Primrose Press

2024, artist-made paste paper dyed with ash and iron oxide, letterpress and digital printing, original poetry, wood container, 5.4 x 8.4 inches, 40 copies.

A companion piece to Negroes: A Handbook (2015), Colored: A Handbook (2020), African American: A Handbook (2020), and Black: A Handbook (2022), White: A Handbook jumps around real and imagined time and space like its predecessors. Letterpress and digitally printed on artist-made paste papers dyed with ash and iron oxide, White explores adjacency, privilege, mediocrity, passing, imagined victimhood, and grievance as it speaks of life, love, power, and envy within its limited color palette.

Consisting of a title page, ten "chapter" poems, and a colophon, the unbound pages of White: A Handbook are housed in a lidded, wooden container with “White” engraved on the lid. While deviating fromthe use of persimmon juice in previous entrees, White: A Handbook continues the artist’s discussion of race while exploring paper transformation- sifting the texture, surface, color, and presence of a simple piece of paper.

The paste papers were made in New Haven, Connecticut, in Norway during an artist’s residency at Halden Bookworks, and in the United Kingdom at the Bodleian Libraries’ Bibliographical Press in Oxford.

Collections: Baylor University, British Library, Brown University, James Madison University, Los Angeles Public Library, National Gallery of Art, Ohio University, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Rijksmuseum, Scripps College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, University of Chicago, University of Nebraska in Omaha, University of Oxford, University of Virginia, Wesleyan University, private collections.

'Pause artist’s book

2024, offset lithography, letterpress printing, laser cut, Somerset paper, 2” x 2” x ¼” (closed) accordion inside a 2.5” x 2.5” container with AI-generated ​s​ilhouette image, 200 copies.

‘Pause was offset printed at the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts by offset printer Erica Honson, letterpress printed in the letterpress studio, and laser cut in the Albert M. Greenfield Makerspace at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania over an unseasonably warm week at the end of April/start of May 2024, and was funded by the von Hess Visiting Artist Program. This artist’s book is signed and numbered by Blassingame.

With its three-color, offset printed imagery and metallic, letterpress-printed text, ‘Pause consists of the octagonal accordion text block, which is held in a locket-style container with a printed cover. With its letterpress-printed, AI-generated ​s​ilhouette, the offset-printed and laser-cut container features a letterpress-printed, script-style dedication and colophon reminiscent of jewelry engraving. For this project, Blassingame selected a small group of Black women to complete a questionnaire about their awareness of, feelings and memories related to menopause. In the laser-cut, accordion text block, the quoted and excerpted responses were letterpress printed in a blackish-gold ink color in Bitter typeface, which plays upon the stereotype of the bitter or angry Black woman. Serving as the offset-printed backgrounds, scanned materials represent intimacy and vulnerability, softness and strength. ‘Pause is meant to celebrate and extend grace to Black women on their menopause journey, and normalize the discussion of menopause and changes to women’s bodies. 

Collections: Baylor University, Brown University, Cleveland Institute of Art, Colorado College, Indiana University Indianapolis, James Madison University, Los Angeles Public Library, New York University, Ohio University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Phoenix Public Library, Princeton University, Rhode Island School of Design, Rijksmuseum, Scripps College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Georgia, University of Miami, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Wesleyan University, Yale University, private collections

2015, cyanotype on cotton, velvet, 176 x 17 inches, 4 copies.

This work represents an alternate family tree for the Brown family of Providence, Rhode Island. Pulling from archival research, a line of enslaved relatives owned by various members of the Brown Family is connected across this scroll. As the reader/viewer walks along its length, they reconstruct a family tree and move along a simulated street where the names of those enslaved relatives are privileged over those of their owners. With minimal text stretched across a long surface bordered with sumptuous velvet, the book explores methods of reading and speaking about race.

Collection: Brown University

digitally printed, (Open) 43.25 x 8.25 inches, 60 copies

Commissioned by Cave Canem

Meant to be read as a declaration, this accordion book of Gratitude by Cave Canem co-founder Cornelius Eady was digitally printed in Archer and Oleo Script typefaces on hanji paper. Two words, I Am, are repeated in the background until illegible, forming a chain-like pattern. This background text references Eady’s declaration “I am a black American poet,” connecting it to the 1968 Memphis Sanitation strike I Am A Man signs, while the patterning references Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman? and Am I Not a Man and a Brother? queries of enslaved Americans and abolitionists.

