coffee. Drmay runs KW Zinetopia and the Hamilton Zine Machine. As part of her freelance graphic design work, Vuong handles design and social media for Roux Bakehouse. Jadhav is a member of the Creek Collective, KW Zinetopia and is also a writer-in-residence for CAFKA.25.  

“I was coming from Seattle, and within the first month, there was a zine fair that Sid was running which was just right up my alley,” Glaser said. 

“I feel really lucky to have met everyone. There’s a really vibrant arts community here,” she said. 

Beyond its function as a print shop, the studiomates hope to cultivate Dirty Work Studio as a catch-all space to support programming and events.  

“All of us, we come from print, community organizing, makerspaces,” Jadhav said.  

“It started off as a co-working space and a print studio, but the past few weeks [there has been] a lot of programming. Having informal spaces for creative community [to] get together is how interesting work and collaborations can happen,” they said.  

“On average in a month, we’re looking to have at least five or six events. I’ve got a monthly cyber-thriller movie night, [Elise] has her monthly lecture series, there’s a deplatforming series going on right now. At this point we have a few things lined up where we’re providing space for folks doing different things, working with them to make their events successes too,” Drmay said. 

“As much as we love working here and having that workspace, it is also really important to all of us to be able to have folks in here and run fun things, bring people together, because I think we’re all very passionate about having that kind of space here,” they said.  

The studio is not currently categorized as a non-profit and is therefore operating without any public funding, although they are eligible for some grants.  

“This is a labour of love. We currently don’t have any funding to this work. We were very lucky at our launch to get donations,” Jadhav said.  

“For this to be more sustainable, it would be amazing to have more support from the community.” 

Dirty Work Studio is open for risograph printing as of this past February and can be contacted for quotes at [email protected].  

News about upcoming programming can be found on their Instagram  
@dirtyworkstudio. 

This article has been updated to reflect the following facts : It was Drmay, not Jadhav who purchased the printer; the earlier version of this article stated that the studio cannot be categorized as a non-profit—this is incorrect as they could be classified as one after going through the legal process.

#cafka25 #dirtyWorkStudio #eliseGlaser #HansHaryanto #inkjet #kitchener #LocalArt #LocalArtist #natalieVuong #Printing #risographs #ShalakaJadhav #sidDrmay