Recent Blog Posts


Book Art Theory

Capitalizing on the interdisciplinary nature of the field, this blog calls attention to criticism and theory about the book as a medium and/or subject in works of art and, more generally, about book art. It seeks to encourage dialogue, solicit comments, and create a generative space for new ideas from critics and theorists of various fields regarding the aesthetic, semiotic, haptic, cognitive, historical, and other features that distinguish these works and their function in ethical, political, and social matters.

To contribute to the list of underrepresented voices in the book arts, see CBAA Book Art + Social Justice Resource List.

  • 01 Oct 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)


    It was quite by happenstance that I stumbled upon the concept of placing my paintings in a book. In fact, the idea wasn’t even my own; my spouse, Victoria, suggested it. The idea hit me with a bright burst of energy. A limited, signed first edition would be the perfect vehicle to share my most recent series of small paintings.

    About a year prior—at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic—Victoria and I quarantined with our kids at her parents’ farmette in rural Pennsylvania. After a few months, we got news that Victoria was accepted to Duke University to study theology, so we all decided to move together (my in-laws in tow), to central North Carolina. There, in a disrupted routine, without a proper studio available, I wondered what would be next for me artistically.


    Many of my recent abstract and landscape paintings explore the horizon line as a metaphor of the meeting place of the divine and the human. I develop an atmosphere on either side of that thin line with deep brown, subtle grays, and muted blues. Often, I punctuate the soft environments with stark black or white, or rich 18 karat gold. It becomes a conversation between foreground and sky—something like a prayer. I’ve enjoyed leaning into painting as a means to explore spiritual connections and church traditions.

    Most church traditions, however, are fairly new to me. I was raised in a big American church—the kind of church that had a multiple-thousand-seat auditorium instead of a sanctuary—so when the season of Lent came around, it intrigued me. In reading and talking with Victoria, I came to understand Lent as something powerful and poignant for exactly the time we were going through. There was the pandemic, of course, which upended everything, and I was in a season of lament, uncertainty, and self-examination. Similarly, Lent, as I came to learn, is a somber period of waiting and reflection, a time to remember that the world is not as it should be, nor as it will stay. With that knowledge, I wanted to see what it would look like to participate in the tradition for the first time. I decided to create 40 four-inch paintings over the 40 days of Lent.


    On February 17th, Ash Wednesday, I began the daily ritual of creating a single, introspective painting in contemporary, minimalist marks. I worked in a restrained style with contrasting elements juxtaposed purposefully: light and dark, precious and common, hopeful and somber, holy and base. Metallic gold accents reference the use of gold in holy sites around the world and in centuries of art on crosses, halos, and statues. I also used gold to mark each Sunday in Lent with a blank, all-gold canvas. On those days, I didn’t paint. This lined up with the weekly sabbath rest, which is typically taken as a break from the observation of Lent.

    As I created the pieces, I posted them on my Instagram account and enjoyed discussing the pieces with viewers in the comments. When the series was complete, I considered how to present the work. Ultimately, the series worked best when presented in a modified grid that matched the calendar layout of the days of Lent. It begins at the top of the 4th column, a Wednesday, and rows are filled out sequentially, with every Sunday being noted by a blank, all-gold canvas as the first painting in each row of 7 days.


    Solemn Season, Brian Behm, 2021, Acrylic and 18k Gold on Canvas.

    In the end, I sold the piece as a set to a collector in Tennessee who was eager to show it off in a revolving series of churches. Afterward, though, I felt there was more that could be done with the piece. I could make postcards out of them. Or a large poster that showed all of them. Maybe I could sell prints? But I was skeptical there would be interest in those things. I discussed this foggy thought with Victoria, who, by then, was neck-deep in a masters program at Duke and was about half way to receiving her degree.

    “Why don’t you make a book?” she offered. As I thought about it, I got chills.

    That’s ingenious! A book!

    The sequential nature of the project fits nicely into the pacing of pages. The book would need to be small, intimate, something you can easily hold in your lap. And I thought it should include some writing. With all of her involvement in my processing, not to mention her continuing theological studies, Victoria was the perfect candidate. I asked her to write a longform poetic prayer that I could intersperse between the prints of the paintings. The plan was set. This will be great.

    But how do I make a book? .  .   .  to be continued.

     

    Brian Behm is an artist working at the intersection of abstract and sacred art. His home studio is in the woods near Durham, North Carolina, and he can be found online on Instagram or at his website where he sells work directly to collectors and accepts commissions.


    This post was moderated by Kathy Hettinga.

