CBAA the Association for Book Art Education

Capitalizing on the interdisciplinary nature of the field, this blog calls attention to criticism and theory about the book as a medium and/or subject in works of art and, more generally, about book art. It seeks to encourage dialogue, solicit comments, and create a generative space for new ideas from critics and theorists of various fields regarding the aesthetic, semiotic, haptic, cognitive, historical, and other features that distinguish these works and their function in ethical, political, and social matters.

To contribute to the list of underrepresented voices in the book arts, see CBAA Book Art + Social Justice Resource List.

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BOOK ARTS RUMINATIONS, CONTINUED // Susan Viguers

15 Sep 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

This is a continuation of the September 1^st post.

As is common among book artists, I introduce viewers to my books on my website. The structure and images of most of my books are so entwined with the text that the book does not make sense if that text isn’t read. For Lily Yeh’s and my Rwanda book, I experimented with a video that included pauses allowing the viewer to read the text. The result was embarrassingly dull (and never posted). It jolted me into recognizing that the usual reason for introducing one’s book on a website is to present a glimpse, an arresting visual glimpse of the book. That does not include experiencing the book. I was reminded of that when I checked out the images and the handling video, on the Big Jump Press website, of Katie Baldwin’s and Sarah Bryant’s remarkable new artist book, Small Patches of Land. Although certainly presenting a visually beautiful book, the website does not in the least communicate the multifaceted experience of the book, one that requires that it be handled and read. (I knew that because I had the book.) So how can a book artist give actual access to experiencing one’s books?

There is nothing new about that discussion. See, for one of many examples, Anna Platz-Twelt’s essay on her Art Blog, “Artist Books: Display and Exhibition,” and online there are at present a number of archives that go beyond letting you know about the book to actually moving through it – digitally, of course. Johanna Drucker’s ArtistBooksOnLine project may not be defunct, but it was highly effective and influential in, among other things, promoting the value and need for that. The Cynthia Sears Artists’ Book Collection of Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, in its critically focused Artists’ Books’ Unshelved series, presents books in a holistic way, one that includes attention to the experience of moving through a book – its images, tactility, and text. Aaron Cohick and AB Gorham’s S Apostrophe S Artist Book Readings, an online series of book artists showing and reading their books, gets even closer to capturing the experience of an artist book. The virtual world also, of course, offers digital versions of some printed books, which allows the viewer to move through a book on their own. But nothing online of which I am aware deals with both the issue of the reader’s agency and the physiological experience of handling and reading a book.

When I submitted a book to the Madison CBAA conference exhibition, I included a note stipulating that the book be handled. But when I got to the exhibition, I found every book was labeled the same, “Please do not touch.” There were many books at the exhibition displayed with a spread that, although not giving the full experience of the book, was arresting, evocative, often visually tactile. Overall, I felt that that created a rather successful exhibition of art – visual art. However, my book did not contribute to that success because of the extent that the visual was mediated by other modalities, the temporal and the verbal. And my book was not alone.

That exhibition made me quick to agree to help with planning and designing an exhibition that would include artist books for the eighty-plus year-old organization American Color Print Society that in the past had just exhibited prints. The first suggestion that came up for exhibiting books was for a table, on which books would be placed, with chairs. I felt strongly, however, that the books needed to have the same presence as the art on the wall, which meant that they’d be on the same visual level – on pedestals or shelves – and not require a rather major interruption in the audience’s usual movement through the gallery by asking them to pull out a chair and sit down. Prospective book artists would be asked if they wanted a book handled and how it should be displayed. My thought was that the books to be handled would be in one area, with prominent signage above stating something to the effect of “These books require being handled and read.”

But it turned out, only two books, one being mine and one a zine, were clearly in that category. There were, however, quite a few artists who stated that their books could be handled “gently.” So, in the end, there was no big sign insisting on handling, but small tags next to each book, one “Please do not touch,” another “Please handle gently,” and, for two, “This book needs to be handled and read.” On opening night, I saw a few people touch books that had that “gently” tag, but they didn’t pick up and read the book. Due to the many available pedestals and the support of the installing team and the books that, despite their static pose, were visually remarkable, the artist books, I felt, did contribute to the success of the exhibition. But, again, it was an art exhibition and did not fully give expression to what artist books are.

Since that show, I’ve been mulling over the word “gently.” My original thought was that for those book artists their work had a preciousness that had more weight than the artists’ need to have their books experienced. But that is an oversimplification. Handling a book goes against accepted behavior at art exhibitions for both audience and artist. Also, of course, there’s the problem implicit in that handling. A museum has guards who make sure you don’t cross the line separating you from, protecting, the painting. There’s clarity to that. But when does handling a book cross the “gently” line?

Book fairs offer the opportunity for the viewer to be in the same physical space as the book and often the opportunity to handle the artist book. I approach them, however, with ambivalence. First, there are so many tables, so many books! There’s no way I can give them the attention I’d like. Also, occasionally and understandably, when a collector who may buy a book, is also there, I’m clearly in the way. But much more frequently, indeed routinely, my experience of handling a book is undercut by my awareness of the artist behind the table, watching, hoping I won’t suddenly just put the book down.

The Members Showcase at the CBAA 2024 conference was smaller, more intimate, than the usual book fair – and not focused on sales – but I still felt that discomfort with examining a work with the artist there watching. At Clif Meador’s table, I admired his new book, Endloser Krieg / Endless War, as he turned the pages, but I couldn’t help complaining that what I wanted to do is to sit down and read the book, taking my own time. So, he invited me to come sit, back behind the table, and read it. It was only then that I understood the arresting visual art of the book as part of complex powerful experience that, though ostensibly about the 17^thcentury Thirty Years War, was in fact much more than that.

