So I'm delighted to be here both to have a chance to print as well as do research in the Bodleian, but particularly today to talk with you,
particularly around what sort of how we're trying to rise together and sort of how the book print collective.
I made the mistake of giving our group a very long, rambling name.
So book print collective is trying to make take space as well as how you can be
an ally for making space for - in the US we say bipoc - so black indigenous artists,
artists of colour, rest of the world, global majority, book arts, creatives, cultures and histories.
So I'd like to start by briefly introducing the collective and I'm going to keep
myself on a timer so I don't go over just to give a little bit of background.
So I founded the group in 2019, well before the pandemic was a consideration and really with the desire to bring bipoc book artists, paper makers,
curators, letterpress printers, print makers into conversation, potentially into collaboration with scholars of bipoc book history and print culture.
So right off the bat are all of our members are not people of colour necessarily
The scholars
The artists are people of colour, but the scholars may not be if they have an expertise and interest in bipoc book histories and print cultures,
then they're part of our community. As well as creating a support system for members.
And it's really our shared interest and passion in artists books as potential vehicles for social change, racial unity that sort of binds us.
If you're not familiar with an artist's book, welcome to the before and after of your existence.
So everyone probably has a different definition of an artist's book,
and each person may have varying definitions over the course of their lifetimes or even days.
Right now, mine is a artwork in the book form.
Even that is very amorphous because the book form is kind of expansive.
And again, you know, ask me next week and I might have shifted it dramatically or slightly.
And really for me, I see almost everything as a potential collaboration.
And so I'm excited about our current collaborations, potential for future collaborations across media discipline.
Whether that collaboration is, you know, a panel on exhibition scholarship, creating new artwork, to me they are all valid.
And, you know, the belief is that through those collaborations, partly because, you know, members are located across the United States,
we have a member who's in Egypt, another who splits their time between Norway and India.
And so, you know, members don't all live together.
Many members haven't actually physically met one another in person.
And I see the different collaborations as ways for us to kind of deepen our
connections and get to know one another and get to know one another's work.
And then at this point, we're a little over 40 members.
We're sort of paused at that because I feel very strongly about supporting the members that we have.
And that support looks different for each member and changes this kind of over time what they want to get out of the group,
what they also want to put into into the group as well.
But I would say if you're interested in becoming a member, even though we're sort of paused, that doesn't mean we'll always be pause.
And I'm always happy to talk with people. So that's the book print collective.
So taking space, I want to sort of across my talk,
talk about kind of four different sections that really are kind of interrelated that we're trying to do.
The first being grants, so providing some level of funding to members.
So for the last two years, we've offered a member project grant.
I'm going to grab a little bit of water. So this is a grant that offers up to $500 for a project, whether that scholarship,
you know, creating new work, it's really kind of amorphous and very open.
Members do have to apply. But right off the bat, you know that if you are going to apply,
no more than 40 some odd members are going to apply versus hundreds or thousands of people.
And so the last go round this year, we were able to offer project grants to three members.
And I'd like to touch briefly on those.
And, you know, because this was just offered for some of these projects, they've just finished them.
Others they're still sort of conceptualising, so you'll see different ranges of completion.
So the first project is tentatively titled Kinship, and that's by Islam Aly.
Islam is located in Egypt.
He is a book artist who typically his work uses or explores historical book forms and utilises sort of newer technology to sort of shift them.
Kinship is an artist book that delves into the intricate dynamics between colonial and colonised artefacts,
delving into their cultural and historical significance while emphasising the critical role of repatriation in safeguarding cultural heritage.
So what you're seeing is really the sort of start of him kind of conceptualising the project.
So in the foreground you see some of his notes related to form in the, my upper right you see
sort of that four quadrant container that he's created the mock up for some materials as well.
So at this point, Islam has embarked on a journey of research,
initiating the creation of mock ups, experimenting with diverse materials, sketching out concepts.
Upcoming phases include refining the mock ups, exploring diverse binding techniques and printing approaches.
But I believe he might actually have this work finished by February 2024.
So that's when the Codex Book Arts Fair is in the Bay Area of California.