  • 15 Sep 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    “Out of a playful movement of elements whose interrelations are not immediately apparent, patterns arise which an observant and critical intellect can only evaluate afterwards. The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.” Carl Jung

    “The best way to have a great idea is to have a lot of ideas.” Linus Pauling

    Mock-ups and sketches are fundamental to my artistic practice, and I would posit that they are fundamental to most creative endeavors. Yet so often we focus on the finished product giving little regard to the many mock-ups that occurred before the finished piece. This act of creating multiple iterations offers valuable lessons and developments in emotional growth and skill building. Though students often desire to skip this process in an effort to save time, and established artists may cut corners confident in their experience, both rob themselves of the unexpected discoveries that occur when you experiment with size and materials. 

    The creation of mock-ups is a way of thinking through the hands, an act of play, an application of design thinking. Play has often been defined as being a spontaneous activity that is joyful, having the absence of consequences and the removal of constraint. [1] The mock-up is the act of play applied to design thinking.

    Nielsen Norman Group


    There is no way to replicate the freedom of association that can occur when the mind is allowed to be “absent of consequence and constraint,"[2] at least for a little while.

    I am reminded of a story relayed in Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It is said that a ceramics professor divided his class at the beginning of the semester into two groups. One group would be graded based on quantity and the other on quality. The students in the quantity group would be graded on the number of pots they produced and the quality group was to be graded on producing one “perfect” pot. When the day came to inspect the work, it was clear that the quantity students had produced the higher quality work because they learned from the experience of every pot they built while the students responsible for producing a single pot had mostly spent their time theorizing their designs and did not have the physical understanding of the medium to execute the work. Creating mock-ups removes the pressure of perfectionism and allows you to focus on creating intimate knowledge of the material. Ironically, it is the understanding of the medium through “play” that enables a higher level of execution in future constructions. 

    Respecting the value of mocking-up ideas is one of the most powerful tools for both artists and scholars. We would all do well to remember the value of mock-ups both as a way to build experiential knowledge and as potential reference tools. They don’t have to be pretty or perfect; they just need to help you decipher pros and cons of each option conceived and tested. Studying mock-ups/prototypes also assists scholarly speculation in tracing the progress and development of book forms, techniques, and artistic voices. It is my hope that more book artists and especially those who are also educators will strongly promote and share the prototyping side of their creative practices.

    [1] Gareth Loudon, Gina Deininger, Paul Wilgeroth, “The Importance of Play and Creativity in the Design Curriculum,” International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, Artesis University College, Antwerp, Belgium, September 6-7, 2012.The Importance of Play and Creativity in the Design Curriculum

    [2] Ibid.


    Jerushia Graham is Museum Coordinator for Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking. She served as the North American Hand Papermakers’ inaugural VP of Exhibitions/Curatorial. The Georgia Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Art has recognized her artwork. Graham earned her Book Arts/Printmaking MFA from the University of the Arts. https://jerushiagraham.wixsite.com/jerushiagraham

  • 01 Sep 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    As a child, the library was one of my favorite places. I would spend hours lost in fantasy novels, art history books, comic books, and science magazines. I still get the same feeling of adventure and wonder when I enter a library or open a new book. Books are an invitation to belong.

    By 2017, I am a graduate student in an interdisciplinary book arts program. I am exploring what print media can do; how words and images work, how pages and bindings themselves can tell stories. I am fascinated and inspired by the endless ways that my peers and mentors reinvent the book. I experiment with letterpress, offset lithography, and screen printing, artist books, zines, comics, and video.

    The program feels like a home for me and my peers, but even as we are finding our voices, the walls start coming down around us. The college decides book arts aren’t relevant (i.e., lucrative), and as we try to finish our degrees, walls are literally torn down, architects interrupt our work to measure floors, presses are sold, and our hard-working mentors are laid off. The community I have with my cohort never goes away, but academia no longer feels like a place I belong.

    Now in 2022, I’m not sure where I belong — in the city, the book and print communities, or in my career. Creating our own paths as artists is powerful, but when artists must make ends meet by piecing together gigs, only the very lucky or very privileged can make it. Only artists with family money can risk going months without work. For those of us who are not so privileged, pursuing art can have serious consequences for our wellbeing. Even knowing the risks, we choose this path because we need art in our lives. It is unjust that the game of professional art is easy for some and life-or-death for so many others.

    When artists like me have limited access to institutional resources and struggle to survive as independent artists, it impairs our creativity and the entire field. As an artist preoccupied with survival, my work takes much longer to incubate and develop. Without a community studio, I work at home, where I must acquire my own tools instead of sharing abundant communal ones. Freelance work, which I enjoy, at times takes me from projects that align with my core practice. Hustling for limited opportunities creates competition, which can discourage artists from collaborating or lifting one another up. Together these obstacles make our work much harder, and steer us away from the rich collaboration, dialogue, and innovation that we all seek.

    The field of book arts also loses something when artists are not welcomed or supported. When classist, racist and sexist systems marginalize working-class, BIPOC, and women and trans artists, the arts lose diversity of thought and perspective. If all artists were supported by their communities, our discourse, debate, research, and innovation would improve.

    In Chicago, many brilliant people are building better support systems. Sixty Inches from Center and Chuquimarca support scholars and artists and foster important conversations about who belongs in the art world. The Chicago Arts Census collects data to improve working conditions for us all. And while Chicago has a few community print studios, I haven’t always felt welcome in these spaces as an Indigenous artist, a working-class artist, or a queer trans woman. It can be exhausting just to be the only brown person, or trans person, in a room. Even with the efforts above, we need more spaces of our own.

    When I imagine an art world where we belong, I see community studios that aren’t exclusive or prohibitively expensive to join. I see universal healthcare and guaranteed income. I see grassroots groups pooling resources, knowledge, and networks for their collective benefit. I see society-wide, WPA-style art programs, without the nationalism.

    Book and print arts could soar. Freed from minimum wage, meager contracts, or racist institutions, we could all create better art. We could take greater conceptual and practical risks, and we could do the job that artists have always had: tell stories that comfort the marginalized and challenge the powerful.


    River Kerstetter is a queer transfeminine artist of Onʌyota'a:ka and European descent based in Chicago. She explores memory, identity, and history through printmaking and design. River is a co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago, and co-hosts TIES, a reading series for Indigenous queer, trans, and Two-Spirit writers.


  • 13 Aug 2022 1:07 PM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    The last time I went to work on the machine, I was carrying a box of paper, trying to balance the bottom but stumbling on bushes, grasses, and flowers that had grown much taller than me. The weeds belonged in this place, so no one ever pulled them. My boots sank into the mud, and it was time to take deeper and more intentional breaths. It was important to be calm when I got to the door I was looking for. There is no path to the door, only traces of footsteps left by others, leading to a clearing surrounded by all this greenery. 

    Learning to open the door was the easy part; remembering how to walk there through the garden took the most practice. Several people showed me, some more than once. With each walk I took notes and made mental reminders so I could get back. I enter the familiar space and the door shuts behind me, leaving me in complete darkness. I set my paper down on a table using my hips to navigate and, with my hands now free, I clap twice and the lights flood into the room — a full letterpress studio. There’s a Vandercook Universal no. 1, a number 4, an SP 25. Any press will appear if you ask for it.

    The studio exists because artists needed a space to work outside of institutions that lock their tools away. This space was created by community, word of mouth, rituals, practice, tradition, the powers of wish fulfillment, and tactical steps. Everyone has a different way of getting here. The best way to remember the path is to return as often as possible. 

    Inside, I allow my energy to acclimate to the space and to the machine. I whisper my prayers. Soon my mind, body, and heart are in sync and I'm off like a rocket. For me it’s about the release of energy, about sharing parts of my life. I find myself entranced when I’m arranging type on the press bed — the puzzle that will reveal itself only with color or pressure. It’s the perfect process for my jittery brain. I pick the brightest ink possible, just for the thrill, and grab my paper, hands dirty, but too excited to stop to wash. I use language to make prints and once a print leaves my hands it is open to interpretation, but I can feel the transfer of energy from myself to my materials.


    The machine is a tool for creating vessels, like books, but the machine is also a vessel. This process, this space helps me navigate and stay afloat regardless of circumstance. To come to this place again and again is a necessity but it’s also a choice. When I can, I give care to my practice. When I can, I give care back to the body. My direct relationship with the machine helps me remain present and accountable to myself. Some of the objects I create on the machine have energy, and I can make a human-like connection to my prints because, through the letterpress process, I feel an activation of the materials.

    I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I’ve been back to this place. I let the fear of judgment far worse than my own hinder my process as I try to sustain a practice too often clouded by whiteness. I’ve let anguish and anger about navigating life under capitalism overshadow my path. My spirit wants nothing more than to return to this place, yet I realized I needed this stillness to regain the energy I had poured into my art practice. This break from the machine is not just a penance; it is also a rest, which is necessary because I am human. I must know by now that this place still exists in me because of all the times I’ve left my trace on that path. In the meantime, I keep my words and wishes in notebooks and post-its until I can return to the place where I go to make sure I don’t bury the voice inside of myself.


    Ruby Figueroa is a visual artist and writer from Chicago, IL. Their autobiographical work is a mix of nonfiction, prose and poetry seen in their letterpress prints, zines, artist books, monoprints, broadsides, and videos. Ruby’s work explores home and the relationship between humans, loss, time, and heartbreak.