So, I am back to the issue of access to artist books and my feeling that focusing on artist books as simply a visual art form denies something essential about at least many artist books. Artist books are not just a theater of one, but a physical theater of one. A double curse.

Susan Viguers began her career as a scholar and teacher of literature and writing at the University of the Arts. Mid-career she transitioned from Liberal Arts into the College of Art and Design, began making artist books, and eventually, for nine years, directed the MFA Book Arts/Printmaking Program.

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ARTIST BOOK RUMINATIONS // Susan Viguers

01 Sep 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

There’s no argument at the center of this blog post, at least that I’m aware of right now. I don’t have trouble thinking of “arguments” – that’s from my academic background – but these days, whenever I do, I immediately think of how partial it is, how limited, how beside the point. So here, rather than arguing, I’m simply ruminating.

When Lily Yey's and my book on the Rwanda genocide, which we’d self-printed, was picked up by New Village Press, the title was changed and the phrase “an Artist Book” was added. I mentioned that to Clif Meador when walking down Broad St. – he was in Philadelphia working on a book at the Borowsky Center – and he groaned. I remember thinking and maybe saying something to defend the publisher’s addition. It prepared the reader to understand that the content would be communicated as much by the images and design as by the text, a different approach than that to the scholarly books they usually published. Why is Ben Lerner’s recent book titled “Transcription, A Novel”? That “A Novel” oriented me to approach what I would be reading as having the depth in time and space and complexity of a novel (a long novel), in spite of it being only 129 pages, and it being fiction, in spite of, or along with, the neutral accuracy associated with the word “transcription.” Terms such as “artist book” and “novel” can be useful.

That leads me into a maze of interconnecting, overlapping trains of thought. One is to the issue of audience. How important is the audience in the creation of a book or a work of art. I’m not referring to the arguments of literary critics such as Stanley Fish that the reader is the essential creator or to Roland Barthes’ “death of the author.” Rather I am thinking of the audience from the artist’s perspective. For whom are we making our book? I would argue that consciously or unconsciously we are thinking of a particular audience. And isn’t that significant in defining what we do?

That takes me back to the phrase “artist book.” I’m most comfortable with Levi Sherman’s term “book thinking.” (See his blog post with that title.) For me that captures what I feel is essential about “artist books” without the danger of being too limited or too expansive that can accompany that phrase. “Book thinking,” however, approaches the field from an angle that doesn’t provide me with the language to talk about the specific works I want to talk about. I interpret Richard Minsky’s discussion in his post “Why Bother with Wikipedia?” as supporting the usefulness of the usual terminology. So, at least for the moment, I am back to the phrase “artist book.”

Which leads me into another line of thought, which I’ll take up in the next blog post. What do the exhibitions of artist books reveal about our thinking of them?

To start with the first issue, that of audience, there was objection, early in this blog, to including a post on the Eric Carle Museum since he is a creator of picture books, not artist books. In Carle’s books, text, image, design, structure are fused – form is content – something I consider the lodestar for artist books. His books are, of course, commercially packaged/published, which for many is a strike against them as “artist books”; it wouldn’t make sense to buy hugely expensive books for children. But I also sense that the fact that the audience is children contributed to the objection. Artist books are for adults! Initiated adults at that. The creators of artist books in the early tradition of “fine press” books were/are consciously, it seems to me, thinking of a particular elite adult audience – like minded artists, and, for selling, collectors and Special Collections, which of course usually allow access, but limited to a specialized and primed population. The audience they create for, it seems to me, is not so much interested in what is being expressed, but in how elegantly, impressively, it is rendered, a rendering that, of course, honors a particular text or subject.

Moving to another category of book artists, the maker of zines has different goals and creates for quite a different audience, one with different aesthetic values and who has no interest in paying much money, but still not for children. Their reason for making the zine is to communicate something in a way that will have impact on their audience. One reason for the limited scope of the audience for individual works is simply that are just so many zines out there!

Then there’s another rather undefined grouping of artist books – tactile, visual, often textual (overlapping the subcategory of fine press books), and in various ways, sculptural. Not only are these books very expensive, as are those called “fine press,” but many need to be handled in order to be fully experienced, for the viewer to grasp what’s essential to, the reason for, the work. The creators of those books must be aware, or, if not, they are repressing the thought, that they are creating for a very circumscribed audience. If you say you are a book artist, or that you make artist books, people generally have absolutely no idea what you mean, unless, of course, you’re talking to one of your kind.

But what’s wrong with creating work for a very limited audience? Publishers require prospective writers to know and define their audience. CBAA and, of course, the Center for Book Arts in New York as well as other book art centers are committed to furthering the knowledge and impact of artist books and increasing the inclusivity of the field. But for some kinds of artist books, the very qualities that can make them such impactful works of art create a barrier keeping potential audience out. But, of course, that doesn’t necessarily have to matter. It didn’t matter that those extraordinarily illuminated Books of Hours in the Middle Ages were created for just one person. However, as a creator of artist books, that bothers me. I create books to communicate something I am thinking, feeling, seeing, that can’t be expressed in any other way. If I can’t reach my audience, creating an artist book feels rather meaningless.

To be continued.

Susan Viguers began her career as a scholar and teacher of literature and writing at the University of the Arts. Mid-career she transitioned from Liberal Arts into the College of Art and Design, began making artist books, and eventually, for nine years, directed the MFA Book Arts/Printmaking Program.

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BOOK-AS-CONTAINER, BOOK-AS-TECHNOLOGY // Dan'o Reid

15 Aug 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

As a life-long academic, obviously I love information, but when it comes to books it's really the container that interests me. I started out as a medieval historian and I specialized in late antiquity: the transition from Roman imperial culture to the new medieval culture. Since the codex was invented in that period, I can’t help but think about the book-as-technology, durable vessel for information. The codex was an improvement over the scroll in terms of durability and ease of use. You could pack more feet of writing into a smaller space using a codex. It was easier to mark your place. And the flat codex was easier to wrap in a protective envelope and carry away with you. This technology developed in a time of economic instability, widespread migration, and increased interest in the written word. It didn’t suddenly arise fully formed in the shape we recognize today. People experimented a bit first.