It happens every two years. For book artists, that's sort of like the place to premiere new work.
Okay.
The next artist who received a project grant was Irene Chen, and her new work is Fish Out of Water,
and she qualifies it as a graphic short story memoir style in ten frames and its edition of 20 copies.
It includes digital watercolour drawings, hand lettering.
And I'll show a few pages and it really takes you on the trip that she as a child takes of going to the fish market.
Kicking out the fish, being tasked with carrying the fish.
So this frame without water, the fish twisted and flipped violently.
I was worried that the fish would not make it. And then being on the bus away from Chinatown.
There were not many Chinese, and everyone stared at us.
You see her sitting with all the eyes watching her and the fish.
The fish was lip flapping.
Was in the flip flopping bag. And we were both uncomfortable in our environments.
So this is a project that actually this book is completed.
And then the third is by Amy Lee. Aimee Lee is a hanji maker.
So hanji is Korean handmade paper. In this case.
This project is tentatively titled Community Rituals and Labour Day.
Those are all related to women's work. So in the images you see.
Aimee is taking strips of congee and twisting them into rope.
For this project.
Aimee is planning to write letters and then have them obscured, whether tearing them into strips to turn into hanji rope or printing over them.
Her work is actually on this project.
She's actually collaborating with another artist and the project is inspired by centuries old letters and fragments found in tombs written by widows,
bereaved mothers who had lost their children. And so she sees the rope or call it thread as being part of the work.
And then the text that's written on it is Korean alphabet lettering.
And then last year we were able to offer six
Members project grants and I'll just talk about three of those.
So the first was Alisa Banks, who is a book artist.
Typically, she makes unique works, so just one copy.
But increasingly making edition work as well.
And her project is archived books.
It's a collection of models containing ephemera from previous artist books that she has created.
And then part of the grant actually allowed her to work with a professional
photographer to document her work in the case of the the mock-ups or maquettes.
These are kind of really integral to her teaching.
So teaching of workshops in that she's able to typically maybe show some of your finished work.
Students might ask questions about, you know, process, form.
In this case, she actually can sort of show the breakdown of the process.
The next artist is Ashley Doughty, and Ashley is a graphic designer book artist.
Her project that received a grant is called Namesake, and it's a work in progress that she sees eventually would be a board book for her son.
Carrie Peyton. The pages in the covers for the the book were produced during a In Cahoots
residency in California utilising their wood and metal type collection.
And for this project she collected quotes for her son's namesakes, both of whom died of cancer before her son was born.
And those felt the spreads. So half of the book is dedicated to her father, Peyton.
And those are in pink or red. And the other half to her father in law, Carrie.
And those are in blue.
In the middle, the words of the two men mingle and ideally prompting the reader to flip the book and continue reading the quotes.
Additionally, Ashley is playing with rainbow rolls,
so blending two colours on the letter pressed cylinder to form a gradient and setting type at angles on curves.
She's also experimenting with U.V. colour changing pigments that become vibrant in the sunlight.
So at this point, she's finished her printing and then her plan is to work on trimming down pages and assembling the book.
Spring 2024 during her sabbatical.
And then the third project that I want to talk about is by Radha Pandey.
So Radha is a book artist, paper maker.
And the project that she received.
The grant is called Flora of Mughal India.
And this is an artist's book that she started in 2019.
The book explores the shift in perception of nature and its representation in illuminate
illuminated manuscripts in India during the time of cultural and political change.
1500 to 1700. And how that consequently changed the art of the book.
The visual representation of nature on the Indian subcontinent.
This work is a collaboration between Radha and master craftspeople in India.
The book combines letterpress printing, miniature painting, papercutting and hand illumination.
Part of this grant actually enabled her to pay the miniature printer or I'm sorry, miniature painter,
who you see here, allowing him to complete the hand-painted illustrations, the top of base layer.
And to this point, she's finished almost finished the book.
So finished engraving printing the base layer.
His illustrations are completed and she is looking forward to having this.
Available to display again at Codex February next year.
I see a little bit more on the title page in process as well as one of the pages.
