Keynote speakers Kathryn and Howard Clark

Twinrocker Handmade Paper: A Chunk of San Francisco in a Hoosier Cornfield | recap

Kathryn and Howard Clark founded Twinrocker Handmade Paper in 1971, an endeavor pivotal to the renaissance of hand papermaking in America. The Clarks met in graduate school at Wayne State University in Detroit, where Kathryn earned an MFA in printmaking and Howard a degree in Industrial Design. After graduation they moved to San Francisco where Kathryn was a fine art lithography printer in a Tamarind offshoot shop, Collector’s Press. It was during those years (1970–1972) that they realized there was no handmade paper being made in the United States, and that fine papers had to be imported from Europe. With encouragement from Master Printer and Director of Collector’s Press, Ernest deSoto, and fine book printers and binders in the Bay Area, the Clarks decided to try making handmade paper. Howard designed and built a Hollander beater and other equipment, and they made their first sheets of paper in their basement, from old cotton rags. In 1972 they moved to a tiny, family farm on the edge of Brookston, Indiana, to build a handmade paper mill and to continue in their mission of reviving the art of making handmade paper in the United States. Twinrocker has been technically innovative by applying modern papermaking materials to the hand craft, setting high standards for permanence and light fastness. The Clarks developed papers in many sizes and shapes that had not been previously available, including larger sizes than any European hand mills. Over time, their work began to influence the look of some machine made papers.

George D. Barnum 

Forest/Trees/Paper/Documents: Proposals for Papermaking at the US Government Printing Office | recap

George Barnum is Agency Historian and Congressional Relations Specialist at the US Government Printing Office. He holds a BA in English Literature from Cleveland State University and a MLS from Kent State University. He has worked as an academic librarian, library program administrator, archivist, and information system developer, as well as historian and gallery manager. Barnum has written extensively on rare and valuable government documents, electronic dissemination of government information, and the history of the GPO. He is Secretary of the Chesapeake Chapter of APHA.

Timothy Barrett

Fifteenth-Century Papermakers and Printers: Negotiations and Innovations | recap

Timothy Barrett is an associate professor in the University of Iowa Center for the Book and the School of Library and Information Science. Barrett received a BA degree in Art Communications from Antioch College in 1973. His career includes two years at Twinrocker Handmade Paper in Brookston, Indiana, two years under a Fulbright Fellowship studying papermaking in Japan, and two years at Western Michigan University’s Department of Paper Science and Engineering.  Barrett’s research on early European handmade papers has been funded by the NEA, the Kress Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Services and as of 2010, a MacArthur Fellowship.

Josef Beery

Flax: The Printer’s Plant | recap

Josef Beery is cofounder, with Cal Otto in 1995, of the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, a hyperactive group of artists and students sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities in central Virginia, www.virginiabookarts.org. A publication designer (since 1985), specializing in fundraising and educational materials, but whose work extends most enjoyably to the design of poetry books and broadsides for several well-known presses. Beery is a woodcut printmaker and letterpress printer, and maker of artist’s books and journals. He teaches undergraduate classes in the history of the book and book arts and is guest printer at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School.

Inge Bruggeman

The Conversation Between Paper and Printing in Contemporary Artists’ Books | recap

Inge Bruggeman just moved to Reno, Nevada where she recently accepted a position at the University of Nevada as Assistant Professor and Director of the Black Rock Press. She is currently building a program there that unites the work at the press with fine art, design, book arts and publication arts. Inge previously taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Oregon College of Art & Craft, the Pacific NW College of Art and at Columbia College Chicago’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. Her work focuses on artist’s books, fine press publications, prints and other text-based art work. This work investigates our personal and collective relationship to the shifting role of the book, print media and text in our world today. Inge has an avid interest in the history of the French livre d’artiste and the contemporary artist’s book in France. Her most recent book was made during a residency in Marseille, France and was a finalist for the MCBA International Artists’ Book Award. She has received other awards and grants, including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission. Her work is collected and shown internationally and she enjoys lecturing and teaching workshops nationally and abroad.

Wendy Burk and Karla Elling

When the Paper is the Poem: Contemporary Hand Papermaking and Letterpress at Mummy Mountain Press | recap

Wendy Burk is the librarian of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, one of the nation’s largest library collections of contemporary poetry.

Karla Elling, the proprietor of Mummy Mountain Press, designs and letterpress prints poetry broadsides and books on paper she makes by hand from sustainable fibers.

Angela Campbell

Into the Fold: Understanding Albrecht Dürer’s Meisterstiche Papers | recap

Angela Campbell is an Assistant Paper Conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She graduated from Buffalo State College with a MA, CAS in Art Conservation in 2009 and was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Paper Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for two years before joining the department as a full-time conservator in 2011. During her Mellon Fellowship, Campbell carried out research on Albrecht Dürer’s Meisterstiche impressions and, specifically, on the materials that were available to artists and printers in sixteenth-century Germany.

Anne Covell and Kazuko Hioki

Investigations in Recycled Papermaking: Recreating Japanese Book Cover Papers from the Edo Period | recap

Anne Covell is the proprietor of Sin Nombre Press. She is an MFA candidate in Book Arts at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, where she is currently studying under an Iowa Arts Fellowship. In 2010 she completed a joint MA in Library and Information Science and Graduate Certificate in Book Studies/Book Arts and Technologies from the University of Iowa where she was a Robert A. Olson Fellow in Special Collections. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad and can be seen in a growing number of museums and library collections.

Kazuko Hioki serves as the Conservation Librarian and Asian Studies Liaison Librarian at the University of Kentucky Libraries. She has worked at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. She is a recipient of the 2012 FAIC/Samuel H. Kress Conservation Publication Fellowship. She received her Bachelor of Agriculture in Pesticide Chemistry from Kobe University, Japan, and worked for the Sumitomo Chemical Company as a scientific information specialist. She earned a MILS with a Certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from the University of Texas at Austin. More information about her studies and research can be found here: http://works.bepress.com/kazukohioki/.

Jerushia Graham, Virginia Howell, and Suzanne Sawyer

From Paper To Print: Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking and Atlanta Printmakers Studio Collaborations

Jerushia Graham has an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and BFA degrees in Fabric Design and Printmaking from the University of Georgia in Athens. He develops community arts programming, teaches a variety of audiences, consults on arts programming, and exhibits nationally and internationally. Graham currently teaches for Kennesaw State University, the Art Institute of Atlanta–Decatur, The Hudgens Center of Arts, and Spelman Museum.

Virginia Howell has an MA in history from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, and a BA in history and American Studies from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She is the Education Curator at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking. Howell has extensive experience in informal museum education, developing programs for all ages and audiences. Since coming to the museum, she has developed new school programs, created workshops for adults, and worked to increase the museum’s online presence.

Suzanne Sawyer holds an MFA in Book Arts from The University of Alabama, a BFA in Art Education from Virginia Commonwealth University, and is the Education Director at Atlanta Printmakers Studio. Sawyer also works as a book and paper conservation technician in Emory University Library’s Preservation Lab. She is proprietor of Down Home Girl Studio and works in a variety of media areas including sculpture, handmade paper, books, drawings, letterpress printing, and printmaking. Her artist’s books are in numerous collections including Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, Baylor University, Indiana University, Scripps College, and University of California, Berkeley.

Tatiana Ginsberg

Material of the Margins: Handmade Paper in Artist’s Books | recap
Tatiana Ginsberg makes drawings, prints, installations, and books, most of which use handmade paper. She has a certificate in Book Studies from the University of Iowa Center for the Book, an MFA from the University of California Santa Barbara, and teaches printmaking, papermaking, and artist’s books.

Jon Hook and Andrea Peterson

Sculptural Forms: Casting Pulp in Ceramic Molds (Demonstration) | recap

Hook Pottery Paper is the studio farm of Jon Hook, clay artist, and Andrea Peterson, paper, book, and print artist. Andrea and Jon have been living their dream in northwest Indiana since 1997. In both of their fields of work and study, they attempt to live in harmony with the surrounding environment. They practice several sustainable methods on their small farm that entwines their work and life. Hook Pottery Paper consists of a clay studio, a combined book, paper and print studio, and a gallery shop.

dennis ichiyama

Printing Wood Type (Demonstration) | recap

Dennis Ichiyama is Professor of Visual Communication Design at Purdue University. He studied at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and Yale University and completed postgraduate work at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland. Since 1999 he has done research on historic wood type in the United States and abroad.

Richard Kelly

The Anatomy of a Banknote: 1855 Innovations in Design, Papermaking, and Printing | recap

Richard Kelly has published extensively on security printing, particularly on the history, design, and printing of banknotes.

Michael Knies

Calendered Paper, Electrotyping, Hard-Packing and Late Nineteenth-Century “Fancy Type Faces” | recap

Michael Knies is Special Collections Librarian and Associate Professor at Weinberg Memorial Library, University of Scranton. Prior to his arrival in Scranton in 1996, he served as Collections Manager/Archivist at the National Canal Museum in Easton Pennsylvania. He has undergraduate degrees in philosophy and classics and Master’s Degrees in American Studies and Library Science from Penn State and Rutgers. He spent much of his career publishing in anthracite coal mining history. Alongside his current interest in later nineteenth-century typography he is also doing research in nineteenth-century American penmanship as curator of the Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection at Weinberg.

John Labovitz

Divers digital desiderata: Explorations in digital printing | recap

John Labovitz was exposed at a young age to a heady mix of avant-garde art, folk festivals, and hardcore punk rock, sparking a life-long appreciation of obscure and independent strains of artistic expression. He was an early participant in the pioneer days of both desktop publishing and the early web. For many years he has been both photographer and printmaker, concentrating in the latter area on quadtone inkjet printing. He lives in West Virginia, where he is developing a printmakers’ retreat center on an old apple farm.

Amy LeePard and Suzanne Sawyer

Pulp Diction | recap

Amy LeePard is a candidate for the MFA in Book Arts at The University of Alabama and earned her BA in Community Arts from New College. With a background in photography, she worked independently with book artists and printers to learn binding, letterpress printing, and papermaking. Amy creates one-of-a-kind and edition handmade books under the imprint Painted Bunting Books. Her work incorporates several forms of print technology from traditional printmaking to letterpress printing to giclée fine art printing and she has a special interest in historic book structures. Amy serves as National Exhibitions Chair for the Guild of Book Workers.

Suzanne Sawyer holds an MFA in Book Arts from The University of Alabama, a BFA in Art Education from Virginia Commonwealth University, and is the Education Director at Atlanta Printmakers Studio. Sawyer also works as a book and paper conservation technician in Emory University Library’s Preservation Lab. She is proprietor of Down Home Girl Studio and works in a variety of media areas including sculpture, handmade paper, books, drawings, letterpress printing, and printmaking. Her artist’s books are in numerous collections including Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, Baylor University, Indiana University, Scripps College, and University of California, Berkeley.

Tom Leech

Gustave Baumann: His Prints and His Papers

Tom Leech has been the Director of the Press at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2001. He has more than thirty-five years experience in printing, papermaking, and related book arts. Tom received the 2014 Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design, and the 2013 Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was a member of the 1990 and 1992 Everest Environmental Expeditions, and in 1994 co-founded the Paper Road/Tibet Project that reintroduced papermaking to Tibet.

Geoffrey Little

“Print paper ought to be as free as the air and water”: American Newspapers, Canadian Newsprint, and the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, 1909-1913 | recap

Geoffrey Little is Scholarly Communications Librarian and Librarian for History at Concordia University in Montreal. A former student apprentice at the Massey College Press in Toronto, he has published and presented in the fields of book and library history and the history of scholarly communication.

Mathieu Lommen

Some Notes on the Use of Paper in the Book Designs of Willem Sandberg and Irma Boom

Mathieu Lommen is a curator of graphic design and typography at the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches graphic design history. He has published multiple works about book and type design from the nineteenth century onwards, and has curated several exhibitions.

Jamie Mahoney

Printing the Drinkable Book: Advances in Paper in the Twenty-First Century | recap

Jamie Mahoney is Assistant Professor and Director of the Bowe House Press, a letterpress studio at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts. She is Editor and Creative Director of thINK, a semiannual letterpress student publication. thINK teams students with published poets to pro­duce Artist Books that are distributed throughout the nation in Special Collections, including Yale University’s Haas Arts Library, UCLA’s Arts Library, The Library of Virginia and the VCU Cabell Library. Mahoney experiments with both traditional and twenty-first-century printing technologies. Metal and wood materials of letterpress are combined with new technologies like laser cutters and 3D printing.

Kitty Maryatt

Size Matters | recap

Kitty Maryatt is Director of the Scripps College Press and Assistant Professor of Art at Scripps College in Claremont, California. She has taught Typography and the Book Arts at Scripps for twenty-nine years. In this bookmaking class given each semester, the students write their own stories, develop imagery, hand-set metal type, print the collaborative books by letterpress, bind and sell them in limited editions of 100 copies. They have published fifty-six titles to date and have fifty-eight standing order patrons. She also teaches a Core Humanities class to sophomores titled The Artist Book as an Agent of Social Change.

monika meler

Diffused Relief Printing Using and Etching Press (Demonstration)

Originally from Brodnica, Poland, Monika Meler earned her BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She continued her studies at Purdue University, where she earned an MA, followed with an MFA from the Tyler school of art, Temple University. Meler is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She has completed residencies at Emmanuel College in Boston, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Connecticut, the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium, the Cork Printmakers in Ireland, and the Women’s Studio Workshop in New York. Solo Exhibits include The Distance Between at the Limerick Printmakers Gallery in Ireland and Contain/Retain at the Cocoon Gallery in Kansas City.

Brian Queen

The Paper Artist & the Engineer: How Technology Supports the Creative Process | recap

Brian Queen lives in Calgary and has been making paper by hand for twenty years utilizing a wide range of materials and techniques. He specializes in creating light and shade watermarks and building papermaking equipment but his interests span the book arts including letterpress printing and how new technologies impacts the book arts. In his day job Queen owns and operates Sensa-Light, a company that manufactures custom architectural lighting for offices, hotels, and restaurants.

Sandra Liddell Reese

The Secret of the Art: Ten Short Stories | recap

In 1975 Sandra Liddell Reese began working collaboratively with Harry Reese publishing poetry books in small press limited editions. The habit of exploration in their work is, in large measure, made possible by controlling the means of production. They design, print from metal type, make paper from cloth and natural fibers and bind each edition often including their own visual art. As of 2014 Turkey Press has issued fifty-seven books. Edition Reese, a second imprint, has produced eleven titles. Press archives were acquired by the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in 1992.

amy richard

Hand Papermaking and the Printed Word: Dynamic Tools for Healing | recap

Amy Richard is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book where she is focusing on the history and technique of hand papermaking as well as spiritual traditions associated with paper. Inspired by the Peace Paper Project, she began partnering with art therapists to bring papermaking to healing arts communities through workshops and demonstrations in Florida and now in Iowa. Richard serves on the Board of Directors for Hand Papermaking, Inc. and is also a volunteer for the Hand Papermaking Documentation Project.

jae jennifer rossman

Through the Lens of Paper: Using the Medium’s Cultural Significance to Introduce Freshmen to Higher Education Concepts | recap

Jae Jennifer Rossman is the Assistant Director for Special Collections at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, Yale University. She has a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting and Printmaking from Brandeis University, an MSLIS from Simmons College, and an MA in Modern History and Literature from Drew University.

Steph Rue, Radha Pandey, and Elizabeth Boyne

Printing By Hand in Asia | recap

Steph Rue and Radha Pandey are current MFA candidates at the University of Iowa Center for the Book (UICB), where they study papermaking, bookbinding, book history, and letterpress printing.

Elizabeth Boyne is a recent UICB MFA graduate who resides in Oakland, California, and is an Artist in Residence at the Kala Art Institute. Their artist books and works on paper have been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad.