Designed, printed, and bound by Blassingame , the Gratitude artist’s book celebrates Cave Canem's 25th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of Cornelius Eady’s Brutal Imagination.

Title and colophon signed by Eady and Blassingame are prined on band.

Collections: private collections

BLACK: A HANDBOOK

2022, artist-made paste paper dyed with persimmon, ash, iron oxide, and indigo, digital printing, original poetry, wood container, 5.4 x 8.4 inches, 40 copies.

1 copy available at Vamp & Tramp

A companion piece to Negroes: A Handbook (2015), Colored: A Handbook (2020), and African American: A Handbook, Black: A Handbook continues the artist’s discussion of race while exploring paper transformation- sifting the texture, surface, color, presence of a simple piece of paper.

Collections: Binghamton University, Boston Athenaeum, Bowdoin College, British Library, Brown University, Carleton College, Columbia University, Free Library of Philadelphia, Library of Congress, Los Angeles Public Library, National Gallery of Art, Ohio State University, Oregon State University, Penn State University, Princeton University, Rijksmuseum, Rollins College, Rutgers University, Scripps College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, University of British Columbia, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Delaware, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Kentucky, University of Miami, University of Michigan, University of Oxford, University of Vermont, University of Virginia, Wellesley College, Yale University, and private collections.

2020, persimmon and indigo-dyed paste paper, letterpress and digital printing, original poetry, persimmon and indigo-dyed wooden container, 5.5 x 8 inches, 20 copies. 2 artist’s proofs.

This companion piece to Negroes: A Handbook (2015) and Colored: A Handbook (2020) contains letterpress and digitally printed, original poetry on paste paper dyed with indigo and persimmon juice. The colors, patterns, and marks serve as evocative illustrations and background to the text. The dyeing process involved the darkening of the paper over a thirty day period to a deep, rich brown hue. During that time, the paper was regularly burnished to heighten its glossiness and lacquer-like appearance as well as dyeing with indigo. The birch wood container underwent a similar process.

Chapter Six: Eloquent in his praise

African American Princetonian

ran for our nation

but had he been white

men would have stopped

but had he been white

all on that Sunday

would have been eloquent in his praise

those same who held Blacks

in contempt

saying

at the back 100 yards of the cemetery

bury the black

Collections: Bowling Green State University, Columbia University, Free Library of Philadelphia, Los Angeles Public Library, National Gallery of Art, Ohio University, Scripps College, Smith College, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Temple University, University of Delaware, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Kentucky, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Yale University, private collections

2020, persimmon-dyed paste paper, letterpress and digital printing, original poetry, persimmon-dyed wooden container, 5.5 x 8 inches, 20 copies. 2 artist’s proofs.

A companion to Negroes: A Handbook (2015), Colored combines letterpress and digital printing with persimmon-dyed paste papers. The process of making the paste paper for this book enlivened my studio with bright colors and patterns. The dyeing process involved the darkening of the paper over a thirty day period to a deep, rich brown hue. During that time, the paper was regularly burnished to heighten its glossiness and lacquer-like appearance. The birch wood container underwent a similar process.

The poems in Colored: A Handbook were written over the course of four decades during trips to Russia, New York, Missouri; artist residencies in Minnesota, New Mexico and New Hampshire; and living in Connecticut, District of Columbia, and California.

The titular poem, Colored, reads:

over a landscape

drab and desolate

hanging on like a dream

turquoise

pink

lavender

yellow houses

chained together

dragging their rainbow

from the valley floor

into the sun

marched across squad cars

and security fences

displaying hope

Colored simultaneously positions itself in an era when Americans of African descent were labeled such, but moves and shifts across time to explore various realities. Disappointment, longing, love, hope, wonder are all part of this artist’s book. My wish is that some of the joy and wonder that I experienced in the creation of it and the paste papers will transfer to the reader as they touch, turn, and read its pages.

Collections: Bowling Green State University, College of William and Mary, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Ohio University, Rhode Island School of Design, Scripps College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, Stanford University, Temple University, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Kentucky, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Yale University, private collections

In 2020 and continuing in 2021, a volunteer group of translators, consisting of artists, publishers, writers, educators, and students were brought together by tijuana, a Brazilian art book fair organizer, to translate to translate A Love Story. The finished translation was published by par(ent)esis.

