What exactly is the Night Drawer? In a literal sense, it’s a small cardboard box filled with countless slips of paper. Each slip has the potential to spawn a multitude of creative works, which are compiled and printed into a zine every week—for the foreseeable future.
The maintenance of this process is facilitated by Feddric Dobbler, the creative Mayor of our fair city of Olympia. No one ever voted for him, but we’d all cast a ballot if he ran (and if the office existed). He’ll deny he holds the title, but we know in our hearts that he does.
The creation and collection of ideas that power the Night Drawer is ever-changing and infinitely inscrutable. It’s important to keep a creative engine’s parts as complex and illogical as possible—if the process ever becomes streamlined, it stops functioning properly, and you end up tearing the whole thing apart (even though no one really knows how it works). It runs mostly on mystery, community, beer, and that lingering smell on your clothes days after you leave The Voyeur.
The Night Drawer has been a gift to my life. I moved to Olympis two years ago and, by chance, was introduced to Freddy, who invited me to come draw. I took him up on it—and I’ve been showing up every week since.
In the span of just a few months, I went from barely knowing anyone to having a tight-knit group of fun, creative friends who love to hang out and draw. What an amazing thing to find in a brand-new place I was still getting acquainted with!
Drawing and hanging out are basically my two favorite activities, and having a dedicated time and place to do both every week is nothing short of amazing. Thank you, Freddy, and everyone in the Night Drawer community for being so welcoming and inclusive. My life has improved with all of you in it.
What follows is a collection of most of my drawings from my second year attending the Night Drawer, I hope you enjoy at least some of them.
-Zonka
What exactly is the Night Drawer? In a literal sense, it’s a small cardboard box filled with countless slips of paper. Each slip has the potential to spawn a multitude of creative works, which are compiled and printed into a zine every week—for the foreseeable future.
The maintenance of this process is facilitated by Feddric Dobbler, the creative Mayor of our fair city of Olympia. No one ever voted for him, but we’d all cast a ballot if he ran (and if the office existed). He’ll deny he holds the title, but we know in our hearts that he does.
The creation and collection of ideas that power the Night Drawer is ever-changing and infinitely inscrutable. It’s important to keep a creative engine’s parts as complex and illogical as possible—if the process ever becomes streamlined, it stops functioning properly, and you end up tearing the whole thing apart (even though no one really knows how it works). It runs mostly on mystery, community, beer, and that lingering smell on your clothes days after you leave The Voyeur.
The Night Drawer has been a gift to my life. I moved to Olympis two years ago and, by chance, was introduced to Freddy, who invited me to come draw. I took him up on it—and I’ve been showing up every week since.
In the span of just a few months, I went from barely knowing anyone to having a tight-knit group of fun, creative friends who love to hang out and draw. What an amazing thing to find in a brand-new place I was still getting acquainted with!
Drawing and hanging out are basically my two favorite activities, and having a dedicated time and place to do both every week is nothing short of amazing. Thank you, Freddy, and everyone in the Night Drawer community for being so welcoming and inclusive. My life has improved with all of you in it.
What follows is a collection of most of my drawings from my second year attending the Night Drawer, I hope you enjoy at least some of them.
-Zonka