From these late antique precedents, medieval books further refined the technology of the codex. In my opinion, the book-as-container really peaked in the Middle Ages because these are the most durable books around. Animal skin inscribed with acidic ink is still readable even if it falls in a lake. They’re much more fire resistant than a paper book, because it takes ages for dense, leather bound, parchment books to actually catch on fire. Why don’t we make them this way anymore? Well, for one thing, it’s expensive, and although “information has value,” words are cheap [1].

I’m fascinated, in contrast, by the ephemerality of digital media. How do we get patrons to remember that our e-resources exist? Out of sight, out of mind. Despite their invisibility, files still take up space. The information is physically inscribed somewhere (on an AWS server, probably). On the internet, the world of information appears nonexistent until you think to look for it. If you stop paying attention for a little while, it might really disappear–wiped from the servers that housed it as quickly as it was created. Better hope the Wayback Machine archived an image of the particular point in the lifecycle of the site that you’re interested in. Meanwhile, a book, especially an over-engineered medieval book, endures.

I didn’t know the term “artist book” before I came to work at Ringling College of Art + Design. My own book creations were made for the sake of understanding the book-as-technology. What happens if I use this thread instead of that thread? Can I recycle this type of leather into a cover? What does it feel like to sew through parchment? I think of myself more as a craftsperson than an artist, but this work prepared me to look critically at artist books. This is my favorite artist book from those I’ve cataloged so far:

https://ringling.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01RINGLING_INST/16oris8/alma993789250206101

At first, I found the book challenging. I felt that it stretched the meaning of “book” almost to the breaking point. But then I opened one of the components and it reminded me of late-antique codices enclosed in leather envelopes.

I peered through the center of the closed component and understood the term “tunnel book.” I saw something that wasn’t language stored inside the book-as-container, something more like a feeling or a journey. The “artist book” light bulb came on.

Figuring out how the pieces of this artist book fit together and open up reminded me of puzzling out how an ancient binding works: How many layers are there? Can I see the joins and figure out how they’re attached? I return to the same kinds of questions that I ask myself when I repair a book from the general collection: How is this book put together? Can it stand up to being read a few more times? The artist book feels as delicate and precious as an archaeological artifact.

I often ask myself how the cataloging record can capture these experiments in book-as-technology, these containers of more than language. There are terms for different types of bindings and for different shapes of books. They are helpful if you already know what you’re looking for. I copy the artist's statement into the record in the hope that it will capture more of the feeling, but the record is not the original. Any digital representation is ephemeral, unsatisfactory, while the mass and structure of the book-as-container leaves a weighty impression.

There’s no closure to the process of thoughtful description. You can continue seeing, comparing to precedents, researching terms, imagining new formats for information, essentially forever. Manuscript description follows certain codified patterns, much like describing mass-manufactured modern books. Size, shape, materials, number of quires, paleographical analysis. Still, each pre-modern codex is a unique product of craftsmanship and artistic know-how, identifiable to an expert by those niggling little discrepancies of form and finish that set it apart from each other example of the same art. Artist books resist all standardized description which is what makes them fun to describe. They continuously innovate on the concept of book-as-container in ways that our cutting-edge digital technologies can never quite capture.

[1] Association of College and Research Libraries, “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education,” American Library Association, January 11, 2016, https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework

Dan’o Reid has an MA in History, an MA in Medieval Studies, and an MS in Information. They work at Ringling College of Art + Design, where they experience the singular joys of working with both aging materials and innovative technologies. In their spare time, they make blank journals and practice myriad textile arts. Contact them by email: dreid@ringling.edu or on LinkedIn.

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AN ALTERNATIVE TO WEEDING: A LIBRARIAN'S ARTIST BOOK // Cheri Marks and Kelly Lindberg

01 Aug 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

If you're a librarian or have ever heard the term "weeding," it can pull at your heartstrings, and depending on your personality type – either in a good way or a bad one. If you're new here, weeding is the process of removing library materials that don't circulate, are in poor condition, or no longer serve the collection for a variety of reasons. But what happens when it’s too hard to let go, but something has got to give? Well, folks, we (Cheri Marks, Special Collections Librarian, and Kelly Lindberg, Research and Instruction Librarian) found ourselves in this exact position at Ringling College of Art + Design with some very cool (do we dare say dated?) materials that, instead of parting with, we’re looking at them through a new lens, and one that's full of potential.

Here’s the gist, y’all: We want to create an artist book from materials that are inevitably bound to be deaccessioned – not because they are damaged or unusable, but because their circulation numbers are nonexistent. We’re talking zero. Zip. Nada. We have fifty unbound lithograph prints that were donated to our library with unknown origins, and the portraits can easily be viewed online or purchased as their monetary value is low. So what's a small private art and design college going to do with these?

As librarians that specifically work in Sarasota, Florida, we wanted this idea to be impactful. Our regional area has unfortunately been a hotspot for anti-LGBTQ+ ideas and acts. Rainbow crosswalks and sidewalks filled with public art were enthusiastically erased in the area. Kelly previously worked at the Jane Bancroft Cook Library at New College of Florida, where, during her time there, administration very dramatically tore down “all-gender” bathroom signs. (Luckily, the DeSantis appointed board of trustee members never noticed the books on Critical Race Theory displayed on the new book shelves.) The local public library system has seemed to pause any pride month celebrations or displays that previously existed before current political officers took office. As a private institution, we’re lucky to have had a bit of a bubble around our campus in which we can still promote diversity, equity, and inclusion – however, our Center for Diversity and Inclusion was in fact renamed to be the Center for Student Success so as to not displease potential donors. These local events prompted us to think more intentionally about visibility, representation, and whose stories are welcomed in public spaces. We wanted to create something for patrons to be excited about and have fun with – a book of old, unused prints of some known and some unknown white men into something “glamorous, hilarious, and rebellious” (Hall, Intro.). Drag is often seen as radical and disruptive, something we felt putting out into our community where so much has been taken away. We also wanted to lighten the mood, as “not only does drag set out to subvert society’s norms, it delights at poking fun at the world around us” (Hall, Intro.).

An inspiring book, The Art of Drag by Jake Hall.

Approaching the project

Now for the fun part. Those fifty prints are about to take on a whole new life. We’re looking for a large collaboration within our institution, inviting fifty folks to each transform one portrait print into drag. We hope to see a wide range of techniques and mediums, from some stitching, folding, cutting, layering, and all the other cool stuff us creatives like to work with. Once all fifty prints have had their makeover, they’ll come back together to be bound into an accordion artist book. As we work through mockups, we’ll be thinking about giving these prints a second chance to be seen and interacted with, in an entirely new way. Rather than viewing deaccessioned materials as waste, we began wondering whether they could continue serving the library in another form – not as circulating objects, but as catalysts for artistic collaboration and dialogue. Once this project is complete, it will permanently live in Special Collections and be ready to be discovered by our patrons.

In conclusion

The prints have become institutionally invisible through nonuse. Drag historically makes marginalized identities visible. Drag is an art form, a performance practice, and a cultural tradition. Drag is one of the richest artistic traditions centered on transformation, performance, reinvention, and making the unseen visible. We wanted to reclaim the old and make something new, and this artist book makes both visible again.

As we continue to move through the mockup phases and figure out the details of this project, we’re hoping that this blog sparks some interest and opens up a dialogue around what it means to reimagine materials that might otherwise be overlooked. We’d love to hear from other folks in the community – librarians, archivists, bookmakers, artists, and anyone else who has found themselves asking, “What do we do with the things that no longer fit?”

Because let’s be honest, letting go of materials can be complicated, whether that’s small scraps of paper trimmings from a recent artist book project (yes, I’m looking at you, at me, at all of us!), to archivists sifting through their collections. There’s history, there’s emotion, and sometimes there’s just too much creative potential sitting there waiting to be explored. We’re excited to share this project, hear different perspectives, and see how others approach creating something new from something old.

Some examples that have already been created by Ringling folks.

Work Cited

Jake Hall, The Art of Drag, artwork by Sofie Birkin, Helen Li, Jasjyot Singh Hans & more (Nobrow Press, 2020).

Cheri Marks serves as the Special Collections Librarian & Archivist, and letterpress instructor at Ringling College of Art + Design. She makes artist books and prints under the imprint, Blue Section Press. You can find her work @bluesection.press (Instagram) and Ringling College of Art + Design Special Collections @rcad_specialcollections (Instagram).

Kelly Lindberg is an Instructional Design Librarian at Ringling College of Art + Design’s Alfred R. Goldstein Library, with a longstanding interest in zines and comics. She actively incorporates these passions into her teaching of information literacy to students. You can find her at @comic.kelly (Instagram) and view her posts on @alfredrgoldsteinlibrary (Instagram).

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MY PATH TO BOOK ARTS // Kathryn Schug

14 Jul 2026 6:13 PM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

In 2018, I started looking at colleges. One of the colleges I focused on was the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University (CSB+SJU) in St. Joseph, Minnesota. CSB+SJU was never high on my list, as it is my mother’s alma mater and was the college my sister attended. As an independent person, I did not want to attend a school where my name would be linked to my sister’s, and we would be compared. However, during my tour, my admissions officer offhandedly mentioned the Welle Book Arts Studio. This was the first time book arts had been brought to my attention. After that meeting, I researched the studio and the classes offered. I added a book arts program to the pro list for college and marked the absence of a book arts program as a con on all other schools. Ultimately, it was the book arts and German minors offered at CSB+SJU that made my decision.

I was one of two graduates with a minor in book arts in 2025. Through the program, I learned printmaking, letterpress, graphic design, completed an exhibit as part of my internship requirement, and sat in a few papermaking classes that went until 11:00 pm. After the papermaking classes, I was soaked, cold, and had to trudge through the winter snow back to my apartment, but I had never been happier. I would spend late nights in the letterpress studio, goofing off with the type and printing random posters.

One of my first posters of my favorite German phrase, “You have a Slappable Face.” Photo by Kathryn Schug

I took my first book arts class during the spring semester of my sophomore year. The class, Introduction to Letterpress & Design, was incredible. We were thrown into letterpress right away, given free rein of the studio and type cases. Playing with letter placement on the Vandercook pressbed was exciting. Letterpress was the first art form I felt I was good at and could claim I was “artistic.”

Sophomore year was also when I took my first college-level creative writing class and learned there was more to poetry than strict rhyming schemes and iambic pentameter. I learned about Acrostic, Ghazal, Villanelle, Free Verse, and many more types of poetry. My favorite poems to write are Free Verse, but especially poems that play with the page. Rearranging letters and words, I immediately saw the connection to letterpress. It was easier for me to take the words I wanted in my poem and rearrange them on a pressbed. I did not have to fight the automatic capitalization or layout restraints in Word; I could freely place my words where and how I wanted them.