  • 01 Aug 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    Though we are certainly no experts, here are some guidelines that may serve as a starting point for non-BIPOC artists to think about cultural appropriation in their work. We humbly put these forth in hopes that non-BIPOC book and paper artists will begin to consider if and how their work is truly respectful and inclusive, and to recognize their privilege and positionality as part of the dominant culture with a history of colonization and imperialism.

    1. Non-BIPOC book/paper artists/makers: do you have a press or studio name, or have works with titles containing Asian-sounding words? If so, have you thought about why you chose this name, the cultural or historical context from which these words come? Have you profited from the name sounding more Asian, even though you yourself are not Asian?

    2. Non-BIPOC book/paper instructors: Have you taught workshops or classes on traditional techniques that come from cultures that you are not a part of? If you have the resources to teach, consider redirecting these resources into supporting Asian heritage instructors who are already teaching these topics and/or mentoring or supporting up-and-coming Asian makers to help them become the next generation of workshop instructors. They may not have the experience, skillset, or connections to teach workshops like you do, but they have a key connection to the culture, which is an important distinction. 

    3. If you are inspired by Asian culture and insist on expressing that in your artwork, and if you are not already doing so, we urge you to find ways to deepen your commitment to and allyship with Asian cultures and peoples. During the pandemic and amidst increased instances of anti-Asian violence, many of us in the Asian American community have been hurting and grieving. If you truly love Asian culture enough to use it in your own artwork, and if you want to go beyond cultural appropriation, we urge you to listen to your Asian neighbors/friends/colleagues, find ways to support and come alongside. If you borrow something from someone, how are you giving back?

    4. If you have used Asian imagery or borrowed from Asian culture in your work, have you asked for consent? Have you provided adequate reference or documentation of your source material? If not, and if you are still profiting from this work, consider revisiting these works and thinking through if and how these can be revised. Though potentially inconvenient, this is the type of work that demonstrates responsibility, accountability, and care within our book art community.

    5. On an institutional level: book art curriculum is dominated by European theories, methods, and pedagogies. Educational institutions may consider offering courses about other cultures, so that students can be exposed to non-western design practices. Ideally these courses would be taught by folks with direct ties to the culture, but if this is not possible, it is worth asking: what is a responsible way of teaching about a culture that the instructor may not be a part of?

    Examining our use of cultural appropriation as individuals and as a field is but one piece of a greater project to decolonize the book arts. We can start to ask ourselves about other areas in our field that need examination on a greater structural level, such as collections practices, book arts curriculum, representation, equitable access, cataloguing, and so on. We welcome further explorations and conversation around any of these areas, and also welcome thoughts and feedback on how we can together cease harmful practices such as cultural appropriation. All of us in this field will be better for it.

    Steph Rue is an artist and papermaker based in Sacramento, CA. She received her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, and studied traditional book and papermaking on a Fulbright to Korea in 2015. Steph is co-founder of the Korean American Artist Collective and co-founder of Hanji Edition.

    Radha Pandey is a papermaker and letterpress printer based in Norway/India. She earned her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book and specializes in Indo-Islamic Papermaking techniques, teaching classes in India, Europe, and the US. Her artist's books are held in over 90 public collections internationally.

    Catherine Liu received a Master of Fine Arts in Book Arts at the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2019. To further their knowledge in natural dyes they received multiple University of Iowa Graduate Fellowships, a Stanley Award for International Research, and a Fulbright research grant to study dyeing, printing, and papermaking practices in China and Japan.

    This post was moderated by Kathy Walkup.


  • 15 Jul 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    Recent posts in the Book Art Theory blog have raised questions regarding equity, gatekeeping, accessibility, and inclusivity in the book arts. In keeping with this important and necessary line of inquiry, we want to talk about cultural appropriation in the book arts, specifically the appropriation of Asian imagery, aesthetics, design, materials, traditions, techniques, and language. This is an occurrence that is found all over the art world, not just in the book arts, and not just with Asian cultures. But as we are three Asian book artists, it is what we know and can speak to. 

     

     

    Image description: a person presenting as a white woman, wearing white makeup, black kimono, and floral hair piece, and holding a fan. Free image on Shutterstock.

    Some instances of cultural appropriation that we have noticed: The use of random Asian words or characters to make something seem more "exotic" or have "Asian flair." Random references to Zen and/or Buddhism. Indian symbology like Om or meditating Buddha, prayer flags, or the arbitrary use of Asian calligraphy to create symbols. The "clever" use of chopsticks or bamboo in typography (this is not only culturally offensive, it is tacky). The erroneous use of the word "rice paper" to refer to Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese paper when there is no rice in the paper. Not to mention that using the term “rice paper” to conflate all of these different Asian cultures perpetuates a view that Asian culture is a monolith, which further strips Asians of their individuality. 

