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Katharine Lark DeLamater

BIOGRAPHY

Katharine Lark DeLamater is an artist and papermaker set to graduate with an MFA from the University of Iowa Center for the Book in May 2020. An Iowa Arts fellowship recipient, Katharine has worked as a research assistant to Timothy Barrett since 2018 at the Oakdale Paper Research Facility. After first learning about hand paper making at Mount Holyoke College, she went on to intern at  Pace Paper, Dieu Donné, and the Boston Paper Collective. Katharine has taught classes at The University of Iowa Center for the Book, Dieu Donné Papermill, The Morgan Conservatory, and Polka! Press. Her handmade paper works have been featured in portfolios including Hand Papermaking’s Intergenerationality and Art and Literature Laboratory’s CSArt (2017).

Outside of the studio, she has scholarly interests collaborative art practices and pedagogy in the book arts. Her writing on authorship and collaboration was published in the summer 2019 edition of Hand Papermaking Magazine.  Katharine was invited to be an inaugural reader for “Diptych: A Book Artists’ & Writers’ Reading Series,” hosted by the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and the Center for the Book in November 2019 where she read her most recent artists’ book, Fear is a Careful Plan. 

To keep up to with Katharine’s studio practice, follow her on instagram @katharinelark or visit her website katharinedelamater.com

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a hand papermaker and writer who creates artists’ books and printed objects. My practice involves repetition and revision as I refine my conceptual inclinations through physical craft engagement. Artists’ books provide the viewer the opportunity to touch the artwork which allows me to experiment with material and linguistic pairings and investigate the ways language shifts depending on its carrier sheet. The book form also gives attention to the auditory rustle and rattle of handmade papers, one of the most alluring characteristics of hand papermaking.  

As an artist, I am drawn to hand papermaking and letterpress printing as both disciplines rely heavily on troubleshooting. I am interested in investigating the root of a problem, both technically and conceptually. As a writer, I use language and the book form to make sense of my landscapes, relationships, and memories. My artwork has a strong relationship to quilt-making; in addition to visual inspiration, my process includes gathering, assembling, and piecing together. I pair printed textile imagery with texts that cross difficult territories, that of depression and estrangement, longing and solitude. There is an accurate tension established when the beautiful and the difficult exist on a single, shared plane. 

ARTIST'S WQRK

Project Descriptions

Everything Is Soft, Everything is Scary, artists’ book, hand-set Futura book printed on handmade cotton and flax text paper with handmade translucent abaca paper and tipped in Japanese papers. Images printed using photopolymer, pressure printing, and linoleum cuts. Editioned at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, 2018.

Untitled, broadside with text from Fear is a Careful Plan, hand-set Joanna on Sakamoto with photopolymer prints. Editioned at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, 2018.


Fear is a Careful Plan, artists’ chapbook, a set of ten erasures written by the artist from Abraham Myerson’s 1920 text, The Nervous Housewife. Hand-set Joanna on waxed handmade and Sakamoto paper with photopolymer and linoleum cut images. Sewn boards binding in an edition of 20. Produced at the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2019 with project grant support from the College Book Art Association.


Escape Velocity, pressure print with hand-set Optima type, printed in an edition of 10 at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, 2019.


(Left to right) Embedded Houses, Pocket Drawings, White Table, Peel/Torn, image of show installation at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, 2015.


White Table, detail, collaged handmade papers (abaca, dad’s cotton shirt rags, bamboo) with ink, graphite, charcoal, and litho crayon, 2015.


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