Spread from my artist book Hi Low. Photo by Kathryn Schug

Artist books became my main focus in book arts. Every aspect of my artist books would deepen the meaning of my words, and I enjoyed having complete control over my creative project. For my final semester of college, an advanced section of the letterpress class was created for the two students receiving a book arts minor in 2025. We were given free rein over our projects and worked with our professor to create our curriculum. For my final project, I created my third artist book with three of my poems. It was a special project to me as it was the first time I wrote about living with Type 1 Diabetes. It was the hardest project I did at the time, both emotionally and in terms of scale, but it is the artist book I am proudest of.

Halfway through the project, I was notified that two of my poems had been selected for publication by the Mid-Atlantic Review for their “Amplifying Disabled Voices” section. The book became so much more special to me. I love looking at my artist book, Hi Low, as it holds my first published poems. One of the poems, “32,” was printed in the Mid-Atlantic Review 2025 anthology just a few months ago.

The link between creative writing and artist books is my favorite part of book arts, and both work together to keep me inspired.

Kathryn Schug (she/her) is a writer and book artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She works as a Historic Interpreter/Youth Specialist at the Edina Historical Society. As a recent book arts minor graduate, Schug is exploring affordable ways to practice book arts at home.

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AN EXHIBITION ON DUALITY // Kathryn Schug

01 Jul 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

In 2024, I curated my first exhibition of artist books. The exhibition entitled Duality: Artists’ Books Exploring Multiple Sides featured 16 books from my college, The College of Saint Benedict’s artist book collection, and two copies of my first completed artist book. I chose the theme of duality after spending a lot of time looking through the collection, finding commonalities among my favorite books and in the theme present in my own book.

The displayed artist books used their approach to the page, binding, and tactile materials to explore multiple perspectives of the artist’s chosen concepts. My hope was that the theme would inspire further exploration of artist books and the social contexts they encompass. One chosen book, Reading Dick and Jane with Me by Clarrisa Sligh, explored the idea that the Dick and Jane textbooks do not portray a universal childhood experience of the 1940s and 1950s, especially for Black children. Another book in the exhibition, My Heart’s Page, commissioned by the organization Organik, uses the traditional codex form to outline mass book-burning events from around the world. One example was Bebelplatz (colloquially known as Opernplatz) in Berlin, Germany, where 25,000 books were burned on May 10th, 1933. In memory of this tragedy, there is a copper plaque in Berlin with the quote from German poet Heinrich Heine: “Those who will burn books, will in the end burn people.” I saw this plaque on my 2023 trip to Germany. The quote inspired my first completed artist book and serves as the epigraph to one of my poems in that book. I stumbled upon My Heart’s Page when going through the collection and loved the connection it had to my artist book and the larger theme forming.

Bebelplatz Plaque in Berlin. Photo by Kathryn Schug

The poems in my dos-á-dos artist book, Blooming Books/Burning Blooming Books, highlight the importance of words. The poem, “Blooming Books," argues for the importance of words, while the other poem, “Burning Blooming Books,” explains the destructive and ill-advised activity of burning books.

“Burning Blooming Books” side, featuring singed edges. Photo by Kathryn Schug

Another displayed book, Wild Girls Redux: An Operator’s Manual by Ellen Knudson, overlays images of pin-up girls on the Missouri Department of Revenue Motorcycle Operator Manual, whose words Knudson satirically adapts to be about “operating” women. Philip Gallo controls both sides of the narrative in Electric Tulips 5.1. Writing under the pseudonym Alessandro S. Strega, a revered literary critic, Gallo authors the essay “Future Preterite” about his poem “Electric Tulips 5.1.” This artist book alludes to a similar move made by James Joyce in the Sylvia Beach Publication of 1929, where he praised his novel Ulysses under the pseudonym Vladimir Dixon.

One of the artist books I felt was most important to display was Glass House by Ann Lovett. In her book, Lovett writes a poem about Ann Lovett, a 15-year-old from Ireland with the same name, whose life was very different from her own. In 1984, Ann (the child) died after giving birth to a stillborn in a Grotto of the Virgin Mary. As the artist Lovett wrote, the poem explores “sensuality and the failures of Catholicism in her [Ann’s] life.” It was important to me to highlight the effect abortion bans have on young people, especially at a college rooted in Benedictine Values with its own Virgin Mary Grotto, which has a pro-life club but fails to support a pro-choice club.

The final page in Glass House, featured in the exhibit. Photo by Kathryn Schug

The Virgin Mary Grotto at the College of Saint Benedict. Photo by Kathryn Schug

Duality is present throughout life. Only viewing one side of a debate is how echo chambers begin and thrive, ultimately hindering the dissemination of knowledge and open conversations. My goal in displaying artist books whose themes fit duality was to invite conversations around larger social issues.

Kathryn Schug (she/her) is a writer and book artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She works as a Historic Interpreter/Youth Specialist at the Edina Historical Society. As a recent book arts minor graduate, Schug is exploring affordable ways to practice book arts at home.

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HOW THE PAGE (ALWAYS) MATTERS // Kathleen Walkup

15 Jun 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

In 1995 my neighbor James Sachs invented one of the earliest iterations of the ebook in his garage around the corner from my house. Jim was not new to innovative ideas (despite the modest circumstances of his house, he held many patents, including one on the mouse). He was also a dedicated engineer whose intention with his invention, which he named the Softbook, was to develop a reading tablet that didn’t require a computer.

As he worked, he began to develop questions not about the engineering but about the conceptual form of the product: How did the form of the book develop? How is reading affected when there aren’t facing pages? How do books feel in the hand as we read? What was the history of printing? (In the process of exploring this he managed to locate a Gutenberg leaf for his personal library.) How much information should go on a page? What is a page?

