The newly revived M Gallery has become a hub of alternative artistic and cultural events on Campus. Small, intimate and thoughtfully curated, the space invites art-centered dialogues and offers a refreshing respite from the often homogenous campus dynamic.
On January 22, Chaz Witter ’28.5 hosted a release party for his zine “i needed this.,” at the gallery. The event also encouraged participants to bring canned goods for donation to a local food drive. For a couple of weeks before the date, I had walked around campus, noticing the inscrutable poster with only “i needed this magazine” on it in a lot of places. I had wondered what it was for. When I finally sat down with Witter for a conversation about his artistic vision, the first question I asked him was about the name of his zine.
Witter read from his dedication: “September through December 2025 was by far the worst time of my life. I was drowning in stress, grief, and self-loathing to a degree. Between countless nights of slamming my door and crawling deeper into a hole I found myself in, a question my therapist asked me was running through my head. What do you do to unwind? When they asked me this, I didn't even know what to say. In my state, it seemed like I'd forgot how to calm down. It took some time to come up with an answer, but I realized it was so simple– creating things, whether it be sewing, drawing, making collages. My life was completely void of all creative processes at the time. In response to this simple revelation, I labored for the next two weeks to make I needed this volume one. It was short, kind of crappy, but at the time, it was all I could think about. A temporary distraction of sorts had given me an outlet for my feelings and time away from the bullshit of everyday life. I needed this volume two consumed the last three months of my life. I relished every moment of it. It's silly, it's colorful, and I had a lot of fun making it. I hope reading this magazine makes you want to go out and create something equally silly and colorful.”
He went on saying, “To me, these magazines are more than a silly side project. Like, the whole point of the title was, I was going through a lot, and to kind of get out of that and take my mind off it and focus on something, I put all a bunch of shit together. I made a bunch of art. And so, I needed that. And that's kind of why I made it. I think a lot of people are in a similar vein. It's definitely not like a crazy revelation to come to. Looking back on it, there's a lot of stuff I would have changed about it, but at the moment, I definitely needed to make this.”
I noticed the loud aesthetic that seemed to characterize his visual language and was curious about the motivations behind it.
“I wanted it to kind of just be loud and in your face,” Witter said. “I think people on this campus take themselves very seriously and almost too seriously, in my opinion. This campus is incredibly homogeneous in a lot of ways, like make-up of backgrounds, but also like thought, clothes and hobbies and what people find cool. Like, you're gonna hear the same Noah Khan covers at Womp. Everyone's gonna be wearing exactly what I'm wearing right now. I've even fallen victim to it. I wear a sweater and Blundstones every day. But I just kind of wanted to make something that breaks the monotony, if that makes sense. So I think even having a 2-hour release show with a magazine is gonna be, hopefully, just crazy. I'm really excited to hopefully bring something new and cool to the table.”
Witter also mentioned the physicality of magazines as opposed to the transience of internet culture, which underpinned much of his enthusiasm about print media.
“I think a lot of people would just have always responded much stronger to magazines. They can hold a lot more lasting power than, like, a social media post and be a lot more iconic. And I feel like it kind of cements a certain time in history or has the power to encapsulate like a certain time and replay that time infinitely as long as the magazine is there. Like, people are gonna look back at that cover of Chris Jocelyn on Thrasher magazine and be like, that's an iconic moment of skateboarding. With social media, it's so easy to make something really cool and then just have it last a little bit and then just be gone. Especially with the constant flow of information and stimuli, magazines have an incredible power to just freeze for a moment. At least that's how I see it.”
Looking forward, Volume III of “i needed this” is on the horizon and includes submissions from a variety of student artists. Here’s to hoping for a burgeoning counterculture at Middlebury where more niche voices can be heard, and normative standards can be shattered, even just for a while.
Christy Liang '28 (she/her) is an Arts & Culture Editor.
She is an English & Religion major who loves long conversations, live music in underground bars, and films that are a little pensive. She's genuinely curious about what goes on in other people's minds. Her column, "Conversational Art," is a series of interviews with student and faculty artists across all mediums.
