2018 Conference Speakers
Plenary Speakers
Ruth Lingen
Papermaking & Printmaking Collaborations | recap
The combination of papermaking and printmaking processes can produce beautiful, unusual results. We will look at some memorable editions and unique works made at the Pace Paper workshop in Brooklyn, New York, including works by contemporary artists Donald Baechler, Will Cotton, Leonardo Drew, Tomoo Gokita and Li Songsong, among others. The talk will wrap up with discussion of trends in the paper and art worlds, and projections of the future direction of both.
Ruth Lingen studied papermaking and printmaking with Walter Hamady and Joe Wilfer, and has spent years learning on the job with many other mentors. As director of Pace Paper in Brooklyn, NY, she has collaborated with dozens of artists including Jim Dine, Robert Ryman, Mary Heilmann, Kiki Smith, Chuck Close and Jessica Stockholder. Her collaborative artists books are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Getty, The Brooklyn Museum, and over twenty libraries, including the New York Public Library and Harvard University.
Suzanne Karr Schmidt
Printing the Renaissance Pop-Up Book | recap
Books and single-sheet prints with moving parts date from the beginning of printmaking practice. Drawing on the holdings of the Newberry Library, and collections worldwide, this talk will discuss the ways early modern printers and designers laid out, printed, and assembled these flaps, dials, and constructible objects. Evidence survives in the form of manuals, paper evidence, woodblocks, uncut sheets of movable parts, and in the constructed books themselves. Little known today, interactive prints formed a pervasive, tactile component of visual culture addressing humorous, political, religious, and scientific topics of pivotal interest to the public of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries.
Suzanne Karr Schmidt is the George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at The Newberry. She was previously assistant curator in the department of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she curated the exhibition Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Everyday Life. She is the author of Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance (Brill 2017). Suzanne holds a BA in the history of art and architecture and visual art from Brown University, as well as MPhil and PhD degrees in the history of art from Yale University.
Speakers
in alphabetical order. Panels listed by moderator
Cathleen A. Baker
Typographical Variants on Wove and Laid Papers in Baskerville’s Virgil | recap
Cathleen A. Baker is a paper and book conservator with more than 45-years experience, and she is the author of numerous articles and books, including By His Own Labor: The Biography of Dard Hunter (2000) and From the Hand to the Machine. Nineteenth-Century American Paper and Mediums: Technologies, Materials, and Conservation (2010). She has an MA in art history from Syracuse University, and from the University of Alabama, an MFA in books arts and a PhD in communication studies. Cathy is also proprietor of the award-winning The Legacy Press, established in 1997, which specializes in publishing books about the printing, paper, and bookbinding arts. thelegacypress@gmail.com
Timothy Barrett (moderator) with panelists Cathleen Baker and Lisa Miles
New Definitions for “Watermark” and “Paper”?
Timothy Barrett is professor and director at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. His extensive research on early European handmade papers has been funded by the NEA, the Kress Foundation, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. In 2009 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Barrett is author of two books, a website, seven videotapes, and thirty-six articles or book chapters on the history, technique, science and aesthetics of hand papermaking.
Cathleen A. Baker (bio)
Lisa Miles (bio)
Robert Cagna
Postage Stamps on Handmade Paper: An Early Collaboration of Function and Necessity
Robert Cagna, MA, MSLS, JD, AHIP, is dean of the library and associate professor at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. He was formerly director of the Health Sciences Library at West Virginia University in Charleston, West Virginia, and department head of access and document delivery services at the University of Pennsylvania Biomedical Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a senior research information specialist at the AARP Gerontology Library in Washington, D.C.
Carolee Campbell
Chasing the Ideal Book | recap
Carolee Campbell inaugurated Ninja Press in Sherman Oaks, California, in 1984. She publishes limited editions of contemporary poetry, which she designs, handsets in metal type, prints letterpress, binds, and often illustrates. Her work is heavily influenced both by her extensive experience as a photographer and by her former career as a distinguished actress. Ninja Press books are collected by many of the world’s great libraries. The entire Ninja Press archive is held in the Department of Special Research Collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Drew Cameron
Papermaking as a Socially Engaged Art Practice
Drew Cameron began his hand papermaking practice as a teenager, and then re-imagined it after returning from his enlistment in the U.S. Army with a deployment in the Iraq War. He sees papermaking as a community-driven process and art form, which he facilitates with others through workshops and events as Combat Paper. This innovative technique provides an interactive open-to-all forum where communities including veterans pulp and transform military uniforms into handmade paper, prints, books, and artwork. Cameron has facilitated these workshops for over a decade, bringing papermaking to communities, while also creating and exhibiting his own work.