    We have no problem with cultural appreciation and collaboration, where there is a deep respect and intentional effort to learn directly from the source. We admire non-Asian book/paper artists who have spent significant time in Asian countries, learning the language and/or working directly with master artists, deeply investing time and money to humbly learn an art form that is not of their own heritage. Institutions like the Fulbright Program encourage and support this kind of thoughtful cultural exchange. We appreciate when these non-BIPOC artists have an awareness of their immense privilege, to have the resources to travel to previously colonized countries and extract cultural knowledge, and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that they might receive special treatment for being white.

    When elements of Asian culture are cherry picked and used in a way that feels exploitative, disrespectful, or tacky, this feels less like collaboration and more like appropriation. When the maker has no apparent connection or desire to deepen their understanding not only of the culture from whom they borrowed, but also of the people who carry the heritage – this feels like appropriation. And when non-BIPOC folks have a savior complex about the cultural knowledge that they are “rescuing” – this is not cultural exchange, this is colonization and appropriation. Even institutions that purport to encourage cultural exchange (such as the aforementioned Fulbright Program) can perpetuate this harmful practice of white saviorism – for instance, so many white Americans come to India to “discover” natural dyes, classical music, or other pieces of Indian culture, and then lecture about it while in India, to an Indian public. It is also problematic when we see that the instructors or cultural practitioners in North America/Europe are almost exclusively white, rather than those with lived experiences and cultural ties, such as immigrants. 

    As artists, it is important to recognize the historical precedent for people from the dominant culture taking elements from marginalized people's cultures and using them for their own profit without consent, without acknowledgment of histories of oppression, colonization, imperialism, erasure, and violence. As educator Emi Ito states, "cultural appropriation has always been part of propping up the violence of white supremacy." 

    Borrowing from other cultures is often necessary in our field, and artists find inspiration from all kinds of sources. As book artists, we pride ourselves in our versatility and ability to draw from so many disciplines and traditions to create a bookwork. As our field is relatively new, we can only benefit and grow stronger as a field when we start to ask ourselves critical questions about how or why we make or use certain cultural elements in our work.

    This blog post is in two parts. In Part 2, we offer some guidelines for non-BIPOC book and paper artists to think about and reconsider cultural appropriations in their work.

     

    Steph Rue is an artist and papermaker based in Sacramento, CA. She received her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, and studied traditional book and papermaking on a Fulbright to Korea in 2015. Steph is co-founder of the Korean American Artist Collective and co-founder of Hanji Edition.

    Radha Pandey is a papermaker and letterpress printer based in Norway/India. She earned her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, and specializes in Indo-Islamic Papermaking techniques, teaching classes in India, Europe and the US. Her artist's books are held in over 90 public collections internationally.

    Catherine Liu received a Master of Fine Arts in Book Arts at the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2019. To further their knowledge in natural dyes they received multiple University of Iowa Graduate Fellowships, a Stanley Award for International Research, and a Fulbright research grant to study dyeing, printing, papermaking practices in China and Japan.

    This post was moderated by Kathy Walkup


  • 01 Jul 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    Sarah:

    In November of 2019 I traveled to Yale University in search of swatch books and color cards. The Faber Birren Collection of Books on Color is home to a comprehensive selection of texts, historical examples, artist books, and other resources, including eleven bankers’ boxes of textile samples and paint chips. Color systems on a large scale, and individual sample books on a smaller scale, are attempts to communicate color across distance, disciplines, and cultures. Our personal interactions with samples and swatches are less rational and more emotional, driven by touch and memory. 

    I was drawn in by the tactility of these samples, the beauty of their presentation, and the kinetic structures that protect them.  I was also interested in the nuanced historical context for the production of these books. Like all manufactured objects, these color and textile samples were made in response to shifting technologies, economic factors, and complex national agendas. Color forecasting, the issuing of color cards in advance of a season, was an early form of planned obsolescence, and is still a major engine in the global economy. These color cards and sample books are part of our origin story as a landfill culture.


    Fairmont Color Card

    Early on in the design of Fairmont Color I planned to produce a series of color cards using my domestic surroundings. The pandemic interrupted the project and interfered with the foundational ideas for the book: what it means to be in a domestic space, how much (or how little) time I spent contemplating the colors and textiles that made up my private spaces. I shelved the project for a few months in the beginning of the pandemic, returning to it when I could find the time to engage in the repetitive tasks (thread winding and collage) that were necessary for its production. 

