|
Katherine McCanless Ruffin I am a letterpress printer and book artist. I hold a Masters in Fine Arts in the Book Arts from the University of Alabama, and an AB in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College. I am currently Book Arts Program Director at Wellesley College. My teaching and research at Wellesley focus on the role of the book arts in the liberal arts. The classes and workshops I teach in the Book Arts Lab located in Clapp Library integrate the book arts and the history of the book with various facets of the humanities and draw extensively upon the college's Special Collections. During the spring semester, I co-teach the Arts 107 Book Arts Studio class with Ruth Rogers, Special Collections Librarian. In Wellesley's Summer School, I teach Arts 109 Two Dimensional Design through the medium of letterpress printing (http://www.wellesley.edu/SummerSchool). I also teach intensive letterpress printing workshops at The Center for Book Arts in New York City (http://www.centerforbookarts.org). Prior to teaching book arts at Wellesley College, I taught letterpress printing at the Bow & Arrow Press, Adams House, Harvard University. I have also led workshops in creative writing at the Harvard Extension School and Bryn Mawr College's Writing for College program. I publish limited edition books and broadsides under the imprint of Shinola Press. I began printing under the imprint of Shinola Press when I was a graduate student in the MFA in the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama (http://www.bookarts.ua.edu). During my MFA, I studied the history and arts of the book, including the disciplines of letterpress printing, bookbinding, papermaking, and paper decoration. Currently I am continuing my training as a letterpress printer at Firefly Press in Somerville, Massachusetts, where I am learning Linotype and Monotype hot-metal composition from John Kristensen. |