Katharine DeLamater
Defining Collaborative Authorship in Book Arts
Katharine DeLamater has a BA in studio arts from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied hand papermaking, printmaking, and philosophy. She has interned at Dieu Donné, Pace Paper, and the Boston Paper Collective. DeLamater is a MFA candidate at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, where she is focused on hand papermaking and letterpress printing. Her work was featured in Hand Papermaking’s “Intergenerationality” Portfolio, where she collaborated with Melissa Jay Craig.
Nicole Donnelly
The Hand Papermaker’s Database | recap
Yoga for Papermakers (demonstration)
Nicole Donnelly is a hand papermaker, visual artist, and yoga instructor based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since 2012 she has been a co-organizer of the Hand Papermaking Community Documentation project, and is published in Hand Papermaking (Winter 2013). She is the current President of International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists, 2015-19, and the founder of paperTHINKtank, a community accessible hand papermaking studio and creative workshop in Philadelphia. Her artwork is focused on the environmentally sustainable possibilities and beauty of handmade paper. Donnelly began making paper the same year that she started studying yoga, and completed her training at James Miller’s Freestyle Yoga Academy in 2009 in Iowa City. She has been practicing Vinyasa, Hatha, and Ashtanga yoga for ten years, and actively teaching yoga for eight. She focuses on the sequencing of movement to develop a safe, rigorous, and balanced daily practice that helps prevent injury.
Michael Fallon (moderator) with Mina Takahashi, and others
Fast Friends: A Discussion by Hand Papermaking, Inc., about the Collaborative Relationship Between Printmakers and Papermakers
Michael Fallon is executive director of Hand Papermaking, Inc. He holds an MFA in book arts from the University of Alabama, and he has published extensively about art and craft in diverse publications such as Art in America, American Craft, Art Papers, Public Art Review, and Hand Papermaking.
Mina Takahashi is editor of Hand Papermaking magazine, a non-profit biannual publication chronicling the finest work in the field while advancing the scholarship and facilitating the production of handmade paper and paper art. She is a member of the board of directors of Dieu Donné Papermill, New York, where she served as executive director from 1990 to 2004. Trained originally in Japanese papermaking, she teaches and consults on the artistic and craft applications of hand papermaking across the country and internationally. Takahashi recently co-curated with Susan Gosin an exhibition titled Paper/Print: American Hand Papermaking, 1960s to Today, the first comprehensive retrospective tracing the development of hand papermaking as an outgrowth of the printmaking renaissance in the United States. The exhibition, accompanied by an illustrated publication, was presented at the International Print Center New York, April 5 through June 14, 2018. Takahashi lives in upstate New York, in Delaware County, where she will open a hand papermaking studio in 2019.
Sonia Farmer
Resisting Paradise: The Craftsman Press Archive
Sonia Farmer is a writer, visual artist, and small press publisher who uses letterpress printing, bookbinding, hand-papermaking, and digital projects to build narratives about the Caribbean space. She is the founder of Poinciana Paper Press, a small, independent press in Nassau, The Bahamas, which produces handmade and limited edition chapbooks of Caribbean literature and promotes the crafts of book arts through workshops and creative collaborations. Her artwork has been exhibited throughout Nassau including at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. She is the author of “Infidelities” (Poinciana Paper Press, 2017), which was longlisted for the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She holds a BFA in Writing from Pratt Institute and is pursuing her MFA in Book Arts at the University of Iowa.
Donald Farnsworth
Renaissance Paper Texture | recap
Donald Farnsworth is known internationally as an artist, master printmaker, an authority on the history and manufacture of handmade paper, and as an innovator in digital technology and weaving techniques. He designed and led the building of a handmade paper mill for Nyumba Ya Sanaa, a nonprofit in Tanzania and has taught art at universities for many years. In 1981 he founded Magnolia Editions, a fine art publishing company and collaborative studio in Oakland, California, where he developed techniques that revived and expanded the possibilities of processes including photogravure and tapestry, innovations that led to publications by artists including Alex Katz, Kiki Smith, and Ralph Goings. Farnsworth received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974 and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977.