    Kathy:

    When I saw this project, I was immediately struck by the connection that Sarah’s work was making with the work of feminist artists in the 1970s who were foregrounding the materials and processes of domesticity in their radical art. The painter Miriam Schapiro in particular created collage paintings that repurposed fabric swatches and traditional quilt patterns into large-scale wall pieces that re-stated women’s domestic work as an art form.


    Miriam Schapiro, Nine Patch Gold, 1973, Courtesy Mills College Art Museum. (Gallery view, Possibilities: When artists' books were young, 2022, San Francisco Center for the Book, Kathleen Walkup, curator)

    When Faith Ringgold began her experimentation with fabric and quilts, working alongside Willi Posey, her seamstress mother, to create stuffed dolls, masks and story quilts that told of the oppression of Black people, her art was dismissed as craft. One gallery refused to hang two of her masks with other art in the gallery. Ringgold withdrew the masks and instead wore them to the opening. [1]

    Sarah’s work implicitly acknowledges this legacy while at the same time questioning how these intensely personal and familiar materials of her own domestic space contribute to the very twenty-first century challenges of social and environmental justice.

    Sarah:

    Thank you for those observations! I came to the use of fabric and textile organically through the research I was doing on color and industry (see Regina Lee Blaszczyk’s excellent book The Color Revolution). Once I had determined the course of the book and made the decision to use my clothes and bedding and primary materials, I found myself using my hands and body in unfamiliar ways. No longer tied to the press, I was engaged in hand skills that were outside of my experience but had a long history in connection with femininity and domesticity. Artists like Schapiro and Ringgold were certainly on my mind. I also found myself thinking a great deal about my mother, who for a time sewed all of her own clothes.

    I believe that this book was also made possible by collaborative work that I have been engaged in since 2013 with Shiftlab Collective. Working with other artists, watching their process and material choices, designing our projects collectively all have expanded my independent work.  Katie Baldwin and Denise Bookwalter in particular are printmakers and book artists who incorporate textile and quilting into their process. Spending time in their company certainly has expanded my ideas about materials and the nature of the book. 

    [1] Auther, Elissa. String Felt Thread: The hierarchy of art and craft in American art. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

     

    Sarah Bryant produces artist books and prints under the name Big Jump Press. She is currently an assistant professor at The University of Alabama where she teaches for the MFA Book Arts Program. Her work can be found in many collections, including The Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, and The Yale Arts Library.

    Kathleen Walkup is Professor Emerita at Mills College. Her research interests focus on the history of women and printing and conceptual practice in artists’ books. The catalogue for the exhibition she curated, Possibilities: When artists’ books were young, is available through the San Francisco Center for the Book website. She is a founding director of the College Book Art Association.

  • 15 Jun 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    Why do so many people, when first exposed to the book arts, find themselves enthralled?

    I think a large part of it is in the physicality of using their hands in the processes they’ve just been exposed to.


    Many people now have never played in a sandbox or have forgotten the simple joys of playing in the dirt. But we all started our lives finding out about the world by using our hands to touch it, feel it, taste it, and having our fingers cut and burned.

    Here in the twenty-first century, as you know, our lives are increasingly filtered through disembodied electronic portals – screens that flatten our experience, distancing us from direct engagement with the physical world, antithetical to the deeper connections and texture we need to feel fully human. The book arts serve as a restorative, of physical action combining with intellectual activity and content. People new to book arts can be startled with a recognition of what they’ve been missing or have forgotten they had the capacity to do.

    Over the centuries writing has been an expression of societies and broader cultures. For example, Northern European mediaeval societies had variants of spiky architecture, spiky writing and spiky hierarchical thinking. It was a little less severe In Southern Europe.

    When I learned European calligraphy in the mid-1970s, I started from the beginning – wedges pressed into wet clay, using brushes and blunt reeds. Physical acts of making marks with my writing hand. I learned the seven or eight major writing styles from Trajan capitals to the Baroque copperplate of the mid-Eighteenth Century. In repeatedly tracing the “ductus” of alphabetic forms I absorbed their history and adaptations, learned context of the societies they were written in, and benefitted from their legacy. And I appreciated their formal malleability over time and culture.


    Tools for opposable thumbs 

    The physical actions of letterpress printing reinforce my sense of the allure of the book arts through the reconnection, and cooperation, of hand and brain. Each metal letter is a real thing to be put next to another letter. I told students in my private printing classes that in the print shop a nothing becomes a something: a word space is a real thing, with weight. Anaïs Nin writes well about the letterpress experience in Volume 3 of her Diary: 1939-1944: “You can touch the page you wrote.” “The words which first appeared in my head, out of the air, take body. Each letter has a weight. I can weigh each word again, to see if it is the right one.” Building physical structures to hold text or image equally engage hand and brain. 

