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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,


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particularly around what sort of how we're trying to rise together and sort of how the book print collective.


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I made the mistake of giving our group a very long, rambling name.


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So book print collective is trying to make take space as well as how you can be


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an ally for making space for - in the US we say bipoc - so black indigenous artists,


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artists of colour, rest of the world, global majority, book arts, creatives, cultures and histories.


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So I'd like to start by briefly introducing the collective and I'm going to keep


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myself on a timer so I don't go over just to give a little bit of background.


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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,


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curators, letterpress printers, print makers into conversation, potentially into collaboration with scholars of bipoc book history and print culture.


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So right off the bat are all of our members are not people of colour necessarily


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The scholars


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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,


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then they're part of our community. As well as creating a support system for members.


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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.


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If you're not familiar with an artist's book, welcome to the before and after of your existence.


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So everyone probably has a different definition of an artist's book,


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and each person may have varying definitions over the course of their lifetimes or even days.


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Right now, mine is a artwork in the book form.


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Even that is very amorphous because the book form is kind of expansive.


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And again, you know, ask me next week and I might have shifted it dramatically or slightly.


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And really for me, I see almost everything as a potential collaboration.


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And so I'm excited about our current collaborations, potential for future collaborations across media discipline.


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Whether that collaboration is, you know, a panel on exhibition scholarship, creating new artwork, to me they are all valid.


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And, you know, the belief is that through those collaborations, partly because, you know, members are located across the United States,


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we have a member who's in Egypt, another who splits their time between Norway and India.


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And so, you know, members don't all live together.


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Many members haven't actually physically met one another in person.


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And I see the different collaborations as ways for us to kind of deepen our


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connections and get to know one another and get to know one another's work.


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And then at this point, we're a little over 40 members.


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We're sort of paused at that because I feel very strongly about supporting the members that we have.


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And that support looks different for each member and changes this kind of over time what they want to get out of the group,


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what they also want to put into into the group as well.


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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.


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And I'm always happy to talk with people. So that's the book print collective.


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So taking space, I want to sort of across my talk,


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talk about kind of four different sections that really are kind of interrelated that we're trying to do.


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The first being grants, so providing some level of funding to members.


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So for the last two years, we've offered a member project grant.


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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,


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you know, creating new work, it's really kind of amorphous and very open.


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Members do have to apply. But right off the bat, you know that if you are going to apply,


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no more than 40 some odd members are going to apply versus hundreds or thousands of people.


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And so the last go round this year, we were able to offer project grants to three members.


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And I'd like to touch briefly on those.


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And, you know, because this was just offered for some of these projects, they've just finished them.


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Others they're still sort of conceptualising, so you'll see different ranges of completion.


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So the first project is tentatively titled Kinship, and that's by Islam Aly.


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Islam is located in Egypt.


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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.


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Kinship is an artist book that delves into the intricate dynamics between colonial and colonised artefacts,


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delving into their cultural and historical significance while emphasising the critical role of repatriation in safeguarding cultural heritage.


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So what you're seeing is really the sort of start of him kind of conceptualising the project.


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So in the foreground you see some of his notes related to form in the, my upper right you see


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sort of that four quadrant container that he's created the mock up for some materials as well.


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So at this point, Islam has embarked on a journey of research,


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initiating the creation of mock ups, experimenting with diverse materials, sketching out concepts.


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Upcoming phases include refining the mock ups, exploring diverse binding techniques and printing approaches.


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But I believe he might actually have this work finished by February 2024.


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So that's when the Codex Book Arts Fair is in the Bay Area of California.


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It happens every two years. For book artists, that's sort of like the place to premiere new work.


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Okay.


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The next artist who received a project grant was Irene Chen, and her new work is Fish Out of Water,


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and she qualifies it as a graphic short story memoir style in ten frames and its edition of 20 copies.


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It includes digital watercolour drawings, hand lettering.


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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.


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Kicking out the fish, being tasked with carrying the fish.


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So this frame without water, the fish twisted and flipped violently.


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I was worried that the fish would not make it. And then being on the bus away from Chinatown.


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There were not many Chinese, and everyone stared at us.


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You see her sitting with all the eyes watching her and the fish.


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The fish was lip flapping. 


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Was in the flip flopping bag. And we were both uncomfortable in our environments.


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So this is a project that actually this book is completed.


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And then the third is by Amy Lee. Aimee Lee is a hanji maker.


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So hanji is Korean handmade paper. In this case.


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This project is tentatively titled Community Rituals and Labour Day.


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Those are all related to women's work. So in the images you see.


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Aimee is taking strips of congee and twisting them into rope.


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For this project.


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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.


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Her work is actually on this project.


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She's actually collaborating with another artist and the project is inspired by centuries old letters and fragments found in tombs written by widows,


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bereaved mothers who had lost their children. And so she sees the rope or call it thread as being part of the work.


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And then the text that's written on it is Korean alphabet lettering.


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And then last year we were able to offer six


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Members project grants and I'll just talk about three of those.


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So the first was Alisa Banks, who is a book artist.


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Typically, she makes unique works, so just one copy.


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But increasingly making edition work as well.


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And her project is archived books.


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It's a collection of models containing ephemera from previous artist books that she has created.


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And then part of the grant actually allowed her to work with a professional


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photographer to document her work in the case of the the mock-ups or maquettes.


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These are kind of really integral to her teaching.


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So teaching of workshops in that she's able to typically maybe show some of your finished work.


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Students might ask questions about, you know, process, form.


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In this case, she actually can sort of show the breakdown of the process.


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The next artist is Ashley Doughty, and Ashley is a graphic designer book artist.


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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.


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Carrie Peyton. The pages in the covers for the the book were produced during a In Cahoots


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residency in California utilising their wood and metal type collection.


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And for this project she collected quotes for her son's namesakes, both of whom died of cancer before her son was born.


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And those felt the spreads. So half of the book is dedicated to her father, Peyton.


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And those are in pink or red. And the other half to her father in law, Carrie.


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And those are in blue.


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In the middle, the words of the two men mingle and ideally prompting the reader to flip the book and continue reading the quotes.


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Additionally, Ashley is playing with rainbow rolls,


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so blending two colours on the letter pressed cylinder to form a gradient and setting type at angles on curves.


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She's also experimenting with U.V. colour changing pigments that become vibrant in the sunlight.


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So at this point, she's finished her printing and then her plan is to work on trimming down pages and assembling the book.


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Spring 2024 during her sabbatical.


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And then the third project that I want to talk about is by Radha Pandey.


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So Radha is a book artist, paper maker.


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And the project that she received.


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The grant is called Flora of Mughal India.


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And this is an artist's book that she started in 2019.


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The book explores the shift in perception of nature and its representation in illuminate


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illuminated manuscripts in India during the time of cultural and political change.


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1500 to 1700. And how that consequently changed the art of the book.


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The visual representation of nature on the Indian subcontinent.


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This work is a collaboration between Radha and master craftspeople in India.


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The book combines letterpress printing, miniature painting, papercutting and hand illumination.


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Part of this grant actually enabled her to pay the miniature printer or I'm sorry, miniature painter,


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who you see here, allowing him to complete the hand-painted illustrations, the top of base layer.


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And to this point, she's finished almost finished the book.


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So finished engraving printing the base layer.


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His illustrations are completed and she is looking forward to having this.


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Available to display again at Codex February next year.


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I see a little bit more on the title page in process as well as one of the pages.


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And that's beautiful illustrations with her sketching of the text.


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So I want to move on. But we'll still have ties to Radha here as well.


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So Radha and her partner, Johan Solberg, started a book arts centre in Norway.


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And this is sort of just outside of the building.


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This is inside. So they have printing presses, metal type.


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They also have an area for papermaking, library as well.


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And they actually were successful in receiving a grant from the Norwegian


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government to offer two week residencies for a total of six pairs of artists.


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So actually pairing six artists from our collective with artists from India.


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And so three of the pairs occurred this year.


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Colette Gaiter was the first of our members.


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And so Poet is a graphic designer, educator as well.


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She has been writing about and working with for a long time with Emory Douglas, a graphic designer,


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typically more well-known for being the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party.


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So many of the posters, historical posts that you see from the Black Panther Party, their newspaper, that would have been his work.


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And so Colette's work that she is was working on during the residency,


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which actually she also got a project grant for for 2022 was taking his manifesto for activists artists and creating a small edition.


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A big part of this residency and the pairing is that each of the artists are actually


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creating an artist book that sort of ties into their own creative practice.


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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.


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So the background is digitally printed and then the text is letterpress printed.


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And so I would say for folks this year, I think Colette set a very high bar because she actually finished her edition.


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I don't think any of us have quite finished ours just yet.


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But it's a very beautiful, kind of elegant piece.


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The second of the of our members in the pairs is Skye Tafoya.


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One second. And so cold.


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Sorry. Skye had a very ambitious project utilising a lot of polymer plate, making a lot of hand cutting as well as paper engineering.


