1999 Book FOR[U]MS

BOOK ARTIST SPEAKER SERIES

The Book FOR[u]Ms Book Artist Speaker Series, sponsored by the Golda Meir Library, Friends of the Golda Meir Library, and the UWM Department of Visual Arts, enters its fifth season by presenting four women book artists and their relationships to cooperative book-arts centers around the country. All presentations are held at 7:00 p.m. in Special Collections, and are free and open to the public.

ANN KALMBACH and TATANA KELLNER

September 22, 1999

Ann Kalmbach and Tatana Kellner are co-founders and, respectively, the Executive Director and Artistic Director of the Women's Studio Workshop (WSW) in Rosendale, New York. With a particular focus on printmaking and the book arts, WSW is an artists' cooperative studio with a strong national reputation. Founded in 1974 as an alternative space for artists to create new work and to share skills and equipment, WSW has steadily grown to include facilities for printing, papermaking, photography, and ceramics. Besides its studios and an extensive catalog of artists' books, WSW also offers classes, internships, fellowships, residencies, grant opportunities, public school programs, exhibitions, and other special initiatives and projects.

An MFA graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Ann Kalmbach is a printmaker and book artist. Her books can be found in many library and museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As manager of WSW's silkscreen and offset facilities, Kalmbach has worked with many artists on hand-printed books and other special projects. Czech-born artist Tatana Kellner, also an MFA graduate of RIT, is a photographer and book artist who makes ample use of her background in painting, printmaking, and hand papermaking. Her work, which is shown widely and has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in the United States, is strongly informed by her early life in communist-era Prague growing up in a Holocaust-survivor family. Kalmbach and Kellner produce collaborative artists' books as KaKe Art. They will discuss their own work, and the work, programs and initiatives of the Women's Studio Workshop.

MARY JO PAULY

October 13, 1999

Mary Jo Pauly is a letterpress printer and book artist, and is Artistic Director for the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA), Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCBA was founded in 1983 to support and facilitate collaborative efforts in the book arts, and to help integrate those efforts into the everyday lives of the community through classes, workshops, tours, field trips, exhibitions, lectures, public school outreach, a range of internship and volunteer opportunities, and the production of consistently well-produced and affordable fine-press publications.

Mary Jo Pauly began her educational career in graphic design and subsequently received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she studied with Walter Hamady. Her work as a book artist, integrating fine press tradition and structural inventions, has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In addition to her position at MCBA as Artistic Director, she also maintains the letterpress studio; conducts a variety of classes and workshops; oversees the Artists-in-Residence program, Book Arts Cooperative, and fellowship programs; curates and selects guest curators for MCBA's exhibition program; is project manager of all publication projects; and participates in the Book-Artists-in-the-Schools residency program. Mary Jo Pauly will discuss her own work, as well as the work, programs and activities of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

SUSAN E. KING

November 8, 1999

Susan E. King is an artist and writer who began making books after she moved to Southern California in the 1970s to participate in the experimental Feminist Studio Workshop (FSW), the first independent school for women artists. She eventually became the studio director of FSW's Women's Graphic Center at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles. Growing up in the South in a family of storytellers, Susan King's work is imbued with a sense of place that often reflects Southern oral tradition and history. She continues to divide her time between Los Angeles and rural Kentucky. Trained as a sculptor, she brings sculptural form to her printed and one-of-a-kind artist's books, which she prints at Paradise Press in Los Angeles, and at cooperative presses around the country. Her work is in major collections including The Getty Center, the Biblioth�que Nationale, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Victoria and Albert Museum Library. Chronicle Books in San Francisco recently published a trade edition of King's artist's book, Treading the Maze, originally produced at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y. Treading the Maze presents dual texts, one of her pilgrimage to European sacred sites, and the other of her journey through the medical realities of breast cancer.

For more information, contact Max Yela, Special Collections, Golda Meir Library, (414) 229-4345; or Richard Zauft, UWM Department of Visual Art, (414) 229-4258.

LECTURES ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Special Collections, Fourth Floor, Golda Meir Library
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee