GYTHA PRESS

Gytha Press is a Calgary-based small press specializing in comics, zines and art. Keep an eye on this space or follow us on social media to hear about our upcoming projects!

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Nicole Brunel, Excerpt from Toad Hex Issue 1 (read here)

Jillian Fleck, "It Is The 21st Day of My Epic Desert Adventure And." Preview of Toad Hex Issue 2 (read here)

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from Victoria Bailey, "Women's Bands." Excerpt from Toad Hex Issue 1 (read here)

The idea that historically women- who have endured and continue to endure persecution, doubt, suspicion, dismissal, ridicule, disparagement, beatings and burnings -can find safety, space and expression in music and art, is, if true, a Goddess-send. Women are still typically given less artistic credibility, opportunity, promotion, payment, reward, and recognition than men within traditional music and art realms. This the current situation, as it has been throughout time. While women have been depicted as witches, angels, whores, mothers, and – abracadabra – any and all stereotypes ad infinitum, which ultimately serve to maintain the dark art of patriarchy – a spell was also cast to confine women under the enchanting guise of muse by male artists.
That they might call on their power to invoke their own creativity is magical. To use the arts to explore and express their experience, to grab their brooms and refuse to be swept away, to weave their toil and troubles into something more valuable than gold; this is what women have always done. As Pencerdd Gwffyn also observed:
To music the witch flew at last, there to find a sanctuary, a home, an occupation. What more natural, for is there not an affinity between the two crafts? The musician is certainly something of a necromancer, one dealing in form without substance, building fabrics out of nothing, calling from the empty air powers which speak to the innermost heart of man.