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Skye is a printmaker, but also incorporates paper weaving into her printmaking.


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You know, talking about her family's relationship to basket making and weaving.


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So here you see her mock-up of the project that she was working on.


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So lots of different components, kind of pop up aspects as well.


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So I think for her time again, two weeks obviously is very short.


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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.


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And then I was the third member of the pairs.


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So I was working on a variety of projects, some pressure printing.


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So taking photographs, sort of cutting them down and sort of bringing them back together with paper,


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sticker paper to create, you know, one colour image that's just tonal.


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Thinking about leisure. And I'm going to keep moving forward because I know my time is running short.


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So next year we have three more members that will be participating in the artists residency.


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And we're looking forward to actually exhibiting some of the finished works as well.


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But I'm going to keep jumping forward. So sharing space could be sharing opportunities as well.


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So Alex mentioned that a co-curated exhibition 'Paper is People' with Stephanie Sauer, who's also a publisher, book artist, writer, educator.


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And that show opened at Minnesota Centre for Book Arts earlier this year.


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We had the great good fortune of receiving several grants that supported our research tied to the exhibition.


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So several collective members were included as well.


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And really we're looking at sort of adjusting our understanding of what qualifies as hand paper.


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There are a lot of traditions that are actually considered, not paper.


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They're called not paper. So something like papyrus, papal amate from Mexico, bark cloth, are considered, not paper.


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And we're trying to sort of remove these different qualifiers that we feel like


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may be tied more to colonialism than any legitimate reason and see what happens.


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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,


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using the same fibre when you're in Hawaii that is used by someone who is in Korea.


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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?


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So, Aimee Lee showcasing her handy dresses, Alyssa Banks and her work.


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This piece was really kind of a linchpin for the project,


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thinking about what is the papermaking tradition for African-Americans and really can quilting be considered a papermaking tradition?


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Possibly it can. What if What if it is? What?


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What happens when when we look at it in that manner?


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Hong Hong,


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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


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Also with her kind of kinetic almost sculptural piece based in cotton.


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So we had the fortune to include Skye's piece on again, which is the smaller in set piece,


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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.


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It's really in memory of her grandmother, who is a basket maker.


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It also includes letterpress text and the sort of accordion that's kind of pulling out.


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That includes Cherokee syllabic trees. So Chair, Cherokee language in in the text as well.


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And then in talking to her, you know, expressing our interest in including that piece she mentioned,


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oh, well I have another version, a larger version of that.


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Would you be interested? What?


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Yeah, of course. And so this almost kind of lifesize room piece doesn't include the text, but does include the weaving.


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So I'll just play briefly the installation.


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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


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of as our own understanding of the project was sort of developing alongside planning the exhibition and dealing with pieces such as this one.


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Move it forward a little bit. So here you see the larger peice.


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Good in the background. And in the foreground we see Radha's piece.


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So this was exciting for us to include. This is a newer piece of hers.


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So part of what the grants allowed us to do related to our research and the exhibition was actually to


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offer a small honorariums to the participating artists for them to document their practice because we felt,


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okay, well, we're seeing similarities in the fibres.


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Are there other similarities within the process? Do they do they sound similar?


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Do they look similar? And I don't know if I can.


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So this is a papal amate artist working actually with his wife and pounding some of the fibres in the exhibition photo.


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Toward the back you can see three pieces and maybe a portion of another three, a total of six of his work as well.


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So understanding. Are they sounding similar? We were also able to get fibre samples from them tools as well.


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And so sort of stitching together the photo and video documentation as well.


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So artists were very generous with their time and also with sharing their process.


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And then we were also able to include artists in giving workshops.


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So some virtual in person in the show.


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That next iteration of the show in San Francisco will actually be including some additional artists.


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So Veronica Pham, who was kind enough to offer Vietnamese papermaking workshops at Minnesota.


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As well as including workshops that weren't necessarily open registration, so might have been limited to affinity groups.


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And so reaching out directly to sort of communities to see if they would be interested in working with artists.


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And then Stephanie and I also taught a workshop community paper stories.


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And so in this case,


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students sort of kind of overheard stories in their neighbourhood and kind of brought that text with them and then could write it out,


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use a typewriter, share those stories so we could get a kind of a sense of the larger community.


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And then the second half of our day was actually making sheets.


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So we had these nice, bright, wild bits of pulp.


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They're actually cooking those sheets twice.


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So in the centre of behind one sheet would be some twine in a tee to enable us to potentially tie them together.