You can access Uma história de amor, the Portuguese translation of A Love Story artist's book at leituraetraducao.com.br

2018, digitally printed, 8.5 x 11 inches, 30 copies.

2021 reprint available for purchase.

A portion of the sales proceeds are used to purchase books for prison book programs like DC Books to Prisons, Chicago Books to Women in Prison, Prison Book Program, Wesleyan Center for Prison Education, and Louisiana Books to Prisoners, and personal items for recently exonerated Innocence Project New Orleans clients.

A Love Story is a love letter to the book arts field and the creative process with its individuality and eccentricities. Related to making artists' books with a social justice focus, the book presents the artist’s process from conceiving an idea through completion and presenting. Between criss-crossing the country, the artist employed the collage-making process to de-stress while maintaining focus on simultaneous book projects on various issues of race and racism.

Collections: Amherst College, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Brown University, College of William and Mary, Kenyon College, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mills College, Ohio University, Philadelphia Free Public Library, San Diego State University, Scripps College, Southern Connecticut State University, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Temple University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Delaware, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Puget Sound, University of Texas at San Antonio, University of Wisconsin at Madison, William and Mary, Yale University, private collections​​​​​​​.

Created as part of the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective’s partnership with Quarantine Public Library, Darkness Aids Germination is an instant book and meditation on loss, resilience, and growth of self and seedlings. It is now available for viewing and download on QPL’s website with new titles by five collective members: Alisa Banks, Tiffany E. Barber, Hong Hong, Akua Lezli Hope, and Rejin Leys.

Quarantine Public Library

“Quarantine Public Library is a repository of books made by artists. The works published here are for anyone to freely download, print and assemble—to keep or give away.

This collaborative project was dreamed up by Katie Garth and Tracy Honn in May 2020. We love artists’ books, zines, and libraries; art and poetry; words and pictures. We wanted to make something to share as many of us are staying at home, disconnected from art, books, and one another. The project is not about COVID-19, but is explicitly of its time.

With brisk attention, a lot of talking and correspondence, and the enthusiastic good will of generous artists who say yes, we offer this as a gift to share and circulate in a discombobulated time.

EveryoneOn

In the spirit of our project, donations generated by QPL will be directed to EveryoneOn, a non-profit that connects low-income families to affordable internet service and computers. We admire their clear goals and genuine service benefits—the organization “believe[s] in the democratizing power of the internet and technology, especially for low-income and marginalized communities,” and so do we.”

Consider donating to Quarantine Public Library’s fundraiser.

“All proceeds will be donated to EveryoneOn, a nonprofit that connects low-income families to affordable internet service and computers.”

You can donate here.

2021 reprint

Digitally printed with original poetry; 125 copies

8.5.x 5.5 inches

Digitally-printed booklet of original poems by Tia Blassingame that originally appeared in the artist’s Settled: African American Sediment or Constant Middle Passage artist’s book (2015).

The disruptive and mournful effects that death, kidnapping, abuse, or assault have on a person and a community transcend the borders of distance and time.

Thinking about contemporary individuals who have lost their lives, gone missing, or had their dignity assaulted, I wrote about how each person and related incident affected me. Diverse themes are explored from the criminalizing of the victim in the case of Trayvon Martin to the absence of concern and media coverage for kidnapped African Americans such as Relisha Rudd.

Each loss is mourned, each absence felt. All are connected. We came over in the same ships. Today as yesterday, we are stuck in this constant middle passage.

Collections: Smith College, Stanford University, private collections

2015, digitally printed, 8.5 x 11 inches, 30 copies.

2021 reprint available for purchase.

A portion of the sales proceeds are donated to NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Innocence Project.

M/W2 is featured in the inaugural Artist's Books Unshelved video from the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.

Book on Books review of the Mourning/Warning artist’s books.

Stripping the maritime alphabet of its primary colors and replacing them with muted browns and blacks, Mourning/Warning highlights the relationship of Americans of the African diaspora to water, maritime travel and the need for an alternate means of communication in times of emergency and duress. How do you send a warning call that hatred comes constantly in waves?

M/W serves as a method of honoring, mourning, and remembering the slain and wronged as well as teaching our children and ourselves to be vigilant and wary in hostile terrain, where your skin color makes you an easy target.

Collections: Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Bennington College, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Boston Athenaeum, Cornell University, East Carolina University, Florida State University, Furman University, Lafayette College, Library of Congress, Maryland Institute College of Art, Michigan State University, Peabody Essex Museum, Philadelphia Free Public Library, Rhode Island School of Design, Savannah College of Art & Design, Smith College, Stanford University,  Tufts University, University of California at Irvine, University of Delaware, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Louisville, University of Texas at San Antonio, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wesleyan University, Yale University, and private collections.

2018, digitally printed, 8.5 x 11 inches, 30 copies.

2021 reprint available for purchase.

A portion of the sales proceeds are donated to the Innocence Project New Orleans, National Bail Out & Ujimaa Medics.

Featured in the inaugural Artist's Books Unshelved video from the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.

Book on Books review of the Mourning/Warning artist’s books.

This set of numerical and repeater, or substitute, maritime flags compliments the alphabetical flags featured in Mourning/Warning: An Abecedarian. The repeaters make character duplication possible and can make historical and contemporary patterns of suffering, grief, humiliation painfully apparent.

Stripping the maritime alphabet of its primary colors and replacing them with muted browns and blacks, Mourning/Warning 2 highlights the relationship of Americans of African diaspora to water, maritime travel and the need for an alternate means of communication in times of emergency and duress. How do you send a warning call that hatred comes constantly in waves?

M/W 2 serves as a method of honoring, mourning, and remembering the slain and wronged as well as teaching our children and ourselves to be vigilant and wary in hostile terrain, where your skin color makes you an easy target.

Collections: Amherst College, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Bowdoin College, East Carolina University, Indiana University, Lafayette College, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Pennsylvania State University, Reed College, Rhode Island School of Design, Savannah College of Art & Design, Smith College, Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Central Florida, University of Delaware, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Puget Sound, Walker Art Center, Wesleyan University, Yale University, private collections.

2020, paste paper, digital printing, original poetry, 4.25 x 5.5 inches (closed), 8.5 x 11 inches (open).

Revisions of Mid-Day Suspense represents my contribution to the 2020 Primrose Press Artists’ Valentine Swap. It consists of handmade paste paper and digitally printed versions of an original poem. Each valentine contains two versions of the poem. Two contain the final version, which may later become another revision.

The final version of the poem reads:

Mid-Day Suspense

With the plantation shutters

not completely shut

Potent southern California sunlight floods in

Over the bedroom

The pool so close, so adjacent

Makes them undulate

light and shadow shimmying along the ceiling

Over the bookcase and dresser

For hours they dip and dive

Gliding effortlessly across the room

As the day shifts to night

Without a heated pool, you’d rather watch

Outside reflected in

Time floating

Versus baking and bathing under the sun

Like a gecko mid push-up

Copies Available email primroseletterpress at gmail.com

Collections: Princeton University, private collections

2019, risograph printed, folded brochure, 2.5 x 3.75 inches (closed), 10 x 7.5 inches (open). Available in two paper colors: grey and tan. Edition Size: 35 copies (25 (grey), 10 (tan) copies).

Book Review of Students.

Printed during Summer 2019 International Print Center New York artist residency, Students was risograph printed at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. This artist’s book consists of a two-sided folded brochure with text by the author and nineteenth century verse by African American students of an integrated school. The front of Students discusses my research on the students, their birth status as free or enslaved. Images in red ink also appear of the boarding house where several students resided. The backside has their verse set against a background of the twenty-four star flag that would have been used during the school’s tenure from 1834-5.

The book form of Students was inspired by the brochures available at the National Park Service and historical sites across the country. As such it is meant to be informative and guide you in connecting our history to our current situation. The color scheme- red, black, and blue- ties directly to the colors of the flag, but also colors that represent struggle, pain: black and blue, red, respectively.

Sales proceeds are used to purchase requested items on exonerated Innocence Project New Orleans clients’ Amazon wishlists.

Collections: Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Columbia University, Davidson College, Kenyon College, Messiah College, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Ohio University, Peabody Essex Museum, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Rhode Island School of Design, Scripps College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, University of Vermont, University of Washington, private collections.

2018, pressure printing, handset letterpress, and pouch book stab binding, 9.5 x 12 inches, 25 copies.

The artist places herself as a stand in for African American victims of police brutality, violence and humiliation. Unlike the victims and their families, the artist controls which images are shared and how. She can delete information: background, people. She can alter color, scale, orientation. Accompanying letterpress text serves as captions and shows how incredible racial profiling and post-mortem media portrayals of African American victims. Personal and family photographs as well as those that the artist shared on social media were digital manipulated, then hand cut and assembled as paper matrices.

