Sid Berger received his Ph.D. in Medieval and Renaissance English Literature and Bibliography in 1971 and has since taught a variety of courses in these areas at numerous universities. He also teaches courses in Medieval Codicology; Bibliography (Enumerative, Descriptive, Historical, and Textual); The History of the Book; Rare Book Librarianship; and Preservation of Library Materials and Preservation Administration. His workshops include Printing on a Handpress; Papermaking; the Hand Casting of Printing Type; Book Collecting; and other book-related classes. Berger is also widely published in these areas, and he has run his own private press, The Doe Press, since 1978. For thirteen years he served as a rare book librarian, the Curator of Printed Books and the subsequent Curator of Manuscripts at the American Antiquarian Society, and Head of Special Collections at the University of California-Riverside. Following those appointments, he was made Director of the Library of Congress-affiliated California Center for the Book at University of California-Los Angeles for three years until 2002. Berger is currently a professor in the Communications and English Departments at Simmons College in Boston.
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Ken Botnick has been making books for almost 25 years. With Steve Miller, he was co-proprietor of Red Ozier Press in New York in the late 1970's and 1980's. For the last 15 years Botnick has printed under his own imprint. In addition to working at the press, Botnick was responsible for the design and production of art books at Yale University Press, and he served as Executive Director of the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. Botnick is currently an Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, teaching in the Visual Communications department and serving as the Director of the Kranzberg Book Studio.
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Betty Bright is an independent scholar, curator, and teacher. She received a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Minnesota in Spring 2000. That research formed the basis of her book, No Longer Innocent: the Book Arts in America, 1960 to 1980, which is due out in 2005 from Granary Books. Before embarking on her Ph.D. studies, Bright helped found the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, working there for nine years as Program Director. In that capacity she curated over fifty exhibitions, several of which toured nationally with accompanying catalogues. Bright curated the exhibition "The Press at Colorado College: the Pressroom as Classroom", accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, which is currently on tour. The exhibition will be at The Newberry Library in Chicago (February 2 - March 26, 2005), followed by showings at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Fall 2005) and The University of the Arts in Philadelphia (Spring 2006).
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Carolee Campbell is an Emmy Award-winning actress whose extensive theatre training and work on stage was followed by a nine-year career starring on a television soap opera in New York. Paralleling her theatrical career was a deep involvement in photography and the traditional darkroom process. It was her interest in nineteenth-century photographic techniques, bookbinding, and hand-held containers for suites of prints that led Carolee to her discovery of letterpress printing. As a result, Ninja Press was inaugurated in 1984. While there was no specific literary agenda governing the selection of works to be published at the outset, the abiding interest has mainly been in contemporary poetry. Carolee works alone on designing each edition which she then illustrates, hand-sets type, letterpress prints, and binds by hand. Ninja Press has evolved into a respected private press whose work is exhibited and collected widely by both private collectors and institutions, including the Research Library at The Getty Research Institute, the New York Public Library, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and The British Library. The Ninja Press archive was purchased by the University of California-Santa Barbara in 1997. Ninja Press celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2004.
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Johnny Carrera's start in the book arts came in 1989 when he was promoted from a janatorial position at Oberlin College's main library to a book repair technician. He later attended the North Bennet St. School in Boston and studied with Sally Key. Carrera chose the name Quercus Press when he editioned his first letterpress printed book in 1993 while working as a volunteer at the Silver Buckle Press at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The name Quercus Press sprung from his love of botany and trees: quercus, Latin for "oak", possesses the connotation of something long-lasting and majestic, and the QU is often a graceful ligature in older typefaces. His books use traditional bookmaking methods to convey conceptually provocative artwork. Highlights in Carrera's career include working on Putrefatti with Sam Walker, hand composing his artist's newspaper "Work in Progress", and his ongoing printing project, "Pictorial Webster's", a letterpress printed book of engravings originally printed in the 19th century editions of Webster's Dictionary.
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Julie Chen is a nationally known book artist and book arts instructor. She has been producing limited edition artist's books under the Flying Fish Press imprint for the past 17 years. Her work can be found in library and museum collections around the world, including the library at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Chen completed her undergraduate work at University of California-Berkeley in studio art in 1984 and went on to receive an M.A. in book arts from Mills College in 1989. During the school year she teaches in the book arts program at Mills College; during the summer, she teaches intensive book arts workshops at institutions around the country. Chen's most recent artist's book, True to Life, won an award at the 2004 Pyramid Atlantic Artists' Books Fair and Conference.