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We're kind of going we're making our sheets, really.


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You know, each piece is really kind of interesting and sort of gives you sometimes wild stories, sometimes very kind of like banal stories.


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And there's at least one side together. And I'm going to sort of keep going on.


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You know, our time is short. So this is some of our members at Codex 2022.


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So this is the first time that we shared a table.


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Tables at this fair can be 1200 dollars.


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I think for most artists, particularly thinking of myself, that for many years seemed outrageous.


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Partly because unless you're local, you have airfare, hotel, food.


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Is anyone going to buy your stuff to break even?


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And so we split a table, and so on my left you see our shared table.


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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.


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We also asked the organisers that we potentially be located next to, or at least close to other members who had individual tables.


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So to my right is Islam Aly had a table, I believe Radha and her partner had a table.


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So we asked to be close to them, you know, just as support, particularly in case of the inevitable.


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I'll call them what they are aggressions. They're not really microaggressions that might might occur.


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And so going forward, we've sort of continued to do that.


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We'll have another share table in February at Codex and again have requested to sort of create our own sort of neighbourhood.


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In September, we were invited by the Centre for Book Arts in New York to be part of their inaugural book Arts Fair.


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That was inside of art on paper.


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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.


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And also those like meet members Skye and Colette Fu.


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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.


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So many know one another, maybe through their work. Some went to school together.


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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.


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So I'm just going to share some of the work that was on the table.


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So this is a very kind of quiet but very kind of profound piece by Sun Young Kang.


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It's called In Between Presence and Absence One.


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And it's all kind of self-contained.


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So closed up, it's just black, just this black fabric box, and it opens up into these forms that are interconnected.


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And so the book embodies the concept of coexistence and in separate and separate


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severability of presence and absence by employing antithetical elements,


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the physical duality of paper that originates from a single sheet of paper in the process


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of crafting Sun Young creates voids in what she considers a vase through cut outs,


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but she simultaneously fills the second vase, symbolising the interconnectedness of fullness and emptiness.


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You know, So the piece on my right are all the little bits cut out of the piece on my left.


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They're all sort of connected. You can kind of carefully sort of lifted and extended.


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And then the piece on my left, the sort of remains have been bound into a book that you can page through,


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you know, this handmade paper with the deco edge that weirdly has a presence, although it's representing absence.


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And then I'll show two pieces by Colette and turn that sound down.


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So Colette has been documenting the ethnic minority groups of China since 2008.


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She creates oversized pop up books. That combined her photography with pop up paper engineering.


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This piece is Wings of Silver. And from Colette.


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According to Mia Legend, Butterfly mother gave birth to 12 eggs, which are the origin of all living things.


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This is a story about their sisters rice festival and a girl's dowry of silver.


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And maybe in the background you might have seen some of the other pop up egg books.


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This next piece is Kaifuna. Yunnan is of the Dulong minority and this tells a story of their facial tattoos.


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The duelling are one of the smallest minority groups in China and reside on the eastern rim of the Himalayas.


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So you can kind of imagine how excited I am to present on the same table work.


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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.


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They're just breathtaking. But both are very, very powerful pieces.


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Reijin Leys is a paper maker and educator, and she was kind enough when I reached out to her.


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To share this work that at that point was very new work.


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And so this is part of a series that incorporates paper cash sculptures.


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It's called 'With These Hands'. And it's a series of sculptures of her late father's tools.


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And it represents a tribute to him, but also to the range of skills all, all caregivers bring to their work.


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Whether professionally or within their families communities.


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Both material and content suggest stewardship and environmental relationship through care and repair of the things we own.


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These somewhat fragile relief sculptures may not immortalise the walls as stone or bronze sculptures would, yet they render them,


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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.


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And so in the centre in white we have Reijin with her, with the sculptural pieces behind her, with Colette, upper right.


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Myself being a goofball in the centre.


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Colette Gaiter, who was kind enough to share her manifesto from Emory Douglas that she had printed


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at the residency with Colette and then myself and Colette having a good time,


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kind of holding our table down there. And then so we always like to celebrate the work that are and accomplishments of our members.


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You know, just because one member is being recognised does not diminish any one of us.


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It actually lifts us all up. So this is Hong Kong.


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So she had her work was included in the paper as People exhibition, and she had received a fellowship,


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USAID's fellowship this year and actually many more fellowships as well.


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And so I'd like to just quote her.


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So the piece that you see is called Father and Father's Mother.


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Chart of the Inner Warp one. And this is Hong Kong.