With each photograph and subsequent turn of the page, I AM represents both the suspension of a person’s life and potential growth into the person they will become. A baby is murdered and will never be the toddler standing unsteady with her hand patting an ottoman as her father watches television in the background. The toddler does not spend her tenth summer swimming in the pool and making friends at camp. And so on.

Collections: Bainbridge Museum of Art, Baylor University, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, College of William & Mary, Mount Holyoke College, Ohio University, Penn State University, Scripps College, Shawnee & Topeka County Public Library, Smith College, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Irvine, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Delaware, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Southern California, University of Texas at San Antonio, Yale University, private collections.

2019, pressure printing, handset letterpress, and pouch book stab binding, 9.5 x 12 inches, 25 copies.

The artist places herself as a stand-in to explore black womanhood through the standard descriptors of white womanhood. Starting with Hallmark movie description, the artist noted the adjectives used to describe the primarily white protagonists of romantic films. The assembled words are seldom used to describe African American women and girls. The artist created a second list of terms that she felt were not considered realistic descriptions of them due to prejudice, hate, fear, ignorance. Black girls similar to black boys are rarely viewed as innocent or children, but as disjointed shadows or threats. Black women are seldom viewed as beautiful or acceptable romantic protagonists as evidence by the dearth of such in Hallmark romance movies.

Paired with pressure printed, artist self portraits that shift in terms of fragmentation and obfuscation, the handset letterpress text emerges as a fractured list of affirmations for black girls and women. Similar to in the I AM artist's book (2018), the artist controls how and how much photographic detail is shown. She can delete information: backgrounds, people. She can alter color, scale, orientation. Personal and family photographs as well as those that the artist shared on social media were digital manipulated, hand cut and assembled as paper matrices. The accompanying letterpress text serves as captions, which depending upon the reader and who they deem to be you reads as affirmations of black womanhood or re-evaluation of white womanhood as the only ideal in terms of beauty, human value. The captions in You Are explore a duality in American femininity that defines and is tension with the other.

Copies Available email primroseletterpress at gmail.com

Collections: Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Colby College, Colorado College, Columbia University, Indiana University at Bloomington, Kenyon College, Ohio University, Penn State University, Princeton University, Rijksmuseum, Scripps College, Smith College, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, University of California at Irvine, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Delaware, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Iowa, University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill, Yale University, private collections.

2018-, sewn nylon, 2 x 2 feet, 6 copies.

This set contains alphabetical maritime flags of sewn nylon. Mourning/Warning books: An Abecedarian serves as the key for using the flags. Conceived of in Newport, Rhode Island and completed in New Haven, Connecticut, the M/W flags set serves as a method of memorializing the slain and wronged, and of teaching our children and ourselves to be vigilant and wary in hostile terrain, where your skin color makes you an easy target.

Copies Available email primroseletterpress at gmail.com

2015, letterpress and handmade kozo-cotton paper, 7 x 7.88 inches, 5 copies.

On February 3, 2015, 38 year old mother of two, Yuvette Henderson was shot and killed by Emeryville, California police officers near Extra Space Storage at the Oakland-Emeryville line.

The concrete poem of her purse on the ground in the aftermath of her killing attempts to summarize the events of and after her death. Letterpress printed on handmade paper the brief line of text on the front of the folded sheet act as title and help to orient the reader.

The concrete and original poems grapple with the truth of the circumstances leading up to and after the shooting.

Collections: Library of Congress, University of California at Irvine, University of Delaware, Washington University of St. Louis, private collection.

Slavery's Historic House Signs: Collected Stories, 2015, cyanotype and tea-stained cyanotype on cotton and silk with Dutch wax African fabric and velvet. Dimensions: 53 in x 8.5 in, 70 in x 8 in, 42 in x 9 in, 57 in x 7.5 in, 90 in x 7.5 in, 49 in x 8 in, 53 in x 7 in

Every city and history holds invisible populations. Walking past the historic homes along Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island, one passes house markers that distinguish a population of white males and their achievements. I found it interesting to consider the enslaved Africans that resided and worked in these homes. In many ways, this project is my method of cataloguing mundane facts and relationships between the invisible slave population and their distinguished, accomplished owners. The owners' wealth accumulation was in large part made possible by their participation in the slave trade through holding, trading, and stocking the slave ships.