And that's beautiful illustrations with her sketching of the text.
So I want to move on. But we'll still have ties to Radha here as well.
So Radha and her partner, Johan Solberg, started a book arts centre in Norway.
And this is sort of just outside of the building.
This is inside. So they have printing presses, metal type.
They also have an area for papermaking, library as well.
And they actually were successful in receiving a grant from the Norwegian
government to offer two week residencies for a total of six pairs of artists.
So actually pairing six artists from our collective with artists from India.
And so three of the pairs occurred this year.
Colette Gaiter was the first of our members.
And so Poet is a graphic designer, educator as well.
She has been writing about and working with for a long time with Emory Douglas, a graphic designer,
typically more well-known for being the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party.
So many of the posters, historical posts that you see from the Black Panther Party, their newspaper, that would have been his work.
And so Colette's work that she is was working on during the residency,
which actually she also got a project grant for for 2022 was taking his manifesto for activists artists and creating a small edition.
A big part of this residency and the pairing is that each of the artists are actually
creating an artist book that sort of ties into their own creative practice.
So in this case, utilising Emory's content and sort of the imagery that you see is actually from one of his posters as well.
So the background is digitally printed and then the text is letterpress printed.
And so I would say for folks this year, I think Colette set a very high bar because she actually finished her edition.
I don't think any of us have quite finished ours just yet.
But it's a very beautiful, kind of elegant piece.
The second of the of our members in the pairs is Skye Tafoya.
One second. And so cold.
Sorry. Skye had a very ambitious project utilising a lot of polymer plate, making a lot of hand cutting as well as paper engineering.
Skye is a printmaker, but also incorporates paper weaving into her printmaking.
You know, talking about her family's relationship to basket making and weaving.
So here you see her mock-up of the project that she was working on.
So lots of different components, kind of pop up aspects as well.
So I think for her time again, two weeks obviously is very short.
She completed a bulk of her printing. And I would say this is a project very much in process, partly because it's very ambitious.
And then I was the third member of the pairs.
So I was working on a variety of projects, some pressure printing.
So taking photographs, sort of cutting them down and sort of bringing them back together with paper,
sticker paper to create, you know, one colour image that's just tonal.
Thinking about leisure. And I'm going to keep moving forward because I know my time is running short.
So next year we have three more members that will be participating in the artists residency.
And we're looking forward to actually exhibiting some of the finished works as well.
But I'm going to keep jumping forward. So sharing space could be sharing opportunities as well.
So Alex mentioned that a co-curated exhibition 'Paper is People' with Stephanie Sauer, who's also a publisher, book artist, writer, educator.
And that show opened at Minnesota Centre for Book Arts earlier this year.
We had the great good fortune of receiving several grants that supported our research tied to the exhibition.
So several collective members were included as well.
And really we're looking at sort of adjusting our understanding of what qualifies as hand paper.
There are a lot of traditions that are actually considered, not paper.
They're called not paper. So something like papyrus, papal amate from Mexico, bark cloth, are considered, not paper.
And we're trying to sort of remove these different qualifiers that we feel like
may be tied more to colonialism than any legitimate reason and see what happens.
And we're finding what happens is there are a lot of commonalities between seemingly disparate traditions and cultures down to using the same fibre,
using the same fibre when you're in Hawaii that is used by someone who is in Korea.
And what does that mean and what does it mean about our differences that maybe they're not, as you know, significant and strong as we think?
So, Aimee Lee showcasing her handy dresses, Alyssa Banks and her work.
This piece was really kind of a linchpin for the project,
thinking about what is the papermaking tradition for African-Americans and really can quilting be considered a papermaking tradition?
Possibly it can. What if What if it is? What?
What happens when when we look at it in that manner?
Hong Hong,
with her site specific monumental paper that sort of pieces that drop in natural pieces that drop in become a part of the piece. Radha Pandy
Also with her kind of kinetic almost sculptural piece based in cotton.
So we had the fortune to include Skye's piece on again, which is the smaller in set piece,
and that's the work that she did with Women's Studio Workshop in upstate New York in the U.S. And it's a piece that includes that paper weaving.
