Primrose Press

For Black people print (2023), pressure and letterpress printing, 8.5. x 11 inches, varied edition of 50.

BUY

Creating during an artist residency at Halden Bookworks in Norway, this varied edition print features original text by Tia Blassingame letterpress printed in an Ombré pattern against a pressure printed pattern surrounded by a letterpress printed sketch of brown hands creating an artist’s book. Signed and numbered by the artist, for Black people is available on plastic-like plike and varied Japanese papers.

2019, 2-color pressure printing.

Conceived of during Summer 2019 International Print Center New York (IPCNY) artist residency as part of the Umbra: Prints for a Dark Age, curated by Alison Saar, this work was printed at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. At the start of my residency, Trump made derogatory comments about the city of Baltimore, a district partially under Congressman Elijah Cumming’s purview. Instead of offering solutions or federal support to remedy the economic struggles and lack of opportunity in Baltimore, he demeaned the city and by extension its residents.

There was something in his hail of comments that struck me as essential to understanding how he and his administration is able to justify so many cruel decisions. “No human being would want to live there.” When I read that, I understand it to also mean the current residents were not human beings. Just as slaves often not considered people, or human. If you don’t consider the people of Baltimore to be human beings, you may not consider the children and families held in ICE custody human or Muslim travellers or athletes silently protesting police brutality.

This two-color pressure print consists of a self-portrait generated from a hand-cut matrice and pressure printed text. This print inspired a forthcoming artist’s book of the same name.

Available for purchase

2019, created for Playing with Words at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, excerpt of the poem, Trace, by Dobby Gibson from the recently published Little Glass Planet. Handmade paper, pulp painting, handset letterpress, 14 x 20 inches. 75 copies.

As I read Gibson’s Little Glass Planet, I kept coming back to Trace and its mention of tumbleweeds and diamonds, planets and pre-history. Beyond just reading, Dobby Gibson’s poem, I wanted to ponder it as I was creating the substrate for the print. Extending the process by incorporating hand papermaking and pulp painting allowed me more time to consider this world that Dobby created, and look for ways to mirror the wonder and movement implied in lines like “We’re trapped inside diamonds” and “we can make the diamonds spin.” The papermaking process also informed my latter typographic decisions. Ideally the paper, particularly when it is backlit, itself is a slice of the wonder I experienced reading and considering Little Glass Planet.

Sheets were pulled and then while on the mould, small openings were torn. I used repurposed paper for the pulp painting which shows through the torn sheet as well as casts a shadow from behind.

2017, pressure printing, 7 x 10.25 inches, 8 varied copies.

I’m very interested in the relationship between black and white in terms of who is considered innocent, criminal. As a nation, we continue this long history of re-victimization of black individuals and their loved ones, and of a justice system that does not provide justice if the crime is committed by a white American against a black American. Even in our popular culture we joke about this. We accept this as tragic, but almost inevitable. Though both are constructs, blackness does not exist without whiteness. Whiteness cannot exist without blackness. It’s fascinating how that relationship plays out like the biggest threat to white supremacy is just being, existing in this skin.

handset letterpress, cut vinyl, pressure printing

2016

9 x 12 inches

Available for purchase

Jahi recalls the disappearance and search for 2 year old Jahi Turner in San Diego, California in 2002. He remains missing.

Jahi is my contribution to the Folium print portfolio. Additional information about the portfolio is below.

The College Book Art Association is excited to present Folium, CBAA’s first print portfolio/exchange to benefit the CBAA academic journal, Openings: Studies in Book Art. This peer-reviewed journal aims to energize artistic practice, stimulate study in the field of book art, and encourage profound and multifaceted thinking in this dynamic arena. By providing open online access to Openings, CBAA seeks to support diverse conversations and an ongoing examination of the continually shifting role of the book in contemporary culture.

Inspired by the potential for Openings to grow as a platform for critical and theoretical investigation, the theme for this portfolio is folium (plural foliums or folia). Folium, in Latin, means leaf: a leaf of a book or a tree. The mathematical folium of Descartes is a curve consisting of two infinite branches sharing a common asymptote; the curve has a double point and a leaf-shaped loop. In anatomy, a folium is a wrinkle on the surface of the brain. In geology, a folium is a thin, leaflike layer or stratum occurring especially in metamorphic rock. Together these definitions suggest growth and layers, and they lead to a visually rich collection of prints: prints with references to math, leaves, folded paper, and suggestions of the infinite.

The imaginative variety of prints and folios in the Folium collection range from classic letterpress printed broadsides with text to purely visual interpretations of the theme to contemporary pieces utilizing tactile materials and inventive techniques. The imagery includes leaves and algebraic curves, as well as references to book pages and the brain. The participating artists are professionals in the field of book arts: printers, binders, educators, and fine artists. In the spirit of our journal, Openings, this portfolio is our offering to the future of book arts.

Participating Artists:

Megan Adie

Tia Blassingame

Mare Blocker & Jessica Spring

Denise Bookwalter

Macy Chadwick

Julie Chen

Bridget Elmer

Lucy Holtsnider

Andrea Kohashi

Sara Langworthy

Susan Lowdermilk

Amy Lund

Kimberly Maher

Emily Martin

Kerry McAleer-Keeler

Allison Leialoha Milham

Kathleen O’Connell

Candida Pagan

Radha Pandey

Camden M. Richards

Jaime Lynn Shafer

Barbara Tetenbaum

Emily Tipps

Sara White

Karen Zimmermann

Edition

Folium was published in an edition of 50, with 25 copies for distribution to the participants, 24 numbered copies offered for sale, and one copy for the CBAA archives.

Dimensions

Printed pieces: 9” x 12”

Enclosure: 10“ x 13” x 5/8”

This collection consists of flat prints, broadsides, and folios on a variety of papers using any print medium or combination of media, including letterpress, offset, digital printing, and/or other printmaking techniques.

The complete set is housed in a custom enclosure.

$975.00

Please visit the Vamp and Tramp website if you would like to purchase a copy

Email candida.pagan@gmail.com with further inquiries.

2017, handset letterpress, reductive linocut, original poetry, 6.75 x 9.5 inches.

The print reads:

One morning

we won’t wake up to

swastikas and racial epithets

spraypainted on our homes,

our cars, offices

places of worship, our schools

One morning

Collections: private collections

2016, handmade kozo paper, original poem, letterpress and pressure printing, 14 by 18 inches.

Part of The Island of Enchantment: la isla del encanto, Puerto Rico SGCI print portfolio, organized by Michelle Murillo, Omission combines papermaking, letterpress and pressure printing with original poetry. The print includes a star-shaped piece embedded in the handmade kozo paper sheet. Partial letterpress poem printed on Rives Lightweight from my 2015 artist's book, Negroes: a Handbook.

See full poem below:

Chapter 11: Omission

Dream for dream

Struggle for struggle

We are missing

Not missed

I built the White House, capitol building

I have the paystubs to prove

I handled marble, brought masterpiece

from its cold placid planes

I built your cities that you have been telling

me all along are not my cities

Sweat for sweat

Callous for callous

We are missing

I washed the afterbirth from your eyes

I stroked your temples to turn crying to cooing

I taught you how to tune your mouth for a whistle

I do these things and others that you will

not for your children

Prayer for prayer

Hymn for hymn

We are missing

I, spit on, dog sicked on,

Walked in the road so you could stroll the sidewalk

I wore holey shoes and unraveling pants

soaked by tires splashing puddles

I caught colds waiting in the rain at the

back door, colored entrance

I stood for you to sit

Erasing me page for page

Line for line

The paper was created by the artist by processing the kozo fiber, manually beating the fiber into pulp, pulling sheets and letting them dry in the sun. Star-shaped, letterpress pieces are embedded between two layers of kozo. The abstract pattern, partly inspired by Adinkra symbols and Puerto Rico’s flag, was pressure printed on the finished sheet. The piece is meant to evoke an alternative flag that considers the shared history of slavery in Puerto Rico and the nation.

Collections: Kennesaw State University, private collections.

2016, lettepress, original poem. 30 copies.

Collections: private collections

2014, photogravure and screenprinting, 22 x 30 inches, 16 copies.

Collections: University of Delaware, private collections.

2014, photogravure, paint, wax, pigment. 22 x 30 inches.

2014, photogravure on chiffon.

2014, photogravure on chiffon.

2014, photogravure, letterpress, original photograph, 11 x 14 inches.

I have been exploring the slave trade in Bristol, Rhode Island through prints on paper and on fabric, and trying to tell stories, histories. The pieces created from site visits are attempts to incorporate my photographs that were seen principally as part of the research process and sketches about the story of two slave children.

A study for a larger, ongoing project, Daughter Slave Wife Mother Rhyme combines text from a family nursery rhyme with that of a headstone. Adjua and Pauledore, respectively the female and male enslaved children owned by the DeWolf family of Bristol, Rhode Island, are provided very different weight in each text. The mournful prose of the headstone decreases the weight of the DeWolf family nursery rhyme verse with its mocking and seeming diminished dignity of the two children and implies the presence of Pauledore and Adjua’s descendants. Where in the text they are forever infantilized and subjugated, the photogravure image speaks to their humanity, complexity, lives we can only gain snapshots of understanding through research.

Collections: Kennesaw State University, private collections.

2014, photogravure, letterpress, scored gold leaf, unique.

2012, letterpress, original poem, 8.5 x 11 inches, 40 copies.

This broadside combines a sketch and poem to address the invisibility of the homeless and their displacement by political protests.

Bus stops transformed into bedrooms
Doorways, storefronts into living room and stage
The audience driving past

March Lost

Parked shopping carts alongside Audis and BMWs
Muttering, crying
Unheard, unseen too visible and too loud cursing

Marching lost
Found cold

2011, etching, letterpress, original poetry, 15 copies..

Created for the Al-Mutanabbi Street broadside project, this print pairs an etching and handset letterpress text. The text is an original poem that explores the 2007 car bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street, the bookselling street of Baghdad. Printed in Washington, DC in 2011, it is an edition of fifteen. This print was exhibited at Corcoran College of Art + Design. It toured internationally as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Begins Here exhibition.

Collections: Jaffe Center for Book Arts, Iraq National Library

2011, lithography.

2010, letterpress.