Riverside artist Jeff Soto has spent the last five years cultivating more than just his succulent collection. His new zine, Succulent Hoarder, released this week through his stormcloudz.com shop, captures the fever dream of 2020 through 36 pages of illustrations, journal entries, logos and memes that transform pandemic-era plant hoarding into surrealist art.
The limited-edition zine comes in two versions: an olive-covered standard edition of 225 copies and a yellow, signed-and-numbered edition of 75 that includes Atrox Succulenti, a 12-page mini zine. For Soto—known internationally for his gallery work and commercial commissions, including poster designs for bands like Ween, Phish and Pearl Jam—returning to the DIY zine format represents both nostalgia and necessity.
“I think physical media and physical art will have even more importance and rarity as AI and the digital world stomps forward,” Soto explains. The RCC instructor has deep roots in zine culture, having produced about 25 zines since the 1990s, but Succulent Hoarder marks his first self-published work in five or six years.
The timing feels deliberate. As algorithms increasingly dictate our cultural consumption, Soto sees zines reclaiming their original purpose. “They held information for subjects that were outside popular culture, topics that mainstream media didn’t give a shit about,” he notes. “I think as the internet becomes ingrained and monetized in our day to day, it’s actually becoming harder to find our communities and harder to discover new art.”
The project grew organically. “I kept making it bigger and bigger. I had to finally decide 36 pages was enough!” Soto admits. His perfectionism shows in the project’s five-year development, with Soto describing how the zine documents not just the pandemic’s external realities but its internal landscapes.
For collectors familiar with Soto’s large-scale paintings and commercial work, the zine promises an intimate window into his process during one of history’s strangest chapters. The combination of journal entries and memes alongside surreal illustrations aims to ground the artwork in lived experience, creating what Soto describes as an artist’s response to surviving 2020.
The resurgence of physical media like zines parallels vinyl’s comeback—not as nostalgia but as a necessary counterweight to digital overwhelm. These objects demand different engagement, forcing us to slow down, turn pages, experience the weight of paper and imperfection of printing that confirms human hands made this.
There’s a romance and ritual to physical objects that digital media can’t replicate. Like vinyl records that transform music into an event requiring deliberate action, zines create moments of discovery and connection. In an era of endless scrolling and algorithmic feeds, the hunt through record shops or art stores, the surprise of what you’ll find—even the way a zine ages in a box until rediscovered years later—all contribute to a relationship with media that feels more human. We won’t abandon digital progress, but we can retain these tactile experiences that anchor us in the physical world.
“I want a collector to feel good about the purchase,” Soto emphasizes. After five years of development, Succulent Hoarder delivers that satisfaction, transforming pandemic-era plant obsession into art that captures how we actually lived through the unlivable—with one eye on catastrophe and the other on our growing succulent collections.
More information: The zines are available now at stormcloudz.com.