It's really in memory of her grandmother, who is a basket maker.
It also includes letterpress text and the sort of accordion that's kind of pulling out.
That includes Cherokee syllabic trees. So Chair, Cherokee language in in the text as well.
And then in talking to her, you know, expressing our interest in including that piece she mentioned,
oh, well I have another version, a larger version of that.
Would you be interested? What?
Yeah, of course. And so this almost kind of lifesize room piece doesn't include the text, but does include the weaving.
So I'll just play briefly the installation.
And I think we're sort of endlessly indebted to the staff at Minnesota's centre for the book for just their patience and working with us kind
of as our own understanding of the project was sort of developing alongside planning the exhibition and dealing with pieces such as this one.
Move it forward a little bit. So here you see the larger peice.
Good in the background. And in the foreground we see Radha's piece.
So this was exciting for us to include. This is a newer piece of hers.
So part of what the grants allowed us to do related to our research and the exhibition was actually to
offer a small honorariums to the participating artists for them to document their practice because we felt,
okay, well, we're seeing similarities in the fibres.
Are there other similarities within the process? Do they do they sound similar?
Do they look similar? And I don't know if I can.
So this is a papal amate artist working actually with his wife and pounding some of the fibres in the exhibition photo.
Toward the back you can see three pieces and maybe a portion of another three, a total of six of his work as well.
So understanding. Are they sounding similar? We were also able to get fibre samples from them tools as well.
And so sort of stitching together the photo and video documentation as well.
So artists were very generous with their time and also with sharing their process.
And then we were also able to include artists in giving workshops.
So some virtual in person in the show.
That next iteration of the show in San Francisco will actually be including some additional artists.
So Veronica Pham, who was kind enough to offer Vietnamese papermaking workshops at Minnesota.
As well as including workshops that weren't necessarily open registration, so might have been limited to affinity groups.
And so reaching out directly to sort of communities to see if they would be interested in working with artists.
And then Stephanie and I also taught a workshop community paper stories.
And so in this case,
students sort of kind of overheard stories in their neighbourhood and kind of brought that text with them and then could write it out,
use a typewriter, share those stories so we could get a kind of a sense of the larger community.
And then the second half of our day was actually making sheets.
So we had these nice, bright, wild bits of pulp.
They're actually cooking those sheets twice.
So in the centre of behind one sheet would be some twine in a tee to enable us to potentially tie them together.
We're kind of going we're making our sheets, really.
You know, each piece is really kind of interesting and sort of gives you sometimes wild stories, sometimes very kind of like banal stories.
And there's at least one side together. And I'm going to sort of keep going on.
You know, our time is short. So this is some of our members at Codex 2022.
So this is the first time that we shared a table.
Tables at this fair can be 1200 dollars.
I think for most artists, particularly thinking of myself, that for many years seemed outrageous.
Partly because unless you're local, you have airfare, hotel, food.
Is anyone going to buy your stuff to break even?
And so we split a table, and so on my left you see our shared table.
So we have Aimee Lee to my right. And then Alison Milham, who's also a book artist, letterpress printer, holding down our table happily.
We also asked the organisers that we potentially be located next to, or at least close to other members who had individual tables.
So to my right is Islam Aly had a table, I believe Radha and her partner had a table.
So we asked to be close to them, you know, just as support, particularly in case of the inevitable.
I'll call them what they are aggressions. They're not really microaggressions that might might occur.
And so going forward, we've sort of continued to do that.
We'll have another share table in February at Codex and again have requested to sort of create our own sort of neighbourhood.
In September, we were invited by the Centre for Book Arts in New York to be part of their inaugural book Arts Fair.
That was inside of art on paper.
And several artists participated, whether they were like Jesse Erickson, who's with the Morgan, who just came out to support and help us out.
And also those like meet members Skye and Colette Fu.
So for many of our members, you know, working and sort of covering the table at a fair is like their first time meeting in person.
So many know one another, maybe through their work. Some went to school together.
But it's a real joy. So that's why I'm like choosing like crazy in these photos, because it's so exciting for us to just be together.