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Terrence Chouinard has worked at Pyramid Atlantic, the Corcoran College of Art & Design, and the Library of Congress. In June of 1999 he joined the Rare Book School staff as printer-in-residence and was awarded their first William Reese Fellowship in American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas. In 2000, Chouinard received his MFA with dual emphases in printing and binding from the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama. He founded his private imprint, the Wing & the Wheel Press, while an undergraduate at the Memphis College of Art in 1993. Items published by the Wing & the Wheel are represented in the collections at Wellesley College's Margaret Clapp Library; the Copley Library; and the Library of the National Gallery of Art. Chouinard was appointed the second Victor Hammer Fellow in the Book Arts in 2000 at Wells College in New York, where in his first year he was instrumental in creating a minor in the Book Arts. A member of the Grolier Club and trustee of the American Printing History Association, Chouinard has been Director of the Wells Book Arts Center since 2002, where he dedicates himself to printing and administrating one of the nation's premier undergraduate book arts program.
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Mark Dimunation was appointed Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress in 1998. As Chief, Dimunation is responsible for the development and management of the Rare Book Collection, the largest collection of rare books in North America. In 2004 Mark was appointed Assistant Director for Special Collections and now oversees eight other divisions in addition to Rare Books. He came to the Library of Congress from Cornell University, where he had served as Curator of Rare Books and Associate Director for Collections in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, and where he taught in the English Department since 1991. Dimunation had his start with rare books when he was appointed the Assistant Chief of Acquisitions at the Bancroft Library at the University of California-Berkeley. He served in that position from 1981-1983, when he was then hired as the Rare Book Librarian and Assistant Chief for Special Collections at Stanford University. Dimunation did his undergraduate work at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Following course work at Christ Church College in Oxford, Dimunation entered the graduate program in American History at the University of California-Berkeley. This research at the Bancroft Library prompted him to pursue a career in Rare Book Librarianship.
Dimunation specializes in 18th and 19th century English and American printing and has considerable experience working with antiquarian materials as well as fine press and contemporary artists' books. He is currently completing an extensive project to reconstruct Thomas Jefferson's Library at the Library of Congress. He has lectured extensively about book collections and has authored a number of exhibition catalogs, including a recent study of Andrew Dickson White as a nineteenth-century book collector. Dimunation is a member of The Grolier Club, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, and the English Short Title Catalogue Board, and he currently serves on the Special Collections Task Force of the Association of Research Libraries.
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Earl M. Collier is Executive Vice President of Genzyme Corporation. He is responsible for managing Genzyme's oncology and cardiovascular businesses. Collier joined Genzyme full-time in 1997, but his relationship with the company dates back to 1990, when he began working with Genzyme as an outside lawyer. At Genzyme he was also President of Genzyme Biosurgery and its predecessor, Genzyme Surgical Products. Collier has more than 20 years of experience in healthcare and was president of Vitas Healthcare Corporation, the largest provider of hospice services in the United States, from 1991 to 1995. Between 1981 and 1991, Collier was a partner at Hogan & Hartson law firm in Washington, D.C. He also served as deputy administrator for the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) in Baltimore during the Carter Administration. From 1977 to 1979, Collier was Deputy Administrator of the New York State offices of Health Systems Management. Collier was an associate at Covington and Burlington law firm in Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1977. He began his legal career in Washington as a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals. Collier sits on the boards of The Covalent Group, Inc. and Excigen, Inc. He earned a BA at Yale University and a JD at the University of Virginia Law School. Collier is an avid private collector of artists' books.
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As both the Sally Preston Swan Librarian for the Denison Library at Scripps College and Assistant Director of the Libraries of The Claremont Colleges, Judy Harvey-Sahak happily works with what she considers one of the most choice book arts collections to be found among liberal arts colleges. With its emphasis on printing history, the collection is strong in the book arts, including artists' books and contemporary press books. From 1980-1988 Harvey-Sahak reestablished and directed the Scripps College Press, and since 1993 she has coordinated all of the Special Collections at the Libraries of The Claremont Colleges. Harvey-Sahak has written and lectured on the history of the book, contemporary California printing, artists' books, teaching presses, and undergraduate use of special collections. Exhibits that she has curated include those on book artists Julie Chen, Susan King, Claire Van Vliet, Andrew Hoyem, and Enid Mark. A graduate of Scripps College and the University of Washington (MLibr), Harvey-Sahak received a Durfee Foundation Grant to observe hand papermaking in China.