Gary Frost
Book Commodity: A Useful Complement to Papermaking and Printing
Gary Frost is Conservator Emeritus, University of Iowa Libraries. He holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been recognized for contributions to the field of book conservation by awards from the American Library Association and the Guild of Book Workers.
Rie Hachiyanagi
An Enduring Master and a New Generation of Traditional Japanese Papermakers
Rie Hachiyanagi came to the United States as a high school exchange student from Sapporo, Japan. Her initial inability to communicate effectively in English led her to engage in artistic forms of expression. She learned papermaking from Timothy Barrett and earned a BFA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is professor of art at Mount Holyoke College, where she teaches papermaking and performance. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo and group exhibitions in New York City, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Sofia, Bulgaria.
E. Haven Hawley
Youth Voices and Printing at the Phoenix Indian School | recap
Elizabeth Haven Hawley, PhD, is chair of the special and area studies collections department at the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. She is a historian of technology, specializing in technical and social analysis of print. She was a visiting faculty member in the History of Science and Technology Program and program director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She has served as lab instructor for descriptive bibliography classes and as printer-in-residence for summer courses at the University of Virginia Rare Book School for more than a decade. Hawley is APHA president (2018–).
Virginia Howell
Order in the Stacks: Organization of a Paper Library | recap
Virginia Howell is the education curator at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking. Howell attended Miami University and received a BA in history and American studies, and graduated from the University of Mississippi with a MA in history. She has been a museum educator for almost twenty years, serving at Reynolda House Museum of American Art, the North Carolina State Capitol, and Cape Fear Museum prior to joining the staff at the Paper Museum in 2013.
Zachary Hudson and Andrew Zandt
Printmaking with Dirca Bark Paper | recap
Zachary J. Hudson is a PhD candidate in horticulture at Iowa State University. His research is focused on the plant genus Dirca L., investigating the anatomy, tensile properties, and ethnobotany of the bark of the genus.
Andrew Zandt is a graduate student in the MFA Integrated Visual Arts program at Iowa State University with a focus on printmaking. Andrew’s printmaking work has been included in numerous juried exhibitions across the Midwest, including the Parkside National Small Print Juried Exhibition in Parkside, Wisconsin, and the Annual Paper In Particular National Juried Exhibition in Columbia, Missouri.
Catherine Liu (demonstration)
Printmaking with Natural Dyes on a Vandercook Proof Press
Catherine Liu is a third year MFA candidate at the University of Iowa Center for the Book with a Research Assistantship to manage the letterpress facilities and presses. My coursework has primarily consisted of printing off of a Vandercook Proofing Press and experimenting with various types of matrices such as metal type, polymer plates, woodcuts, pressure plates, and collagraphs. In 2017, she was awarded a Summer Research Fellowship to work in a natural dye studio in Songzhuang, China, where she made over 150 different colors sourced from a mix of plants and insects.
Sarah McCoy (moderator) with panelists Christopher James, Kseniya Thomas, and Amy Leners
Paper in the Big, Small, and Wild: A Range of Businesses and Artists and How They Purchase and Use Fine Papers in Their Work
Sarah McCoy is associate professor of graphic design at Drake University. McCoy received her MFA from the University of Iowa in 2005, earning a certificate from the Center for the Book with a concentration in letterpress printing. McCoy owns and operates The Permanent Collection letterpress studio in Des Moines, Iowa, where she designs and prints work for clients big and small, such as PaperSource, Madsen Cycles, and music festivals such as Hinterland and 80/35. She has led workshops at universities and conferences such as the Ladies of Letterpress biannual conference. McCoy’s work has been in national and international exhibitions, is held in university library special collections, and included in publications such as Ladies of Letterpress: A Gallery of Prints, published by Princeton Architectural Press.
Christopher James is the owner and operator of Porridge Papers in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he has been making handmade paper for twenty-five years. The paper is locally sourced and made from wood based recycled fibers. Porridge Paper prints by hand, too. We’re so good at it, and so well-known for it, that we’ve even spoken at SXSW about the importance of paper in a digital world. We’ve been commissioned to make custom paper for movies like “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” and bands like Arcade Fire.
Kseniya Thomas in 2007 co-founded Ladies of Letterpress, an international trade organization for letterpress printers and print enthusiasts. Their aim: to promote the art and craft of letterpress printing and to encourage the voice and vision of women printers. Besides running LOLP, she owns and operates a full-service, commercial letterpress and design shop, Thomas-Printers. Kseniya loves the process almost as much as the finished product, whether it’s wedding invitations, stationery systems, custom cards, or anything else that needs the touch of letterpress.