So I'm just going to share some of the work that was on the table.
So this is a very kind of quiet but very kind of profound piece by Sun Young Kang.
It's called In Between Presence and Absence One.
And it's all kind of self-contained.
So closed up, it's just black, just this black fabric box, and it opens up into these forms that are interconnected.
And so the book embodies the concept of coexistence and in separate and separate
severability of presence and absence by employing antithetical elements,
the physical duality of paper that originates from a single sheet of paper in the process
of crafting Sun Young creates voids in what she considers a vase through cut outs,
but she simultaneously fills the second vase, symbolising the interconnectedness of fullness and emptiness.
You know, So the piece on my right are all the little bits cut out of the piece on my left.
They're all sort of connected. You can kind of carefully sort of lifted and extended.
And then the piece on my left, the sort of remains have been bound into a book that you can page through,
you know, this handmade paper with the deco edge that weirdly has a presence, although it's representing absence.
And then I'll show two pieces by Colette and turn that sound down.
So Colette has been documenting the ethnic minority groups of China since 2008.
She creates oversized pop up books. That combined her photography with pop up paper engineering.
This piece is Wings of Silver. And from Colette.
According to Mia Legend, Butterfly mother gave birth to 12 eggs, which are the origin of all living things.
This is a story about their sisters rice festival and a girl's dowry of silver.
And maybe in the background you might have seen some of the other pop up egg books.
This next piece is Kaifuna. Yunnan is of the Dulong minority and this tells a story of their facial tattoos.
The duelling are one of the smallest minority groups in China and reside on the eastern rim of the Himalayas.
So you can kind of imagine how excited I am to present on the same table work.
The piece that I showed from some young Kang with that's very quiet, very subtle, yet profound with Colette's pieces that sort of pop up.
They're just breathtaking. But both are very, very powerful pieces.
Reijin Leys is a paper maker and educator, and she was kind enough when I reached out to her.
To share this work that at that point was very new work.
And so this is part of a series that incorporates paper cash sculptures.
It's called 'With These Hands'. And it's a series of sculptures of her late father's tools.
And it represents a tribute to him, but also to the range of skills all, all caregivers bring to their work.
Whether professionally or within their families communities.
Both material and content suggest stewardship and environmental relationship through care and repair of the things we own.
These somewhat fragile relief sculptures may not immortalise the walls as stone or bronze sculptures would, yet they render them,
and the people who use them visible in new ways, potentially fostering dialogue about the often undervalued work of art that our society relies on.
And so in the centre in white we have Reijin with her, with the sculptural pieces behind her, with Colette, upper right.
Myself being a goofball in the centre.
Colette Gaiter, who was kind enough to share her manifesto from Emory Douglas that she had printed
at the residency with Colette and then myself and Colette having a good time,
kind of holding our table down there. And then so we always like to celebrate the work that are and accomplishments of our members.
You know, just because one member is being recognised does not diminish any one of us.
It actually lifts us all up. So this is Hong Kong.
So she had her work was included in the paper as People exhibition, and she had received a fellowship,
USAID's fellowship this year and actually many more fellowships as well.
And so I'd like to just quote her.
So the piece that you see is called Father and Father's Mother.
Chart of the Inner Warp one. And this is Hong Kong.
I have to travel to far away in distinct locations to make monumental site responsive paper.
The paper is a surface where atmosphere, sky, soil, sun, the mayor of trees and the hands of a single being touch and intersects.
And I'm going to just move a little quickly.
So Myron Beasley has a new book, Performance Art and Politics in the African Diaspora, Neo Politics and the Black Body.
The book examines Negro politics and performance art with a particular focus on the black body and African diaspora.
Beasley situates artists as cultural workers and theorists who illuminate the political linkages between their own and others specific locations.
So a lot of what we do is using social media to sort of spotlight new work, work in progress, new publications, different events for artists.
This is Janelle Washington. She is a papercut artist and choosing Brave.
How Mamie Till, Mobley and Emmett Till sparked the civil rights movement is actually her first foray foray into children's book illustration.
This book is stunning. Very powerful.