Katherine M. Ruffin

Printing and Papermaking in the Ivory Tower: Carl Purington Rollins and the Origins of the Bibliographic Press Movement in America | recap

Katherine M. Ruffin is a doctoral candidate in Library and Information Science at Simmons College. She holds an MFA in the Book Arts from the University of Alabama and an AB in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College. Ruffin is the Book Arts Program Director at Wellesley College and teaches a course on the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century typography and printing at Rare Book School with John Kristensen of Firefly Press.

Paul Shaw

W.A. Dwiggins and the Selling of Paper in America 1914–1934

Paul Shaw teaches the history of graphic design at the School of Visual Arts.

Flora Shum and Emily Cook

Experiments with Paper and Print at Paperhouse Studio

Emily Cook and Flora Shum are printmakers and papermakers who work in Toronto. In 2013 they co-founded Paperhouse Studio, an open access papermaking facility. Cook’s work explores collaboration between human and the uncontrollable forces of the environment. She finds that paper is a perfect medium for this. She graduated with an MFA in printmaking from Louisiana State University in 2008 and is a sessional instructor at Ontario College of Art and Design University. Shum’s work is inspired by her experiences living in high-density cities and the environmental impact on social dynamics. She is interested in printmaking, sculpture, drawing and electronics and in using paper to combine all these elements in installations. Shum graduated with a BFA in Printmaking from OCAD University.

megan singleton

Valley of Venetian Ties: Historic Paper Mills and Printers of Toscolano Maderno | recap

Megan Singleton is a practicing artist and educator based in St. Louis, Missouri. She is adjunct faculty at Webster University where she teaches studio art and papermaking courses for. She has also worked as a digital artist for Bruton Stroube Studios since 2005. She received her MFA in sculpture from Louisiana State University in 2012. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. She serves on the advisory board of the Friends of Dard Hunter, an organization that she values dearly for its ability to connect like-minded people interested in exchanging information, ideas, and experiences.

Leslie Smith

Beyond Substrate: Handmade Paper as Environment for Letterpress Printing  | recap

Leslie Smith is an MFA Student at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. Previously, she was a librarian studying Latin American artist’s books and a letterpress associate at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center. She focuses on letterpress printing, but has begun to conceive of paper as a lively territory for letterpress imagery specifically the anatomies that are part of her current work.

Laura Sorvetti and Russ White

The Geographies of Paper and Printing | recap

Laura Sorvetti coordinates reference, outreach, and instruction for Special Collections and Archives at Kennedy Library, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She assists researchers in accessing primary sources and works with university and community classes to support instruction and facilitate research of the department’s holdings. Laura is the staff curator of Cal Poly’s Shakespeare Press Museum, a working letterpress museum, and studies the history of printing and printing education in California. She is a graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo with a MA and BA in history. Russ White is the Data and GIS Specialist at Kennedy Library, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Russ works to assist students and faculty in a range of disciplines to find apply numeric and geospatial data in their work. Prior to working at the library, Russ was a lecturer in the Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences Department, and research assistant at Cal Poly’s Swanton Pacific Ranch. He is a graduate of Cal Poly, with MS and BS degrees in Forestry, with a concentration in Geographic Information Systems.

Nathan Steele

Literary Pirates and Mammoth Journals in the Nineteenth Century: Remapping the Antebellum Publishing Industry [This presentation was not delivered.] 

Nathan Steele is a graduate assistant at Northeastern Illinois University, pursuing a master in literature with a specific interest in the American canon and archival theory. Currently his research involves tracing the network of antebellum printers that moved westward to “colonize” the new world and the lasting impact this migration held in shaping the American and Latin American literary traditions.

Kathy Wosika

Much to Do with Little: Paper and Book Making at Aba House, Nungua, Ghana | recap

Kathy Wosika studied music and art at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana from 1966–1970 and completed her B.A. and M.A. in Art with an emphasis in Craft Media at California State University, San Diego in 1974. She taught Papermaking, Fibers and Ceramics at Fresno City College for 36 years and retired in 2012. From 1986–1991 she organized Fiber & Papermaking workshops in local elementary schools through a college class called Artreach. During the Spring of 2008 she worked with a paper and book making project in Ghana. She has also traveled to visit paper workshops in Thailand & Tanzania.