I thought of Jim’s work and the discussions we had (sadly too few—he died of lymphoma in 2002) as I was re-reading Bonnie Mak’s How the Page Matters (University of Toronto Press, 2011). For years I assigned reading from the book in my graduate seminars. Mak’s specific focus is on a fifteenth-century manuscript on the nature of a virtuous character, hardly a subject for a seminar on the nature of artist books. But what she is really addressing is the conceptual basis of the page as a carrier of content, and why the page has persisted through the many technological changes of the book as a material artifact. In fact, Mak writes that the page is, all at once, “ . . . an expressive space for text and image, it is a cultural artifact; it is a technological device” [1]. To those ends, Mak credits the designer as the point of interface between the page and the reader. For the manuscript she focuses on, that means that designers have responded to the text and images at specific points in time, creating an artifact that is responsive to the particular time in which it is being read.

Mak also acknowledges the critical importance of blank space, which she says, “. . . enhances the legibility and comprehensibility of the page” [2]. She is specifically referring to the “saccadic” pauses between words, which we know from Roman stone monuments evolved over time. (Mak is also of course referencing the way our eye moves across text in a rhythm also called saccadic.)

For students, Mak’s book helps them to theorize their own design work and maintain focus on the importance of taking the reader into account. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean that an artist is always meant to create conventionally readable pages; what it does suggest is that the artist needs to be intentional in their work, and that they should understand that they have the support, and the weight, of history behind them.

Where Mak falls down a bit is at the same point where many academics who lack hands-on experience in bookmaking land: not taking the more practical issues of production into account. While Mak considers paratextual elements as a fundamental component of any text, she doesn’t explore considerations of, say, the size of sheepskins, or the limitations on the size of papyrus strips as they are turned into paginae and then scrolls, as having a role to play in the ultimate product of these materials.

When Mak examines the digital page, she turns again to the interface of designer and reader. She sees the digital page as looking back to its very earliest models in parchment and paper while also having its own “distinct materiality” and of course possibilities for new configurations. What Mak is theorizing, Jim Sachs came to through his own exploration. The more he learned about the history of the book and the page, the more he leaned toward creating a new technology based on those concepts. He wrapped his invention in a leather cover so that it would not only look but feel more like a book when it was held (although at almost 3 pounds and 11” tall, the experience was more like holding a coffee table book than a paperback novel). Before he died, Jim served on the National Advisory Council of the non-profit group Reading is Fundamental, the nation’s oldest literacy organization, meaning that not only did he understand the importance of his invention to the history of reading, he saw his work as advancing the cause of literacy and knew his place in that space. The Softbook wasn’t merely an invention; it was a link in the long chain of reading as a fundamental human experience. His work at the cutting edge of technology implicitly recognized the three elements of Mak’s criteria for the page: an expressive space, a cultural artifact and a technological device.

Notes:

1] Bonnie Mak, How the Page Matters (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 18.

2] Ibid., 17.

Kathleen Walkup is Lovelace Family Professor Emerita, Mills College (at Northeastern University). She is currently involved in local political work in the Hudson Valley. She will curate an exhibition of Bay Area printing in the 1970s at the Grolier Club, NY, in 2028.

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ARTIST BOOKS AND AI // Peter Tanner

01 Jun 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

In February Levi Sherman and I co-chaired a CBAA-sponsored session at the 114^th College Art Association annual conference in Chicago. We have been co-chairing these sessions for the past three years to bring greater visibility to CBAA and the artist book as both aesthetic object and practice. This year our focus was “Rethinking the Artist’s Book in the Digital Age: AI, Authorship, and Authenticity.” We sought papers that addressed how “digital technologies, AI, and materiality have transformed how we create, consume, and understand art and information. In this digital age, the artist book remains a tactile, immersive medium, emphasizing the importance of haptic engagement. Positioned between tradition and innovation, artist books invite reflection on authenticity, authorship, and material presence.” We were casting a wide net to see what we could receive in terms of the connection between AI and the artist book.

Our session had three excellent presenters who demonstrated the complex frameworks that exist in the creation and function of artist books. This included 1) how artist books critically expose and reinterpret AI systems; 2) how materiality and computation are historically intertwined; 3) how authorship has long been procedural and distributed (or shared); 4) how AI extends older computational and conceptual traditions; 5) how materiality becomes political, epistemological, and resistant; as well as 6) how artist books reveal forms of meaning that AI cannot fully capture.[1]

While reflecting upon the outcome of our session I began to look into other sessions that I either attended or that had some tie to the use of AI and fine art.[2] There were 5 other sessions that addressed issues surrounding AI. Some of the key issues they addressed were:

AI exploits artists' labor, but it also expands creativity and experimentation.

It undermines originality, but increases artistic accessibility.

It threatens artistic livelihood, but supports collaboration.

It reinforces corporate power, and yet enhances education and research.

It encourages homogenization of expression, and yet produces new artistic forms.

It weakens material and embodied art forms, but ironically enables interdisciplinary practices.

It embeds bias and extraction, yet democratizes the tools of creation.

Among all these points and counterpoints, there is no clear trend towards either techno-optimism nor absolute luddism. The continuing trend is toward critical engagement, ethical accountability, protection of creative labor, and reassessing intelligence, authorship and creativity in human-centered ways.

As we train ourselves in the use of AI, we simultaneously train AI. We do so by providing it with metadata that it uses to search and produce synthesized results. These synthesized results are significant, but they are almost always flawed in some way. When junk or incomplete data is entered, that is all that can be accessed or provided in return by searches.

An AI cannot parse and think through texts and implications the way a historian does. Thus, with the information available the AI may answer in an intelligent manner that appears logical and reasonably correct. This makes it easy to “mistake clear reasoning for correct reasoning.” [3] Thus, its answers will be limited and partially correct and false at the same time. Artificial intelligence creates a blended artificial response drawn from a limited library's minor and incomplete collections.