Just a gorgeous book. I think for many people with artist books, they would make a very hard distinction between handmade and and commercially made.
So this book is commercially made, but it's starting from her hand-cut paper illustrations.
And I would say this as an artist, but this is just an incredible work and.
It's won every award that a children's book could possibly receive.
From from caldicot on. And I would say rightly so.
So if you're like me and you have the book before all the little medallions are put on there, you feel very prescient, right?
And then sometimes our members meet. And so this is Janelle meeting Jennifer Mack-Watkins, who also just illustrated her verse children's book.
Jennifer is her. She's a printmaker, but her focus is on hunger.
So Japanese woodblock printing. And so they had a chance to meet at the American Library Association's conference.
And I would say when our members meet in person, they love one another.
They are very happy to meet one another.
And Jennifer's work again uses Mocha to illustrate the life and work of Elijah Pierce, who is a well-known African-American artist.
So I want to sort of close off with how to sort of ally and make space.
So things you can do is kind of help us help ourselves, right?
So helping with fundraising, you know, that grant up to $500 doesn't seem like a lot.
But to me, I feel very strongly that maybe receiving that grant allows other grant makers to see you as
reliable and that you would actually utilise maybe their much larger grant in a meaningful way.
So again, partnering so in this could be, you know partnering commissions just inviting.
But I'll talk about some commissions that that we've encountered.
So this is work by Allison Milham beside our table at Codex.
And in this case, she created this addition broadside in partnership with Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
And so she collaborated with E.H. and her incarcerated poet to print an edition of 100 letterpress Prints and.
I would say, you know, this commission, this project, this sort of collaboration, I think Allison found very, very impactful.
And just to sort of steward this artist's work was very important to her.
I was approached last year by a kind of so American poetry organisation for African-American
poets to create an artist book from a poem Gratitude by one of their founders,
the poet Cornelius Eady.
And so to sort of celebrate their the organisation's 25th anniversary, but also to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his book of poetry,
Brutal Imagination, as well as kind of serving as a fundraiser for the organisation.
So my version of Gratitude is meant to be read as a declaration.
It's an accordion book, digitally printed of Eady's gratitude, and it's printed on commercially made hong-ji.
Two words are repeated kind of in the background. I am.
Until they're pretty much illegible.
You can kind of see them on the title wrapper.
And so they start to form a kind of chain like pattern.
And so the background text references Eady's declaration 'I am a black American poet',
but also kind of connects it to 1963 Memphis Sanitation Strike posters.
I am a man with references to Sojourner Truth.
Ain't I a woman? And I am not a man.
Am I not a man and a brother? Curious of enslaved Americans and abolitionists.
And then last year, Penn State University invited three collective members myself, Ben Blount, who's a letter press printer, Tamar Evanagelistia-dougherty.
She's the Director of Smithsonian Libraries to give a joint talk on book arts and specifically book arts advocacy.
And then from that, they commissioned us to create another project.
So we're actually creating a print portfolio and invited another member, Aimee Lee,
who saw her hunting dresses as part of that paper as people to create new work.
So we've been sort of meeting across this year and hope to have that finished to sort of share at the beginning of next year.
And this is sort of my sort of study for for that project.
And then just kind of in closing and, you know, taking space, making space,
pretty much what I've done in this talk are sort of, you know, walking the talk.
Right? I could have very easily taken this opportunity, this time to share all of my own work.
You saw me, I think, very little in my own work. Very little.
Obviously, that's purposeful because I want to use this time and space to give that space to other artists who maybe don't have this platform.
And I would say it's a very small thing to do, and it's a very easy thing to do.
And, you know, partnering, I'm always happy to talk about opportunities to partner, partner with different organisations and support members.
And I would say a lot of my partnering doesn't start with organisations looking to partner with the collective.
They want to. They approached me to give a talk, workshop, what have you, and then I say, Well that's interesting, that's very nice,
but I have some friends, so maybe we could do this other thing that would actually be quite impactful.
So I would just suggest to think creatively and they're really very small kind
of pivots that actually make more space for a lot of people and can be quite,
quite impactful. I think.