    60 and 72 American pica point Cloister Initials, from Frederic Goudy

    Frank Wilson, a neurologist, in his 1998 book “The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture,” traces the evolution of the hand and its components and posits its influence on creating language – the hand points to or holds a thing that needs an identifying word. Our concepts about reality are largely drawn from a confirming touch. A substantial amount of the information the brain must work with comes through the sensing capacity of the hands.

    Wilson also argues that American education pushes children away from manual exploration to purely intellectual activity too early, stunting the hand/brain co-development process. I believe that this, at least in part, is the source of people’s joy, exhilaration, and relief that they have found where they belong when encountering the art of the (hand) book.

    Parenthetically, I think book arts programs could help other academic disciplines to reawaken the wonders of their fields by offering hands-on sessions, for example making a Jacob’s Ladder structure. Other disciplines don’t seem to pay much attention to their histories and processes like book arts does – whose skills and techniques are by nature historical. Philosophy classes would be enriched by directly experiencing the boundary of thought and touch. Wilson relates that mechanical engineering companies didn’t like to hire young engineers – they hadn’t played in a sandbox and had trouble conceptualizing the third dimension.


    36 Didot point Diethelm Antiqua, released by the Haas foundry around 1950. I had acquired a run of it as part of the Swiss/Canadian shop purchase I made in 2007. I may have been the only printer in the US who had it. I speculate it was Haas’ competitor to Palatino, released a little earlier by Stempel.


    Brian Allen is retired from 45 years working with letterforms, from calligraphic to phototypeset to letterpress to digital. Twenty of those years were spent in digital font production for startups, IBM, and Monotype. He enjoys the art, craft, and culture of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


  • 01 Jun 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    Share Public Access to Creative Endeavors, or the SPACE coalition, was created to combat physical and cultural barriers within the art world for marginalized communities. We, Elaina Brown-Spence, Erica Honson, and Meera Mittal, formed the coalition while in the MFA Printmaking and Book Arts program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We wrote a quasi-manifesto addressing our values as artists and issues of accessibility within the art world. This document, which was later offset printed by Erica Honson and Amanda D’Amico in the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts and made into a zine, was the launching point for us to join the movement to expand inclusivity within the art world.

    We began specifically addressing book arts within our quasi-manifesto by asking, “Who gets to be in Special Collections, museums, libraries, universities, et cetera?” These establishments provide legitimacy, status, economic gain, and avenues for professional growth for the artists whose work they accept. The quantity and locations of exhibitions and collectors on an artist’s CV affects whether gatekeepers will afford that artist another opportunity. And each of those opportunities connects an artist to a network of people who may afford them further opportunities. Furthermore, an artist’s confidence in their ability to succeed professionally, and their sense of value within society, can directly impact their career. Part of that self-perception is built from the validation of being chosen by exhibition spaces — by seeing one’s identity, history, community, and voice as being worthy of public representation. 

                  

    makeSPACE, a quasi-manifesto, offset zine, 2022   

    The way artist books, specifically, are presented, read, and interacted within exhibitions often limits their accessibility. Most artist books are meant to be interacted with by human hands as an integral aspect of their content, materials, structure, and reader experience. But many exhibition locations are inaccessible physically and culturally to numerous communities. This is also due, in part, to the practice of preservation in the book arts field. In response to this, we wrote, “Artist books, regardless of content, are not accessible when acquired by Special Collections. This needs to change. Books in Special Collections remain unread; they lose their “bookness.” Books need to be held, read, touched. Preservation shouldn’t be at the cost of seeing and handling books in person…. Liberate the libraries.” One of the tasks of the Special Collections librarian is to create a certain experience for the reader. When a librarian immediately acts suspicious towards a visitor, interrogates them about why they want to look at the books, and hovers over them during reading, all in the name of preservation, that artist book was not truly read, and the reader may not wish to return to any Special Collections. So, there is a need for more and different spaces for artist books to be read, for artists to have multiple avenues of advancing their careers, supporting themselves economically, and sharing their work as it is intended to be shared. For community members consuming the art, having opportunities to interact with artist books in spaces which are welcoming and inclusive could create richer dialogues and greater cultural impact which are essential to the purpose of art itself.

    Our next action was curating an open-call exhibition, titled makeSPACE, held both in a gallery at the University of the Arts and virtually via Instagram. We sought to utilize the privileges of being students in a graduate program at a private arts university to create an exhibition opportunity for artists who may not have access to such establishments. Our open call for submissions encouraged artists with any identity, educational background, and level of artistic experience to submit their work. For one artist, makeSPACE was the first time they had work accepted to a gallery, and for another, it was the first time their pieces were accepted outside of a student show. The artist books in the show were displayed on open pedestals, with a sign that told viewers they could touch and handle the books (in our call for submissions, we stated that any artist books in the show must be available for handling). By opening this gallery to people outside of the university, we hoped to create chances for communities within and outside of the institution to connect, for people to experience artist books as they are meant to be experienced, and for marginalized artists to have opportunities to be seen and heard.


    makeSPACE exhibition, Gallery 224, 2022

    https://www.instagram.com/heymakespace/

    In joining the conversations on and movement towards accessibility in the arts, we wanted to acknowledge and speak with people who have been doing this work for some time, hear about their practices, and share space. To do so, we organized a panel discussion with Nasheli Ortiz-Gonzalez from Taller-Puertorriqueño and Yuka Petz. In tandem with the panel and the exhibition, we also hosted zine workshops at the Free Library of Philadelphia. All events were free and open to the public. It was important for us to meet people in their community at the library for the workshop and online via Zoom for the panel discussion to reach people wherever they may be.

     

    Elaina Brown-Spence, Meera Mittal, and Erica Honson make up the 2022 graduating class from the MFA Book Arts and Printmaking program at UArts in Philadelphia, PA. Together they formed the SPACE Coalition in 2021 working towards accessibility in the fields of book arts and printmaking and the art world at large.

     

     


  • 15 May 2022 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

    In this article, I would like to unpack some of the reasons gatekeeping can perpetuate. I believe most of the reasoning is understandable and justifiable, but I want to encourage our community to think through ways we can open gates of all sizes.

    Students don’t have access to equipment, so they can’t learn this technique.

    Fair, but equipment access is a privilege and there can be economic barriers preventing access to that equipment for all makers, not just students. Additionally, there may be times when artists will not have access to equipment for other reasons, such as at many artist residencies. It can be difficult to teach certain techniques without equipment, but even just adding a quick mention to your students about the kinds of workarounds they could research may eliminate a mental barrier that would keep them from making books or prints again. 

    It is also important to be transparent about the costs and benefits of investing in quality equipment. Some workarounds/DIY equipment can be so frustrating, the maker abandons book arts when they could have invested 10 more dollars for a better brayer, awl, etc. and eliminated most of their struggle. Additionally, newer makers may not be aware of the grants and assistance available, so even just briefly mentioning that possibility can open gates.

    Book artists and printers love to talk shop – we are constantly discussing what down-and-dirty tricks work, what style press has which common problems, and what equipment is worth purchasing or skipping. This kind of “institutional” knowledge is almost impossible for students or new book artists to research in an effective way, so by freely giving that information to newer makers, the community opens space for innovation.


    This is too advanced to teach.

    I hear this mostly regarding workshops and, given time constraints, equipment constraints, and participant experience constraints, this is a valid concern. However, many advanced courses in book arts and printing are only offered through higher education programs. Enrolling in one of these programs can be a huge barrier if one does not have the time, finances, or learning style best suited for higher education. Additionally, academia can manipulate aspects of these advanced courses – adding pressure to boost enrollment which may change the curriculum, limiting student access to instructors who juggle terrible schedules as they try to live on adjunct pay, and forcing external standards for grading, etc.

    There are, of course, some advanced courses taught as workshops outside of academia, but I would like to encourage an expansion - not only in number but also in topic. I would love to see more courses (introductory and non-introductory) about critical theory, concept + content, professionalism, the role of words in book arts, implementing multimedia, problem solving, and innovations in technology for book artists.


    Students don’t need this information; they only need this information.

    This may be a choice made for the sake of time or to limit confusion – it is often accidental gatekeeping. I do not think this kind of curation needs to be eliminated. However, it is important to make efforts to provide resources to students and new book artists so they may acquire the information themselves. This may be as simple as reminding them that there are multiple ways to accomplish something – while teaching a letterpress course, mention that some printers and artists print by hand – or by recommending resources the students can use to expand their knowledge. (Here is a resource guide I have been working on.)

    These students are too young or too old to learn this.

    It is more common to hear this argument when considering what topics to cover in children’s workshops. However, I am surprised at how often I have heard this in reference to undergraduate students or the age of workshop participants compared to graduate students. This argument is intentional gatekeeping and feels lazy to me. I genuinely believe anyone can learn anything and it is not the place of the instructor to hold knowledge back. Allowing age to act as a barrier shows an unwillingness to adapt one’s own teaching style. If individual instruction is needed, additional time can be built into your course. If physical limitations exist, there are tools to assist.

     

    Beth Sheehan is an artist currently living in Tuscaloosa, AL. She teaches paper, print, and book workshops around the US and virtually. She co-authored the book Bookforms. Sheehan has also worked as a professional printer at Durham Press and Harlan and Weaver and was the Bindery Manager at Small Editions.


Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software