One thing that I have noticed, and which usually comes up at the beginning of most of these sessions or presentations, was a qualification of what version of AI was used to create images or parse data. This leads to the question of how many different types of AI are there that one can possibly use? This is one of those questions that doesn’t really have a precise number available. That is because AI continues to proliferate in all manner of directions, much as Guattari and Deleuze’s concept of rhizomatic networks.

Various types of AI exist and can only really be categorized by their different capabilities, functions and learning approaches.[4]

In terms of capability there are narrow or weak AI’s that are designed for specific tasks such as voice assistants, recommendation systems, chatbots, and self-driving features. Most AI’s around us are of this type. Then there are hypothetical AI systems such as general AI, which are systems that can learn and perform any task that can be done intellectually by a human. This does not fully exist yet. There are potentially also superintelligent AI, a theoretical system which would surpass human intelligence in perhaps every field. This type is still science fiction.

In terms of functionality there are reactive machines that have no memory and only react to whatever is the current input, like IBM’s deep blue chess computer. There is limited memory AI that uses past data, temporarily, to make decisions. This is like self-driving cars and modern chatbots. Then there is also theory of mind AI that could understand emotions, beliefs and intentions. This is still experimental. Finally, there is self-aware AI, that could hypothetically have consciousness or self-awareness. This still does not exist.

AI can also be distinguished by its learning method. There is machine learning, which learns from data patterns. There is also deep learning, which uses neural networks with many layers. This powers image recognition and modern language models. There is also reinforcement learning, which learns through rewards and penalties, used in robotics and game-playing AI. Finally, there is generative AI, which can create new content such as text, images, music or even videos. This includes ChatGPT and image generators.

However, even as AI is parsed into these categories, each one is not distinct because most AI systems combine these categories in different ways. Thus, there are at least dozens to hundreds of AI subtypes. Each type represents a different means with which to enter into a dialogue that can be simultaneously derivative and original, collaborative and threatening, at the same time reinforcing corporate power and enhancing education and research.

In short, I must observe that, as with most things, its complicated. However, what we do with that complication is just as subjective as anything that an AI can produce. It is about as relevant as how we receive any new technology, any new idea, any thesis or dissertation in its relevance or irrelevance.

So, what are we worried about?

What should we be worried about?

What do you think?

Let us know in the comments.

Peter J. Tanner (He, Él, Ele) is Associate Instructor of Spanish at the University of Utah and Editor of Openings: Studies in Book Art, the journal of the College Book Art Association. His research focuses on artist books from Latin America.

[1] These observations were made regarding the materials presented in from the following presentations in our CBAA session: “Material Algorithms: Early Artists’ Books and Computational Practice,” by Regine Ehleiter; “The Artist's Book as a Site for Digital Ethnography”, by Clara Davis; and “Can Artists Books Problematize “Natural Language Processing”? An Exhibition Case Study,” by Xinyue Lulu Yuan.

[2] These observations come from the following sessions with the following presenters:

The Politics of AI as a Medium of Art by the Services to Artists Committee: Brooks Cashbaugh; Mr. Abhishek Narula; Matthew Magill; Morris Fox; Chanhee Choi.

genAI & Copyright: Proactive Protection for Artists: Laura Smith.

What Difference Does AI Make?: Mark J.V. Olson, Julia McHugh and Julianne Miao; Nicola Carboni; Emily A. Pugh; Alison Langmead.

Creativity, Collaboration, and Critique in the Age of AI and Immersive Technologies: Dr. Danilo Ljubomir Bojić; Haiver; Daria Tsoupikova; Hyeyoung Maeng.

Mobilizing Models: How Artistic Intelligence Reprograms AI: Grace Han; Gerui Wang; Miguel Novelo; Barbara Rauch.

[3] Hayt, “Chapter 20,” Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah, 1969.

[4] Primary sources consulted in this section:

Russell, Stuart J., and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. 4th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Pearson, 2021.

Copeland, B. Jack. "Artificial Intelligence." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Last modified 2024. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/artificial-intelligence/

IBM. "Types of Artificial Intelligence." IBM Think. Accessed May 15, 2026. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/artificial-intelligence-types

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NOTES ON REPRINTING: PART TWO // Emily Larned

15 May 2026 12:00 AM | Susan Viguers (Administrator)

On reprinting Efemmera Reissue #3: Saving Seeds, a continuation of the May 1, 2026 post.

With this reprint: I’ve done it before, that’s the main thing. There is a sense of ease in that whatever issues arise, I know I have solved them before. The question is not, will the riso print on this particular paper stock? The question is, will the riso print on this particular paper stock TODAY?

The paper I had originally printed on in 2020 has been discontinued. I can’t get it from the manufacturer, but there’s a small batch distributor who has some quantities of some of the colors. I patch together an order, creating a new palette of earth tones, using some paper stocks I haven’t used before but have similar specs. There is a freedom in this, in not having to replicate my decisions for the original reissue (the original original was black ink on white paper). The fact is, it doesn’t really matter.

Same with assigning ink colors to the different paper colors. During the first printing I made a wide range of ink tests, printing every color ink on every paper color to see what I liked best. I am not as thorough now. I build on what I learned, experiment as I go. If I don’t like it, I adjust. The brick red paper is a new color for me and the orange ink, it turns out, is not legible on it. So there will be two brown-ink pages in a row. Ah, but no! I can print the reverse side of the brick red in green ink. Small problems that can be solved.

Is this over-confidence, because I have made the thing before? Am I too cavalier? Or is it more: not over-emphasizing my role?

What makes this publication great is the attention and labor of its original creator and contributors. Whether the ink is orange or brown is less important. What makes the publication feel special is that there IS orange and green ink, and copper and brown: a variety of earth-toned papers, a tactile and visual abundance.