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Cynthia Imperatore is an independent book dealer specializing in unique and editioned artists' books. Her love of language and subtle poetic expression compelled Cynthia to immerse herself in the genre of artists' books; while completing a bachelor's degree in literature and poetry at Mills College in Oakland, California, Imperatore studied letterpress printing and the arts of the book. In 1995, she began working at Califia Books in San Francisco, where she wrote and produced the store catalogue. In 2004, she started Cynthia Imperatore Books, and she now represents a variety of innovative artists whose books range from the traditional to the conceptual. In 2004 she initiated a series of talks called "Insights into Artists' Books" at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Imperatore's publications include an essay on the work of Julie Chen in the exhibition catalogue Objects/Encounters: Bookworks at Flying Fish Press 1987-2001 (University of Vermont, 2002); and "Marketing Artist's Books & Books in the Collection: Some Thoughts for Book Makers" in Ampersand, the Quarterly Journal of the Pacific Center for the Book Arts (2004).
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Sandra Kroupa is the Book Arts and Rare Book Curator in the Special Collections Division at the University of Washington Libraries. She has worked in Special Collections for nearly 37 years, most of that time involved with the book arts. Kroupa writes, lectures, teaches classes, curates exhibitions, gives workshops on book arts-related topics both historical and modern, and participates in the UW's PhD program in Textual Studies. A founding member of the Book Arts Guild, a regional book arts organization begun 25 years ago, Kroupa schedules lectures and workshops of visiting artists and acts as membership secretary of the group. She has apprenticed to a bookbinder, owns two letterpresses, and regularly participates in workshops and specialized courses in order to better assist students in understanding book history and creating their own books. One of her areas of specialty is 19th century American Literature, especially the work of women writers. Kroupa is currently working on a personal research project on Koberger style bookbindings of the 15th century.
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Emily K. Larned is a book artist and the Vice President of Booklyn, a not-for-profit artist alliance based in Brooklyn, NY. As an agent of Booklyn's Collection Development department, Larned travels extensively, showing a wide assortment of artists' books to institutional collections across the country. Her own artist books are exhibited internationally and have been acquired, via Booklyn, by over fifty public collections, including the Getty, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Tate Britain, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Larned's new book entitled Thrift Store: the Past & Future Secret Lives of Things is a forthcoming trade edition from Ig Publishing.
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In 9th grade, Maryatt had a fantastic early bookmaking experience: all the homeroom students wrote their own autobiographies, hand-lettered and bound the finished book (over-achiever Kitty had to make two books). Maryatt has been happily involved in the book arts since 1971 when she began her life-long study of calligraphy. She started binding in 1975, and in 1977 Maryatt was drawn to letterpress printing and typography. She received a grant in graduate school to study fine binding in Ascona, Switzerland in 1981.
Maryatt is currently 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 18 years, producing 36 editions to date. In this class, students write their own stories, develop imagery, print the collaborative books by letterpress and bind them in limited editions of about 90 copies available for sale. Maryatt has been teaching Book Structures for UCLA Extension since 1988 and just introduced a course called The Art of the Book: Concept, Development and Execution. She previously taught calligraphy there for many years. She is principal owner of Two Hands Press, a book arts design studio specializing in the design and fabrication of both handmade and production books. Her own one-of-a-kind books frequently are investigations of book structure. She lives in Oak Park, California, with her understanding husband, Gary Lindgren; her perfect son, Jason Maryatt Lindgren, is a sophomore at Yale University. Maryatt has an MFA in graphic design from UCLA, an MA in mathematics from Claremont Graduate University, and a BA from Scripps College.
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Lindsey Mears is a book artist based in Philadelphia. She received degrees in English and Mass Communications from James Madison University in 1997, and she earned an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts in 2004. Her background in writing and photography is integrated into her one-of-a-kind and limited edition artist’s books, in which she evokes narratives of the past. Mears combines 19th century photographic processes and letterpress to create layers of original and historic imagery and text which she then hand binds. Additionally, Mears collaborates with her mother, Elizabeth Ryland Mears, creating glass book sculptures with original sandblasted text and imagery. Mears has been the proprietor of Saraswati Books, her business of hand-sewn blank books and leather bags, since 2000.