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I have to travel to far away in distinct locations to make monumental site responsive paper.


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The paper is a surface where atmosphere, sky, soil, sun, the mayor of trees and the hands of a single being touch and intersects.


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And I'm going to just move a little quickly.


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So Myron Beasley has a new book, Performance Art and Politics in the African Diaspora, Neo Politics and the Black Body.


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The book examines Negro politics and performance art with a particular focus on the black body and African diaspora.


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Beasley situates artists as cultural workers and theorists who illuminate the political linkages between their own and others specific locations.


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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.


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This is Janelle Washington. She is a papercut artist and choosing Brave.


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How Mamie Till, Mobley and Emmett Till sparked the civil rights movement is actually her first foray foray into children's book illustration.


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This book is stunning. Very powerful.


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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.


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So this book is commercially made, but it's starting from her hand-cut paper illustrations.


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And I would say this as an artist, but this is just an incredible work and.


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It's won every award that a children's book could possibly receive.


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From from caldicot on. And I would say rightly so.


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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?


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And then sometimes our members meet. And so this is Janelle meeting Jennifer Mack-Watkins, who also just illustrated her verse children's book.


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Jennifer is her. She's a printmaker, but her focus is on hunger.


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So Japanese woodblock printing. And so they had a chance to meet at the American Library Association's conference.


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And I would say when our members meet in person, they love one another.


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They are very happy to meet one another.


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And Jennifer's work again uses Mocha to illustrate the life and work of Elijah Pierce, who is a well-known African-American artist.


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So I want to sort of close off with how to sort of ally and make space.


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So things you can do is kind of help us help ourselves, right?


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So helping with fundraising, you know, that grant up to $500 doesn't seem like a lot.


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But to me, I feel very strongly that maybe receiving that grant allows other grant makers to see you as


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reliable and that you would actually utilise maybe their much larger grant in a meaningful way.


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So again, partnering so in this could be, you know partnering commissions just inviting.


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But I'll talk about some commissions that that we've encountered.


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So this is work by Allison Milham beside our table at Codex.


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And in this case, she created this addition broadside in partnership with Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.


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And so she collaborated with E.H. and her incarcerated poet to print an edition of 100 letterpress Prints and.


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I would say, you know, this commission, this project, this sort of collaboration, I think Allison found very, very impactful.


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And just to sort of steward this artist's work was very important to her.


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I was approached last year by a kind of so American poetry organisation for African-American


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poets to create an artist book from a poem Gratitude by one of their founders,


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the poet Cornelius Eady.


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And so to sort of celebrate their the organisation's 25th anniversary, but also to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his book of poetry,


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Brutal Imagination, as well as kind of serving as a fundraiser for the organisation.


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So my version of Gratitude is meant to be read as a declaration.


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It's an accordion book, digitally printed of Eady's gratitude, and it's printed on commercially made hong-ji.


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Two words are repeated kind of in the background. I am.


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Until they're pretty much illegible.


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You can kind of see them on the title wrapper.


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And so they start to form a kind of chain like pattern.


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And so the background text references Eady's declaration 'I am a black American poet',


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but also kind of connects it to 1963 Memphis Sanitation Strike posters.


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I am a man with references to Sojourner Truth.


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Ain't I a woman? And I am not a man.


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Am I not a man and a brother? Curious of enslaved Americans and abolitionists.


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And then last year, Penn State University invited three collective members myself, Ben Blount, who's a letter press printer, Tamar Evanagelistia-dougherty.


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She's the Director of Smithsonian Libraries to give a joint talk on book arts and specifically book arts advocacy.


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And then from that, they commissioned us to create another project.


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So we're actually creating a print portfolio and invited another member, Aimee Lee,


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who saw her hunting dresses as part of that paper as people to create new work.


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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.


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And this is sort of my sort of study for for that project.


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And then just kind of in closing and, you know, taking space, making space,


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pretty much what I've done in this talk are sort of, you know, walking the talk.


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Right? I could have very easily taken this opportunity, this time to share all of my own work.


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You saw me, I think, very little in my own work. Very little.


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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.


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And I would say it's a very small thing to do, and it's a very easy thing to do.


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And, you know, partnering, I'm always happy to talk about opportunities to partner, partner with different organisations and support members.


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And I would say a lot of my partnering doesn't start with organisations looking to partner with the collective.


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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,


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but I have some friends, so maybe we could do this other thing that would actually be quite impactful.


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So I would just suggest to think creatively and they're really very small kind


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of pivots that actually make more space for a lot of people and can be quite,


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quite impactful. I think.