Yesterday, a windier day, had fewer hiccups; the century-old factory windows were banging in their channels but the riso purred happily along, making master after master without incident, printing sheet after sheet without jamming. Today, the first problem is the cover. (If only I kept better — i.e. ANY — production notes. When I printed it the first time, I just hadn’t anticipated I’d be printing this again, and again, and again, as it turned out,.) As the unfolded original cover is a tan laid paper just slightly smaller than 11x17, the edge of the original cover shows up as a faint artifact line when scanned from the riso’s glass top. I try again: change the setting of the scan to “photo” rather than “line art.” Then the master is too light. I try again: adjust the contrast one lighter, a 2 instead of a 3. The cover edges now disappear; visible are just a couple punctures made by the removed staples. These I can live with; I rather like them. The sewn binding will cover them anyway — if the marks remain on the spine fold that is and don’t get pushed out of place during the printing, which is inevitably variable on the riso.

Today outside is a calmer day, near a gentler kind of spring, but inside now the riso is finicky about the steel blue paper, prints a few at a time, then declines to pick up the next sheet to feed it through. I adjust the dial a few millimeters on the paper feed unit. It prints more again — pauses. Stops. Jam error. This refusal to pick up the paper is called a “jam” at the pick-up, but it isn’t truly a jam; it is more of a resistance to picking up the paper. A no thanks. A bit of protest. A work slow-down. A Bartleby.

I replace a feeder wheel, but I only have one. I order another one. I replace a stripper pad. When the riso indicates an internal jam, I wipe down the offprint on the drum and then feed in waste paper until it prints without an echo. It prints without issue on the lighter weight waste paper. It does not print on steel blue.

I turn it off. Close my eyes for a minute.

Three hours have now been spent this way. Only 70 or so sheets printed of a 200 copy run. Only 70 or so of this run, out of 22 runs, only 70 prints out of 4400 prints, and half the day gone. Certainly this is not the best use of my time?

Or is it? What do we learn by troubleshooting, by cooperating with machines, by assessing their needs and trying to meet them, by being patient, by acknowledging how little we know, by accomplishing something anyway?

Emily Larned has been printing and publishing as an artistic practice since 1993. Her artist publications are collected by over 90 institutions internationally. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where she will serve as Director of Graduate Studies commencing in fall 2026.

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NOTES ON REPRINTING: PART ONE // By Emily Larned

01 May 2026 12:00 AM | Virginia Green (Administrator)

re- word-forming element meaning "back, back from, back to the original place;" also "again, anew, once more," also conveying the notion of "undoing" or "backward," etc., c. 1200, from Old French re- and directly from Latin re- an inseparable prefix meaning "again; back; anew, against."

I never used to reprint artist books, zines, and publications. You might think this derived from traditional fine press tutelage: reprinting a letterpress printed book for which you’ve already distributed the type is a massive, time-consuming undertaking, and besides, the book established its value and status through being “limited.” Why would you reprint? But before my fine press training, my first seven years of publishing were zines. And when each issue went out of print, it never occurred to me to reprint them. When I was publishing zines in the 90s, zines were periodicals; each issue was tied to a particular moment. There was always a new issue. It was an ongoing practice. For seven years I made a new zine every three months, the date on the cover associated with the season (“Fall 1995”). Publishing was always moving forward, not retracing steps, not the “again; back; anew” of reprinting.

Certainly that sounds more interesting, to keep making new things, rather than remaking the old? As Marc Fischer of Temporary Services / Half Letter Press / Public Collectors recently wrote:

“In some ways publishing, and being available to others through publishing, has become how I teach these days. Keeping the old stuff in print is an impossible task....It’s not that I want things to be scarce; it’s that it’s not always cost-effective or storage-effective to make a ton of everything and I’m always looking to balance the labor of making and shipping these publications with the desire to write and design and research the next thing.” – Marc Fischer, April 15, 2026 Public Collectors newsletter

I had been publishing for 25 years before I decided to reprint something. And now, it seems to me, I’m reprinting all the time. Perhaps it is that part of my “desire to write and design and research” is already channeled into a long-term book project that I have been working on since 2021. Reprinting in-demand titles offers certainty; a way to maintain my hands-on studio practice while I toil intangibly. What I reprint is most often authored by other women: overlooked work from feminist archives (I call it the Efemmera Reissue series, visible here). I feel a responsibility to this material. It is important. I am in service to it. Its audience keeps expanding, due to the ubiquity of art book fairs: there are many opportunities for new readers to engage with this work. And I reissued it in the first place to facilitate these encounters. So why stop?

A publication from the past is tied to the present by its relevance. Some topics are aligned with specific moments at the time of their reprinting: I discovered and decided to reissue the first newsletter of the Cassandra Radical Feminist Nurses Network (1984) during COVID. I have now reprinted it three times. The first time was after the Dobbs decision, when imagining a national network of Radical Feminist Nurses conjured a United States with reproductive rights for all. The second time was because it was the second Trump presidency. And the third time, just a few months ago, I reprinted it again because: it keeps selling out, stockists inquire about reordering it, the facial expression across the art book fair table when a browser reads the title out loud radical feminist nurses network, wow. That is affirmation of why I reissued it. And that is why I keep reprinting it.

Making a publication for the first time—even when it is a reissue, as is the case with the Efemmera series, when I am collaborating with decisions made by other people long in the past—is exciting, thrilling. A tremendous scope of choices and problem solving, researching and writing; framing context; reaching out to the original authors; testing materials; seeing the artifact reborn in the present moment.

But as you might imagine, the act of reprinting holds little excitement. Its challenges are of the technical rather than the artistic kind. Therein lies the challenge of how to make something uninteresting, interesting by paying attention to it. So in my next post, a diary of paying attention to reprinting.

Emily Larned has been printing and publishing as an artistic practice since 1993. Her artist publications are collected by over 90 institutions internationally. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where she will serve as Director of Graduate Studies commencing in fall 2026.

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