My breakthrough: Sophy Hollington
In this series, we ask leading creatives to talk about which projects or events have boosted their careers. Here the illustrator Sophy Hollington tells how she turned her childhood fear of asteroids into a folklore zine that shaped her artistic practice
Tan & Loose Press contacted me in 2016 while I was still working part time in London. I got work, but not enough to support myself, and I still didn't have the confidence to quit a job and be a full-time illustrator. I've wanted to do a zine for ages.
Before that, I worked as a Risograph printing technician for Ditto Press and Hato Press for five years. I decided I had to stop because it was really difficult to focus on my own work when I was doing something that was so close to what I wanted to do but wasn't quite doing. Even though I was in Riso printmaking and making books and zines all the time, I never made my own. It felt too much like a busman vacation. So I made a decision to quit and work in stores, freeing my brain and giving myself the impetus to focus on myself and my own work. When Tan & Loose – who run their riso press out of a garage in LA – contacted them, it felt pretty magical.