This is an ongoing project with iterations involving printmaking, textiles, sculpture, book arts, fashion apparel, and papermaking. Each iteration explores the reader's relationship to the piece. When the book is worn, new relationships to reading are forged. The reader/wearer and the reader/viewers have differing relationships and levels of interaction with the piece. In some cases, the reader/viewers must interact directly with the reader/wearer to gain access to the piece in order to read and make sense of it.

These scarf books were worn in Rhode Island by artists (RISD students, faculty and/or artists that have participated in RISD-affiliated exhibitions) during Spring 2015. Artists shared their experience as the reader/wearer with the book and their interactions with reader/viewers. For some the experience was ceremonial. For others it made them feel connected with their history as if they were wearing or were draped in history.

Each scarf relates to the experiences of enslaved relatives owned by the Brown, Hopkins (the former governor of Rhode Island), and Waterman families of Providence, Rhode Island. Research for this project was conducted at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Collection: University of California at Irvine

2015, pressure printing, letterpress, original poetry, sea glass, long-stitch binding, 10.5 x 12.25 inches, 10 copies.

What would it look like if each African American man, woman, and child had a handbook? A guidebook that would give you insight into who they are, what they feel, their accumulated experiences. Such books could show the diversity of the African American experience and maybe help white Americans move beyond prejudices and stereotypes. These guidebooks might help white Americans empathize with their African American counterparts. As this is my guidebook, it is letterpress printed in colors inspired by sea glass and shells collected on the Rhode Island shorelines.

This collection of poems was written and edited by the artist over the course of two decades. Thanks to the time and space afforded by stays at the MacDowell Colony, Anderson Center at Tower Rock, and Yaddo.

Collections: Emory College, Library of Congress, Penn State University, Savannah College of Art & Design, Scripps College, St Olaf College, University of Delaware, University of Washington at Seattle, private collections.

2015, letterpress, concrete and original poems, long-stitch, 6 copies.

The disruptive and mournful effects that death, kidnapping, abuse, or assault have on a person and a community transcend the borders of distance and time.

During the 1764–5 voyage of the Salty, a Brown family slaving ship, from West Africa to the West Indies, 109 of 196 slaves succumbed to suicide, disease, starvation, and injuries inflicted during a failed slave insurrection. Using the line items from the ship's account book that noted their death, I attempted to embody them by repeating and expanding on that brief notation.

Thinking about contemporary individuals who have lost their lives, gone missing, or had their dignity assaulted, I wrote about how each person and related incident affected me. Diverse themes are explored from the criminalizing of the victim in the case of Trayvon Martin to the absence of concern and media coverage for kidnapped African Americans such as Relisha Rudd.

Each loss is mourned, each absence felt. All are connected. We came over in the same ships. Today as yesterday, we are stuck in this constant middle passage.

Collections: Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Library of Congress, RISD Art Museum, Stanford University, University of California at Irvine, private collection.

2013, screenprinting and letterpress, hemp leaf stab binding, 16 x 20 inches, 5 copies.

In an attempt to connect across hundreds of autumns with slaves that lived in Providence, Rhode Island on the eve of the colonies’ independence, I collected leaves along Benefit Street.

Humbling and at times awkward, the collection process involved stooping and lowering my gaze as I sought a representative sampling of leaves fresh to brittle, elm to oak and beyond, whole to tattered along the mile long, largely residential street.

Autumn leaves put on a show now as then. They represent the countless African slaves that will not be rendered visible and not named no matter the diligence of the researcher. For captive Africans walking on Benefit Street, the splendor of autumn leaves might have temporarily suspended the homesickness, humiliation, and sorrow of being a slave in Rhode Island.

Harvest’s text is from or was directly inspired by the accounting of the building, stocking, and voyages of slave ships and other Brown family business records as noted.

African slaves, purchased and sold in the West Indies and other locations, are also revealed in the often mundane receipts and accounts of slaving ships. Utilizing the Brown family business records dating from the 18th century, research was conducted at the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University.

Harvest employs color and sound and translucency to build an interaction with the viewer/reader that ebbs and flows. Influenced by the size and placement of text and image, the viewer will move close to the page. The rhythm of crinkling pages and relatively silent ones acts as a metronome that can both guide the reader’s pace and create a haunting soundtrack as captive Africans are brought into view. Harvest is intended to be emotional and disorienting.

Collections: Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Harvard University, Princeton University, Savannah College of Art & Design, and University of Vermont.

2013, screenprinting and letterpress, hemp leaf stab binding, 16 x 20 inches, unique.

Unlike the editioned version of Harvest, this unique volume showcases the varied tones of brown ink used for the central leaf/text compositions, which stand against the cream-colored paper.

In an attempt to connect across hundreds of autumns with slaves that lived in Providence, Rhode Island on the eve of the colonies’ independence, I collected leaves along Benefit Street.

Humbling and at times awkward, the collection process involved stooping and lowering my gaze as I sought a representative sampling of leaves fresh to brittle, elm to oak and beyond, whole to tattered along the mile long, largely residential street.

Autumn leaves put on a show now as then. They represent the countless African slaves that will not be rendered visible and not named no matter the diligence of the researcher. For captive Africans walking on Benefit Street, the splendor of autumn leaves might have temporarily suspended the homesickness, humiliation, and sorrow of being a slave in Rhode Island.

Harvest’s text is from or was directly inspired by the accounting of the building, stocking, and voyages of slave ships and other Brown family business records as noted.

African slaves, purchased and sold in the West Indies and other locations, are also revealed in the often mundane receipts and accounts of slaving ships. Utilizing the Brown family business records dating from the 18th century, research was conducted at the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University.

Harvest employs color and sound and translucency to build an interaction with the viewer/reader that ebbs and flows. Influenced by the size and placement of text and image, the viewer will move close to the page. The rhythm of crinkling pages acts as a metronome that can both guide the reader’s pace and create a haunting soundtrack as captive Africans are brought into view. Harvest is intended to be emotional and disorienting.

2014, slave receipt on chiffon, 36 x 36 inches, unique.

2013, digitally printed, original poetry, upcycled almanac covers, 10 copies.

My contribution to the Inventory for Al-Mutanabbi Street artists' book exhibition, Hers: a primer of sorts is dedicated to the countless women for whom education and scholarship are restricted or forbidden. Despite lack of opportunity or access, threats of violence, and intimidation, these female readers gain strength and knowledge from the texts that they consume and alternately hide under clothing, farm or factory equipment, and kitchenware.

This idea of limits or restrictions on access to education, particularly for women, seems like an outmoded notion. Yet globally it persists. Contemporary women from various cultures and ages find refuge in books and often at risk to their own physical or emotional safety.

Detailing topography, language, population numbers, and other basic facts, the discarded pages from an outdated almanac serve as the book’s cover and the female protagonist’s cultural and physical landscape. Though covers depicting North America and Europe were not employed, this does not imply that obstacles to women in those regions are absent.

This primer mixes ornate letter forms to create patterns and screens, the main text is concealed and revealed just as a woman or girl in any country or community might hide a book or banned text.

The poem that runs through this artists' book:

Hiding a book under/ cover,

under cloth/ This text

sacred saves/ my life

Verse upon/ verse recited,

inhaled,

For when it/ is found

and taken/ away one

day/ eventual

too late,/ maybe

For I will/ know each

word

To speak it/ often,

low in day/ or dark

Ever under/ this fabric

skin.

Hers was digitally printed on Japanese rice paper with discarded pages from an almanac used for the covers.

Collections: Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis, Iraqi National Library, Kenyon College, Tate Britain.

2012, hand-set and polymer letterpress, etching, photolithography, artist-made paper from the artists' clothing, french twist binding, small accordions.

Set of two books and two wall hangings. Two volumes (Past DC; Present DC): 9 x 17 inches. Wall hangings: 30 x 132 inches, 4 copies.

Surveying historical segregation in the District of Columbia, Past Present: DC posits the idea that we are as segregated today as yesterday. We are separated by the same fears, hat, ignorance, and silence. As the nation's capital and as an American city, D.C. is layered with sites of humiliation, trauma, and racial violence that do not need to be within the city's physical borders to become part of the urban grid and psyche. Conveyors of information, outrage, and sentiment within African American communities across the nation.

In PAST Present: DC, text from historic Jim Crow signs of the DC metro area and other American cities aware printed with handset wood and metal type. Text was position to allow the page to act as a reconstituted sign. Listings of area establishments that accepted African American customers came from mid-twentieth century issues of The Negro Motorists Green Book and Travelguide.

The lyrics of popular American songs portray the journey of African American and white residents across the city where The Star-Spangled Banner seems symbolic of independence, songs of significance to the African American community and of prominence in the Civil Rights movement represent the African American citizen's restricted journey. From Swing Low, Sweet Chariot by Wallis Willis to James Weldon Johnson's Lift Every Voice and Sing to A Change is Gonna Come written by Sam Cooke, the songs change in step with the African American citizen's struggles for equity, enfranchisement, and recognition as an American and a human being' as the white citizen's position or primacy as an American has never been in doubt, the representative song The Star Spangled Banner remains static."

In Past PRESENT: DC, the text from popular bumper stickers, the news cycle, and contemporary political rhetoric replace historic Jim Crow era signs. Mirroring the rhetoric and prejudices of the past: African Americans as primates, promiscuous, and un-American, terms overrun the page and compete for attention, page spreads turn into billboards or monitors.

A shift in residents' journeys presents as a reversal of lyric placement. While The Star Spangled Banner still represents the white resident, original text running fluidly across the book picks up where Negro spiritual and popular song lyrics left off in Past Present: DC.

Collections: Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Library of Congress, State Library of Queensland, and Yale University.

2011, etching, handset letterpress, coptic stitch, upcycled trousers, 5.37 x 7.37 inches, 4 copies.

Gunshy is a book of etchings accompanied by a poem.

The poem reads:

Gnarled and dumb,

The heart muscle speaks

Garbled

And mumbling

From disuse

Captions for the two etchings can be seen as principal or secondary text. The stitch is coptic, and the book is bound in cloth from a pair of dress pants.

Collections: University of California at Irvine, Yale University, private collections.

2011, handset letterpress, original poetry and handmade paper, 8.25 x 8" inches closed, and 32 inches long open, 5 copies.

The handmade paper references the shoreline and the activity of the grunion run.

Collections: California College of the Arts, George Mason University, Princeton University, Tate Britain, private collection.

2011, linocut, handset letterpress, sumi ink, handmade paper, 3.25 x 7.25 inches (closed), 9x 7.25 inches (open), 7 copies.

Commonplace is a flutter book containing handset letterpress poetry, hand-applied sumi-e ink, and multi-layered linoleum block prints that emulate cherry blossoms flowing in the breeze. It is printed on Japanese washi paper and bound in Japanese cloth. The title is handset letterpress on handmade paper.

Collections: Rhode Island School of Design, University of Delaware, University of Virginia, private collections

2011, etching, handset letterpress and stab binding, 12.25 x 17.25 inches, 5 copies.

The text reads:

On May 25th

100 years ago

Laura and Lawrence Nelson

of Okemah, Oklahoma

under the stars

were lynched

and photographed

mother and son

This book recreates my own experience of initially viewing the photograph- that was printed in newspapers and made into postcards. My eye moves round from the light on the water, the lush trees, to the female form appearing to almost dance on the water. No rope.

The sparse text of Anniversary is constructed to control the pacing of the viewer through the book. Text acts to slow or speed the reader, but always to motivate them to continue turning the page. The text plays with and against the imagery in the accompanying etchings to keep the reader engaged, but slightly off-balance as the aftermath of a lynching is revealed.

Collections: Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, University of Virginia, private collections.

Letterpress, digitally printed on handmade and commercial papers. 8.5 X 5 inches (closed) and 19” x 8” (open).

Black in Dictionary exposes derogatory terms used to describe African Americans. The flags feature words and images on the front, while definitions appear on the back. Along the internal spine of the book, the derivations of the n-word accompany a brief essay. In an attempt to open dialogue, the materials and palette combine to arrest the reader’s common impulse of flight or avoid toward the topic of racism.

Letterpress and digitally printed on shimmering handmade and commercial papers, the book’s scale and tactility motivate the viewer to interact with the piece, as they question their own relationship to the terms.

Collections: private collections

2011, digitally printed, linocut, original poetry, unique copy.

Divided into three chapters: Longing, Isolation, and Illustrations, Fundamental Education: longing and isolation in an Amer-Indian community artists' book consists of a French twist binding with handmade paper from Pyramid Atlantic, lino cuts, digital printing, and original poetry.

The first two chapters include a poem meant to consider thefeelings of historic and contemporary members of the Oglala Lakota tribe that reside on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The survivors of Wounded Knee were relocated to this reservation, located in South Dakota.

The final Illustrations-focused chapter highlights how the linocuts that previously served as background illustrate the story from the moment the reader opened the book.

Collection: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign