PRINTING POETRY WORKSHOP #2
with hybrid Reading & Talk by Jared Stanley
Workshop
Saturday & Sunday, March 15-16, 2025
9:30am – 5:00pm
Reading & Talk
Saturday, March 22, 2025
6:00pm
Full workshop fee: $380
Scholarship workshop fee: $140
To sign up, please email contact@codexfoundation.org
WORKSHOP
Our second in a series of letterpress printing workshops with the goal of bringing people together around poetry and the printed word — an exploration of the visual and material qualities surrounding poetry and writing. This workshop brings poets and writers together with printers and makers. Open to all levels: this class is great for poets, designers, artists, publishers, printers, and others who might be interested in collaborating together while learning the basics of letterpress printing, printmaking, and pressroom equipment.
Join master letterpress printer Jonathan Gerken at The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center to create a limited-edition broadside in our printshop in Berkeley. The class will be working with a poem by Jared Stanley who is a poet, writer, and interdisciplinary artist living and working in Reno, Nevada where he is an associate professor teaching in the MFA program for creative writing. The class will hand-set the poem using metal and/or wood types and print an accompanying illustration. Enough broadsides will be printed during the class for each participant to take home a handful of prints.
There are 8 spots available with 2 reduced fee scholarships reserved for individuals from underserved communities. Please contact us if you are interested in a scholarship position and/or to sign up for the workshop.
READING / LECTURE
Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 6pm.
Jared will discuss the expansive possibilities for a poet's words to take on enhanced meaning when given visual and material consideration. He will discuss when a book is a book and when it ventures farther away to become a poetic object living in the world. Broadsides from the workshop will be given out for free at the reading/talk to attendees. This lecture will be open to all with a suggested donation of $20 and will include snacks & drinks.
Insight / Outsight
Lecture with Ryoko Adachi and Veronika Schäpers
Insight / Outsight
Artists Books on Japan
Friday, January 31, 2025 at 6:00 pm; seating will be first-come, first-served.
Reception starts at 5:30 pm
In their talk, the book artists Ryoko Adachi (Tokyo, Japan) and Veronika Schäpers (Karlsruhe, Germany) will each give an insight into their process of making artist's books. Both artists combine refined materials with deep and profound research. While Ryoko Adachi creates works with a modern sensibility using natural objects collected in Tokyo as motifs Veronika Schäpers concentrates on sociological phenomena she observes with an outside view as a foreigner in Japan.
The event will be accompanied by a presentation of books featured in the talk.
This lecture will be open to all with a sliding scale suggested donation of $5-20 (no one will be turned away). Refreshments will be served.
In conjunction with the exhibit at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, The CODEX Foundation is delighted to bring book artists Ryoko Adachi and Veronika Schäpers to speak about their work. You can read more about the SVMA artists' books exhibition titled Book Becoming Art on their website.
This exhibition is co-curated by Maki Aizawa of Amu Arts, Simon J. Blattner, and Barbara Wells. Maki Aizawa will also be translating for Ryoko Adachi during the above talk at the CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center.
APHA: Printing History, Past, Present and Future
Friday, October 18, 2024
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
CODEX is pleased to be a sponsor of American Printing History Association's 50th anniversary hybrid conference, featuring an in-person talk with Macy Chadwick and Felicia Rice at The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center on October 18, 2024. For more information and how to register, please see the APHA Website.
Scholarships to attend “APHA @ 50” printing history conference, Oct. 17-19, 2024
Thanks to a generous grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the American Printing History Association (APHA) is offering scholarships to attend its annual conference, "APHA @ 50: Printing History Past, Present and Future." This hybrid conference will take place from October 17-19 and will feature in-person events in New York City (the Grolier Club, the Center for Book Arts, and the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Berkeley, California (The CODEX Foundation), as well as virtual presentations throughout the weekend. The conference program includes keynotes, papers, workshops, and tours covering a wide range of topics, from typography and artificial intelligence to women in print, historical printing and printmaking practices, letterpress printing education, and the impact of digital media. APHA welcomes the participation of everyone with a passion for printing and book history, including seasoned scholars, librarians and archivists, conservators, students, and hobbyists.
To learn more, please visit APHA's conference webpage at https://printinghistory.
*This event is hosted by APHA. You can learn more about registration and fees on their website here.
Colophon Club: Rhiannon Alpers
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Rhiannon Alpers will join the Colophon Club for an evening to explore the intriguing world of lichen through her new artist book, "Lichen: Rambles in the Colorado Front Range," which debuted at the CODEX Book Fair earlier this year. In this insightful and quirky presentation, Rhiannon will recount her extensive research journey, highlighting the contributions of early women bryologists in San Francisco, Colorado, and Britain and the herbariums they worked for.
Her exploration encompassed a range of fascinating topics, including the processes of papermaking and ink production derived from lichen, as well as macro photography and mono-printing techniques that emulate the intricate surfaces of these organisms. Rhiannon will also discuss the colorful specimen books from that era, illuminating the historical context of her work.
Participants will have the unique opportunity to handle samples, specimens, and various materials alongside an edition of her book. Join us for an engaging evening that promises to deepen your appreciation of both lichen and moss.
Rhiannon Alpers is the proprietor of Gazelle and Goat Press, which creates limited-edition and one-of-a-kind artist books. She is a papermaker, letterpress printer, and bookbinder currently living in Denver, Colorado. Over the years, she has worked as both an academic/workshop educator and a commercial printer, and she holds a BA and MFA in Book and Paper Arts. She was recently selected as an MCBA Book Prize Semi-Finalist in Sept. of 2024.
*This event is run by Colophon Club and requires an RSVP. If you are interested in attending this event, please contact Colophon Club at colophonclub@gmail.com indicating how many guests are coming. A $20 donation covers food and drink and can be paid at the door. Electronic funds or cash accepted.
CalRBS: Artists’ Books in Education: Strategies for Institutional Libraries Course Information
July 15-18, 2024 — co-taught by Ruth Rogers and Inge Bruggeman
In collaboration with the California Rare Book School and UC Berkeley's Environmental Design Library and The Bancroft Library.
Creation and distribution of the contemporary artist book is flourishing on a global scale. From a vast range of media and subject matter, how does one develop the critical insights needed to maintain or build a collection of contemporary artists’ books? This course will explore creative approaches to harness the visual and communicative power of artists’ books, by integrating them into broader curricular objectives.
Class sessions will be held in local research collections where we will meet with librarians and faculty who acquire and teach with artists’ books. Additional programming will include guided hands-on analysis of selected books, with an emphasis on refining curatorial skills. We will share strategies for identifying artists’ books that fit into a cross-disciplinary educational mission, and how they relate to existing historical collections.
PRINTING POETRY WORKSHOP #1 – Sherwin Bitsui
Saturday & Sunday July 27 & 28, 2024
9:30 am – 5:00 pm
Full workshop fee: $320
Scholarship workshop fee: $60
To sign up, please email contact@codexfoundation.org
Our first in a series of letterpress printing workshops with the goal of bringing people together to promote poetry and the printed word. Open to all levels: this class is great for poets, designers, artists, publishers, printers, and others who might be interested in collaborating together while learning the basics of letterpress printing and press equipment.
Join master letterpress printer Jonathan Gerken at The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center to create a limited edition broadside in our printshop in Berkeley. The class will honor Sherwin Bitsui who is a Navajo writer and poet. We will print a poem from his book titled Flood Song, which won the American Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. The class will hand-set the poem using metal type and print enough broadsides for each participant to take a handful of prints. Participants are also invited to attend Sherwin Bitsui’s reading for the UC Berkeley Lunch Poems Series on Thursday, September 5 at 12 pm, where we will hand out copies of the broadside for free. This poetry reading series is held at the Morrison Library on campus and is free and open to the public.
There are 8 total spots available with 2 reduced fee scholarships reserved for individuals from underserved communities. Please contact us if you are interested in a scholarship position.
Union de Hojas: UH Book Structure with Sol Rebora
Saturday & Sunday, February 10 – 11, 2024
10 am – 6 pm (with a 1 hour lunch break)
$410 (includes most materials)
Please contact us for more information and to sign up for this amazing workshop!
Design + Conservation
Leather spine and Japanese textured paper, hard covers and rounded spine binding.
This structure proposes a case binding construction with fine finishing details, combining design and conservation concepts along the process construction. We are going to work with a book printed by Ediciones Urania: Ral Veroni - The Princess with an illustration of Ral Veroni.
The sewing for the signatures provides a flat spine with a very even volume to create a nice rounded spine, and a small shoulder, which is going to be connected to the textblock by a hollow back.
On this structure the endpapers have a particular construction to work with very thin papers playing with possible transparencies, colors and textures, using this part of the construction as a beautiful way to get into the book. Conservation, design, and technology of the materials works for the structure to provide a perfect opening of the book.
Heavy Lifting: Felicia Rice and Theresa Whitehill
Sunday, September 10, 2023
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
$10
Please contact us to reserve your spot!
HEAVY LIFTING continues its tour through Northern California, one community room, gallery, and theater space at a time—wherever people gather—to reflect on issues of crisis and renewal in these difficult times. Each event in the series presents the artists’ book, Heavy Lifting, together with film, poetry, and conversation.
The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™
The CODEX Foundation is pleased to announce our first-ever visiting artist talk at The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center.
The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™
Sunday, January 15, 2023, 4:30 pm
Standard Tickets: $25
Student Tickets: $20
*Sliding scale tickets will be offered to those in need of assistance. Please email us with a request.
Tickets are extremely limited and will sell quickly! Limit one ticket per person.
EMAIL US if you would like to sign up to attend this in-person talk.
About the artist, Dafi Kühne:
Dafi Kühne is a Swiss designer and letterpress printer. He studied in the Visual Communication Department of Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland and he holds a Research-Masters Degree in Typeface Design from University of Reading, UK. In his studio (babyinktwice.ch) he uses a wild mix of analog and digital tools to produce posters for for music, art, architecture, theatre and film projects, and also for products. With this one main rule in his studio «No PDF ever leaves the studio as a final product», he prints all his posters with letterpress printing presses. His mostly typographic letterpress printed posters have won many international poster design awards and been in exhibitions all around the globe. His designer monograph True Print has been published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2016.
Dafi runs his own Typographic Summer Program (www.typographic-printing-program.com) in Switzerland and Pasadena, CA—a two week intense program for students and professionals to learn new approaches to Swiss Typography. While the summer program is a physical workshop Dafi has been looking for a way to document his craziest techniques in a faster online format. With «The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™», he entertainingly documents and explains his process and techniques. Freely available for anyone to enjoy! Besides other international awards, «The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™» won one of the prestigious Swiss Design Awards in 2021.
For his talk at The CODEX Foundation, Dafi will give us some technical insights into the processes used to create his poster work.
Luminous Books at the Boston Athenæum
Materialia Lumina | Luminous Books: Concept & Craft in Contemporary Artists’ Books
NOVEMBER 15, 2022 – MARCH 11, 2023
Materialia Lumina | Luminous Books showcases a selection of outstanding contemporary artists’ books created by some of the world’s most accomplished makers over the past twenty-five years. The books embody a distinctive marriage of “high craft” with “high concept.” They demonstrate a mastery of the traditional arts of the book—printing, printmaking, typography, calligraphy, bookbinding, papermaking, and graphic design—intersecting vigorously with the conceptual daring and exploratory nature of the best contemporary art. The exhibition explores the extraordinary level of skill and persistence involved in creating these beautiful works, as well as their unique power to speak to a range of contemporary issues and concerns.
These forty selections from the Athenæum’s holdings and the collection of a generous private lender were drawn from a curated list of 75 exemplary works, out of more than 6,000 pieces exhibited at the CODEX International Book Fair, the world’s largest venue for contemporary artists’ books, since the fair’s inception in 2007. The Athenæum is one of three venues for this international exhibition, along with Stanford University Libraries and the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach, Germany. A substantial catalog, with descriptive essays and extensive illustrations, accompanies the exhibition.
Unfortunately, because of space constraints and local availability of works the Athenaeum was not able to show all of the works in the catalog, so we encourage you to experience the imagery and in-depth writings about all the wonderful works in the entire exhibition through the printed catalog.
Artists featured in the exhibition:
Sue Anderson and Gwen Harrison, Karen Bleitz, Ken Botnick, Inge Bruggeman, Carolee Campbell, Julie Chen, Donald Glaister, Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence Van Velzer, Leilei Guo, Romano Hänni, Thomas Ingmire, Peter Koch, Clemens-Tobias Lange, Russell Maret, Suzanne Moore, Tim Mosely, Didier Mutel, Robin Price, Sandra Reese and Harry Reese, Felicia Rice, Gaylord Schanilec, Veronika Schäpers, Leonard Seastone, Two Ponds Press, Claire Van Vliet, Sam Winston
Special Project: EXTRACTION
EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of The Abyss
EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss is a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention that will investigate extractive industry in all of its forms (from mining and drilling to the reckless exploitation of water, soil, trees, marine life, and other natural resources). The project will expose and interrogate extraction’s negative social and environmental consequences, from the damage done to people, especially indigenous and disenfranchised communities, to ravaged landscapes and poisoned water to climate change and its many troubling implications.
A constellation of simultaneous and overlapping exhibits, installations, performances, site-specific work, land art, street art, publications, and cross-media events, EXTRACTION will take place in multiple locations throughout the U.S. and abroad during the Summer of 2021. The project will be de-centered, non-hierarchical, and self-organizing, which means that artists, art venues, curators, and art supporters will participate and collaborate as they see fit, including helping the project expand geographically. Everyone can be both creator and catalyst. At a time of growing despair and paralysis, people from all backgrounds and levels of experience—from the amateur to the virtuoso—can take action. We invite everyone to join us in creating an international art ruckus.
Nothing like EXTRACTION has been attempted before: All art forms, all happening at roughly the same time, with hundreds of artists spread across at least four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Australia). And all addressing a single theme—the suicidal consumption of the planet’s natural resources, which is the most pressing environmental issue of our time, encompassing all others, including climate change.
EXTRACTION: A collective global exclamation: “ENOUGH!”
Prominent writers, critics, historians, educators, environmentalists, and other experts have been enlisted as advisors, to provide related texts, and to help us forge affiliations with non-art organizations. The Nevada Museum of Art, a national leader in the exhibition, collection, study, and promotion of environmentally related art, has agreed to archive all project documentation.
EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss is a special project of the CODEX Foundation.
Grolier Club / CODEX Foundation Symposium
The CODEX Effect and the Emergence of the “Third Stream” in the 21st Century
A conversation between artists, curators, scholars, and collectors
THE GROLIER CLUB, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 18 - 19, 2019
Since the turn of the millennium technological as well as cultural exchanges in the fields of printing and graphic arts have enabled new areas of artistic inquiry and therefore new collecting practices to emerge.
While private press, artist’s books, hybrid books, democratic multiples, book-like-objects, and zines are all competing for the attention of the private, museum and academic collections throughout the Western world, the biennial CODEX International Book Fair has emerged to represent the global reach of the high-craft spectrum in both art and literature.
At the CODEX International Book Fair we have observed that certain books inhabit a distinct and until recently, unexplored territory on the complex map of the book as a work of art. We refer to high-concept and high-craft books dwelling within the uncharted area where the wild variety of artist’s books on the one hand, and the more traditional private press books and livre d’artiste on the other, influence one another and propel the book into a new category altogether. We have begun to refer to this phenomenon as the Third Stream – one that is neither an avant-garde artist’s book nor an illustrated typographic book of the private press/livre d’artiste lineage.
The third stream book incorporates and even accelerates techniques learned from new technologies while at the same time provides a locus that encourages a refreshing and deeper exploration of traditional artisanal crafts. Classically trained artists and printers who are both accomplished masters and experimentally minded are rare, and when successful, able to propel their ideas of the possibility of a book beyond the easy and comfortable categories while exhibiting an extraordinary sense of place and making.
New currents indicate the emergence and evolution of highly gifted artists and artisans who embrace the tools and production skills of the traditional arts while dancing on the razor’s edge of intellectual and technological change.