Amy Leners is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Chicago, IL. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book, Paper and Print from Columbia College Chicago. Her work is in collaboration with forgotten spaces, exploring our relationships to architecture and space, specifically our homes and how the possible ephemerality of these spaces affects our psyche. Using handmade site-specific pigments, alternative photography processes, printmaking and handmade paper she creates works that are made by and of these spaces.
Lisa Miles
Daluang Beaten Bark Paper and Contemporary Artists in Indonesia | recap
Lisa Miles is an emerging papermaker and book artist with a focus on beaten bark papers. She holds an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book where she worked as research assistant to Timothy Barrett. In 2017–2018, she represented the United States as a Fulbright Student Researcher for her project “Bark Paper, Plant Dyes, and the Book Arts in Indonesia.” In 2016, she spent two months in Mexico researching amate papermaking with the support of a UI Stanley Graduate Award. She was awarded the 2018 Holle Award for Excellence in Book Arts from the University of Alabama.
Radha Pandey
Papermaking By Hand in India | recap
Radha Pandey is a papermaker and letterpress printer. She earned her MFA in book arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book where she studied letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking with a focus on Western, Eastern, and Islamic Papermaking techniques. In 2012–2014 she traveled to investigate Islamic-world papermaking techniques in India, and has since undertaken her own research on the essential tools of Islamic papermaking. Her artist’s books are held in numerous public collections in the United States and abroad.
Heather Peters
The Driving Force of the Universe Made Visible | recap
Heather Peters is a papermaker and book artist residing in southern California. A recent graduate of the Mills College Book Art and Creative Writing program, she is in the process of restoring two antique Noble and Wood Hollander beaters in order to start her own papermill in the rural community of Rainbow, California. This papermill and artist studio called The Society of Hermits, aims to bring together artist that normally work in solitude, with the belief that there is a desire for meaning and shared knowledge in everyone that transcends place and physical specifics that can best be achieved through the use of individualized substrates and materials.
Serge Pirard
The Craft of Handmade Paper Moulds
Woodworker Serge Pirard, after being asked by a friend to build her a paper mould, ended up working for three years as an apprentice to British master mould maker, Ron Macdonald. When Macdonald retired in 2016, Pirard moved Macdonald’s equipment to Belgium, where he has rebuilt the loom and where he continues the traditional craft of handmade paper mould making.
Laura Post (moderator) with panelists Daniel Heyman, Orit Hofshi, and Vanessa Nieto (panel)
Support Interruptus: The Shifting Roles Between Surface and Substrate
Laura Post is a lecturer at Indiana University, Bloomington. She earned an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in printmaking and a BA from Swarthmore College. In 2015, she apprenticed at Rongbaozhai in Beijing, China, to master traditional Chinese woodblock printing and studied papermaking at Awagami Factory in Tokushima, Japan. Post has been a guest artist at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Temple University. Her work has been exhibited at PaperWest: National Juried Biennial at University of Utah, The Art of Paper: 7th Annual Juried Exhibition at the A.D. Gallery of University of North Carolina, Pembroke, New Prints—Winter 2016 at the International Print Center New York.
Daniel Heyman, a recipient of Guggenheim and Pew Fellowships, and research grants from Princeton University, Dartmouth College and RISD has had residencies at Dartmouth College; Herzliya, Israel; MacDowell; Yaddo and MI-LAB Nagasawa Art Park. Heyman’s work is collected in institutions including Getty Research Institute and Library of Congress. For the project, “Native Impressions: In Our Own Voice,” a collaboration with letterpress artist Lucy Ganje and thirteen Native Americans from four Indian Reservations in North Dakota, Heyman worked with papermaker Nichole Donnelly to design paper whose fiber content enriched the content. He is currently creating a series of large-scale paper folding screens in Japan, and is represented by Cade Tompkins Projects.
Orit Hofshi is internationally recognized as a printmaker and installation artist. She is preoccupied with the human condition, researching both historical and current perspectives, while questioning humans’ place, significance, and role. Through her art, she seeks commonalities of experience that transcend nationalism and sectarianism. Hofshi has exhibited internationally including: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art; Kunstsammlung im Deutscen Bundestag, art Collection of the German Bundestag, Berlin; Danubiana Art Museum, Bratislava; Philagrafika 2010: “The Graphic Unconscious” PAFA Arts Museum; The Print Center, Philadelphia; The Royal Academy of Arts Museum, London; List Gallery, Swarthmore College, PA; and the International Print Center, NY.