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Steve Miller was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he took letterpress printing classes with Walter Hamady of The Perishable Press. He founded Red Ozier Press in 1976, a fine press devoted to publishing literary first editions in handmade limited editions. In 1979 Miller moved the press to New York City, where he and Ken Botnick achieved national prominence for the craftsmanship of their books and the importance of the texts they published — work by authors such as William Faulkner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Allen Ginsberg, as well as a variety of little-known writers and artists. In 1988, the New York Public Library purchased the entire archive of the Red Ozier Press for its permanent collection. Miller came to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1988, where he currently teaches letterpress printing and hand papermaking in the MFA in the Book Arts Program. Although his primary focus at the university is teaching traditional bookmaking, he is also the proprietor of Red Hydra Press and collaborates on various limited edition publishing projects with authors and artists. Miller is also a co-director of Paper and Book Intensive, a nationally recognized annual series of summer workshops in the book arts. He is president of the Advisory Board of the Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, Georgia, and is a past president of the Friends of Dard Hunter, Inc., a group of artists, crafts persons, conservators and scientists devoted to the art and craft of hand papermaking and related book arts. In the spring of 2004 Miller traveled to Cuba with UA students and faculty, collaborating with Cuban book artists to finish a bilingual limited edition book of poems by Billy Collins, the U.S. poet laureate (2001-2003).
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Ruth Rogers has been Special Collections Librarian in the Wellesley College Library since 1991. She administers a collection of over 40,000 items, including rare books and manuscripts, modern fine press books, and contemporary artists' books. Although purchasing new acquisitions is a large part of her job, Rogers is equally committed to making the collection available to students and faculty, who bring over 40 classes a year to Special Collections to see primary sources. In addition to giving frequent slide talks on artists' books, she co-teaches with Katherine McCanless Ruffin a course called "Book Arts Studio", lecturing on the history of the book. Recently, she developed and co-taught an experimental course, "Papyrus to Print to Pixel", which explores revolutions in the technology of written communication over 5,000 years. The course received the Apgar Award for Teaching Excellence at the College.
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Dr. Robert J. Ruben has two intellectual centers to his life: medicine and books. A leader in the medical field of Otolaryngology, he is a Distinguished University Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and the Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Otolaryngology of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Medical Center. A graduate of Princeton University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a Research Associate at the National Institutes of Health, Ruben's research and writing have been focused on developmental biology, otology, pediatrics, otolaryngology, and the history of medicine; he is also Editor-in-Chief of an international medical journal. Ruben has been an ardent student and collector of artists' books for twenty-five years, and an exhibition of his artists' books, "Beyond the Text", was held at Adelphi University. He is a member of the Grolier Club, where his exhibition, "Hear, Hear!" focused on another of his book collections, the history of Otology. He has served as Chair of the Friends of the Princeton University Library for the past four years.
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Katherine McCanless Ruffin is Book Arts Program Director at the Wellesley College Library. In addition to her work at Wellesley, Katherine prints both under her own imprint of Shinola Press and with John Kristensen at Firefly Press. She also teaches intensive printing and bookbinding workshops at The Center for Book Arts and the Penland School of Crafts. Ruffin is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA program in the Book Arts at the University of Alabama. Currently, Ruffin serves on the Board of Advisors for the MFA in the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama, the Council of the Society of Printers, and the leadership group of the Letterpress Guild of New England.
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Suzy Taraba is the Head of Special Collections and University Archivist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. A special collections librarian for over 22 years, Taraba held positions at the Bakken Library of Electricity in Life, Columbia University, Duke University, and the University of Chicago, before returning to Wesleyan, her alma mater, in 1997. She is currently teaching a course called "Texts in Context: The Book as Cultural Artifact" in Wesleyan's Graduate Liberal Studies Program. Taraba actively collects and promotes artists' books at Wesleyan. Her article, "Now What Should We Do With Them?: Artists' Books in the Curriculum," was published in RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage in Fall 2004.
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Claire Van Vliet is an artist and the proprietor of the Janus Press, which she founded in 1955. Located in Newark, Vermont, the press mainly publishes the work of contemporary writers in collaboration with papermakers and printmakers. Among the many authors she has published are Galway Kinnell, John le Carr, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, W. R. Johnson, Denise Levertov, Sandra McPherson, and W. D. Snodgrass.
Institutions that have Janus Press collections include the Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library, the National Museum of the Book in The Hague, the National Library of Canada, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and many college and university libraries. The Library of Congress holds the design archive of the press.
Van Vliet has won numerous national grants, honors, and awards, the most prestigious being the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, which she received in 1989 for her innovations in approaches to the book. She was awarded honorary Doctorates of Fine Arts by the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 1993 and San Diego State University in 1995. The Janus Press celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2005.
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Kathleen Walkup directs the Book Arts Program at Mills College, where she teaches courses covering a broad range of subjects from visible language to women in the Paris avant-garde. Walkup also teaches courses on artists' books through Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. She has taught book arts at the University of Georgia's Study Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy, and she has led several graduate seminars at Camberwell College of Arts, London. Walkup's research interests include the history of women in print culture and conceptual practice in artists' books. Her ongoing artist's book project is entitled "Library of Discards."
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Laurie Whitehill Chong was recently appointed the Rhode Island School of Design's first Special Collections Librarian. Previous to her appointment, she served for over fourteen years as the Library's Head of Readers' Services. Chong has a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MLS from the University of Rhode Island, managing to combine her skills as a book artist, painter, and fiber artist with her library career. The RISD Library has a growing collection of over a thousand artists' books, which Chong uses extensively as a teaching tool for all disciplines. More recently, she has expanded the scope of the collection to include bookmaking process materials and archives from several noted book artists. Chong has been an invited speaker, a panelist, and a workshop leader in the book arts at national conferences and is a part-time instructor for RISD BookWorks, an intensive two-week bookmaking course. She has exhibited her books and artwork in local, regional and national shows. As an active member of the Art Libraries Society/North America and its New England Chapter, Chong has served on the Executive Boards of both. She is also a member of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association and the Guild of Book Workers.
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Max Yela has been head of Special Collections at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries since 1994. Previously, he was the public service librarian for Special Collections at the University of Delaware for nine years. In his twenty years as a special collections librarian, Yela has become interested in the book as artifact and the book as art, and he has developed a personal research interest in the object of the book as an expressive form. He serves as curator for the UWM Book Arts Collection in Special Collections, one of the most extensive collections in the upper Midwest. In association with this collection, Yela has become a regional spokesperson for the book as art, hosting an annual speaker series called Book FOR[u]Ms (co-founded with Richard Zauft, former UWM faculty and ABC Steering Committee member). Since 1995, Book FOR[u]Ms has invited 41 nationally and regionally recognized book artists to deliver public presentations about their work and the meaning of that work in their lives.
Yela is also the co-founder of the Bad Water Book Club, a southeastern Wisconsin book-arts interest group with over 200 members; has delivered many lectures and presentations on the contemporary book-arts movement and its traditional roots; and has produced and curated numerous exhibitions, both extensive and small, on the art of the book. He currently teaches a course he created, "Issues in Contemporary Art: Book Arts Survey", through UWM's Department of Visual Art. Yela is a graduate of UMASS-Amherst and Simmons College, Boston.
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Richard Zauft has taught typography, letterpress printing, and design history as a faculty member in visual art for 24 years. He curated and organized the National Collegiate Book Arts Exhibition in 1984 and the National Broadside Exhibition in 1991. Professor Zauft served as Department Chair, head of the Graphic Design program, and Associate Dean at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1999-2004. His recent work and research has focused on wood type. In 1999 he set up a printing shop at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin; he has also conducted lectures, exhibited work, and directed visiting artist workshops using wood type at institutions around the country, including the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, the San Francisco Center for the Book, the Society of Printers in Boston, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 2004 Zauft co-authored a book on wood type entitled Hamilton Wood Type: A History in Headlines. Zauft holds an MFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a MDP certificate in University Management from Harvard University. Zauft is currently the Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs at Emerson College in Boston.
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Roberta Zonghi, Keeper of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Boston Public Library, is the fourth individual to serve in this post, which was created in 1934 to acknowledge the library’s great collections of rare books and manuscripts. In 1970, Zonghi began her career while still an undergraduate student, working at the Library as a part-time assistant at the Information Desk at the central library. She transferred to the Rare Book and Manuscript Department in 1978 as a bibliographical cataloguer, and in 1998 she was appointed the Keeper after a series of promotions and a worldwide search. Zonghi has given lectures across the country and has published articles on various aspects of the collections of the Boston Public Library, including the Feer World Fair Collection, the William Addison Dwiggins Collection, the Fine Press collection, the Ticknor History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature collection, and the History of the Book collection. Zonghi is also a collector of antique toys, American folk art, and 19th century American paintings. She and her husband are both collectors and avid auction attendees. Her other interests include photographic color and form as found in architecture and architectural ruins, marionettes, masks, and sculpture.
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