Vanessa Nieto is co-founder of Circular, a printmaking studio located in Bogotá, Colombia. She is associate teacher in the visual arts department at Pontificial Xaverian University. Vanessa earned her MFA in printmaking at RISD, and a BFA in visual arts at the National University of Colombia. She is a recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship. Although she explores different media to address the borders between body and politics, such as installation, sculpture and drawing, there is a central interest about the physicality and materiality in printmaking for addressing the act of leaving marks and its relation to violence; particularly from her home country, Colombia.
Brian Queen
Medieval to Digital: The Papermaking Mould
Brian Queen has been making paper by hand for over twenty-five years, utilizing a wide range of materials and techniques. He specializes in creating watermarks and building papermaking equipment but his interests span the book arts, including letterpress printing and studying how new technologies are adapted into book arts. In his day job Queen owns and operates Sensa-Light, a company that manufactures custom architectural lighting for offices, hotels, and restaurants.
Steph Rue and Lars Kim
Survey of Modern Korean Print and Papermaking
Steph Rue is an artist working primarily with handmade paper and books as her medium. She was a 2015–2016 recipient of a Fulbright Arts Research Grant to South Korea, where she studied traditional Korean bookbinding, papermaking, and printing. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of Iowa Center for the Book. She teaches workshops on papermaking and bookmaking, with an emphasis on East Asian techniques. Rue also sells hanji and related products. You can see her work at stephrue.com or read about her research on Korean book and paper arts at stephruejournal.wordpress.com.
Lars Kim is a designer and letterpress printer living in San Francisco. After several years in architecture and new media, she stumbled upon a Heidelberg Windmill in 2006 and rediscovered the tactile beauty of letterpress. Since then, she has deepened her passion for typography as well as the technical aspects of print and bookbinding, working on a wide range of commercial and private projects. She teaches design at the San Francisco Center for the Book, where she produced an artist’s book on Korean art, Shipjangsaeng: Ten Symbols of Longevity (Small Plates Imprint, 2017). Kim also manages production at Logos Graphics in San Francisco and works on graphic and web design projects through her freelance practice, Solsken Design.
Katherine M. Ruffin
Why the Whole Book Matters: Making Books the Hard Way in Twenty-First-Century America | recap
Katherine M. Ruffin is Book Studies and Book Arts Program Director at Wellesley College. She teaches at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. She holds an MFA in book arts from the University of Alabama, and a PhD in library and information science from Simmons College. Katherine gave the Hofer Lecture at the Houghton Library at Harvard University on the topic of “Books as Portals: Reading and Responding to Historical Collections in the Twenty-First Century” in 2017.
Michael Russem
Designing Printing History | this presentation was not delivered
Michael Russem is a freelance book designer in Somerville, Massachusetts. His clients include David R. Godine, Harvard University Press, the Bibliographical Society of America, and New York Review Books.
Todd Samuelson
Imperfect Iterations: Duplicate Iconography in Wood Engraving Block
Todd Samuelson is assistant director for special collections at the Marriott Library, University of Utah. Previously, he served for five years as curator of rare books & manuscripts and director of the Book History Workshop at Cushing Library, Texas A&M University. His research on topics related to book history and special collections administration has appeared in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Printing History, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, portal: Libraries and the Academy, and College & Research Libraries. Samuelson is also a practicing letterpress printer, and publishes work through two imprints, Anise Press and Fat Matter Press.
Jonathan Senchyne
Presence, Intimacy, and Rag Paper in Nineteenth-Century America | recap
Jonathan Senchyne holds a PhD in American literature from Cornell University. He is assistant professor of book history and print culture in the Information School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also director of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture. He has published in Book History, Technology and Culture, PMLA, Early African American Print Culture and elsewhere. He has held research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the NEH, the NYPL, and the CUNY Graduate Center. His first book, Intimate Paper and the Materiality of Early American Literature, is under contract with the University of Massachusetts Press.
Margaret Sheppard
Teaching Materials: Book Arts, Card Games, and the Social Life of Early Modern Texts | recap
Margaret Sheppard is a doctoral student focused on English and book studies at the University of Iowa. An avid hand papermaker and book artist, Sheppard is interested in the materiality of texts and the production of books as social objects. She is currently collaborating on the development of Mark, an educational game centered on early modern printers’ marks. Sheppard holds an MA in the history of text technologies from Florida State University. She is the co-founder of Peace Paper Project, a portable hand papermaking operation that engages international communities in book arts processes as forms of trauma therapy and empowerment. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is archived at the Library of Congress and Yale University.
Scott Skinner/Ali Fujino
Traditional Japanese Kites and Their Influence of Twenty-First-Century Kite Makers
and Kite Making (demonstration) | recap
Scott R. Skinner has been involved with kites since 1976, first as a flier and collector, and, since the early 1980s, a kite maker. He is co-founder of the Drachen Foundation, a private non-profit organization that features kites to teach science, art, history, and culture (www.drachen.org). Many of the projects have had Japanese kites as the subject, and Drachan has researched, written, and published three books on the topic: Kites: Paper Wings over Japan, Japanese Kite Prints by John Stevenson, and Paper in Flight. Skinner continues to make contemporary kites with traditional Japanese forms and materials. http://scottskinner kites.com/bio.html
Ali Fujino has been involved with the arts starting with the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian (now National American Art Museum), working in the exhibition and design for contemporary arts. She has worked internationally as a project producer for various cultural programs. She met Scott Skinner in 1985, and together they founded the Drachen Foundation, a private non-profit dedicated to the documentation and preservation of the kite. As an artist, her love of handmade Japanese papers is appreciated in her art of contemporary moku hanga, Japanese woodblock printing.
Johan Solberg
Papermaking Tradition in Central Asia: From the Introduction of the Craft in Samarkand to the Last Papermakers of the Twentieth Century
Johan Solberg holds an MFA in book arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book. His primary fields of interest are bookbinding and papermaking, and combining scholarly inquiry with artistic craftwork. Solberg has taught various papermaking and bookbinding workshops in the United States and internationally. Solberg conducted a research trip to Uzbekistan in 2017 funded by the University of Iowa Graduate College. He is working to uncover the legacy of the early papermakers, and their contribution to the development of the craft, by making paper and examining textual sources.
Lynn Sures
The Nexus of Being and Place: Interpreting Human Origins in Handmade Paper | recap
2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow Lynn Sures is an artist working in pulp painting, artist books, and prints. Her current focus is the nexus between art and science, in which she considers the physical world and the origins of humans. Sures has exhibited and created works for events in Australia, Japan, Italy; and Sri Lanka, where she was a U.S. State Department American Artist Abroad. She is founding director of the Collegiate Paper Triennial, and of the annual Fabriano Paper/Print/Book studio experience. She was guest editor of the Winter 2016 issue of Hand Papermaking, on the papermaking of Italy.
Peter Thomas
The Revival of Hand Papermaking in the USA in Late Twentieth Century | recap
Peter Thomas is a book artist and hand papermaker with a special interest in production papermaking. He has been active in the leadership of IAPMA, the Friends of Dard Hunter, the Miniature Book Society, Book Arts Santa Cruz, and the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz. Peter works with his wife Donna writing, illustrating, printing, and binding fine press and artist books. Together they have produced over 175 editions, many about hand papermaking or handmade paper. With Donna Thomas, he has produced the educational video, The Ergonomics of Hand Papermaking.
Elizabeth Yale (moderator) and panelists Julia Leonard and Robert Riter
Art, Science, and the Book: Historical Books as Matrices for New Works of Art
Elizabeth Yale is a lecturer in the department of history at the University of Iowa, where she teaches courses in the history of science, the history of the book, and women and gender in the early modern world. She is the author of Sociable Knowledge: Natural History and the Nation in Early Modern Europe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). She is currently at work on a book exploring women’s contributions to the investigation of nature in early modern households.
Julia Leonard is a bookbinder and artist working in Iowa City, Iowa, and a faculty member at the UI Center for the Book. She creates books that pay homage to traditional book design, craft, and organizational methods. Her work often uses found and historic reference books, manuals, and histories to create new stories housed in new structures.
Robert Riter is a faculty member in the University of Alabama’s School of Library & Information Studies, where he teaches courses in archival studies, book history, and descriptive bibliography. His research explores topics related to the publication of original source materials, materiality, and the representation of information in book art.