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Bulletin #11: School’s In (4-evah!)

September 8, 2021

Hello,

Educators are always on the front lines of the ongoing struggle for social change. Thank you, to all the librarians, curators, and teachers who have supported our artists and done such an incredible job serving their own communities throughout the challenges of the pandemic. We see you for all that you do, and we are humbled and honored to serve your academic community. 

We pay profound respect to both the students and educators whose work has placed them in situations where their health was compromised and wish them all a complete recovery. Sadly, Booklyn also mourns those educators and students who have tragically lost their lives in the educational field. And our anger—about the failures of public health and the medical racism that enabled those losses—propels us forward. 

We realize that students will return to their classrooms and libraries with great hunger for the affective, tactile, and immersive, educational, and aesthetic experiences that artists’ books and prints provide, as well as a desire for primary research materials that address the critical issues of our times. With all this in mind, Booklyn is proud to offer the following artists’ books, prints, and box sets in support of our shared journey to a just and sustainable world. 

We wish all educators and students safety and success in your return to in-person instruction. 

Please see the listings below, or go directly to our website to find out more. Email me with inquiries!

Print by Ernesto Yerena Montejano (from When We Fight We Win box set)
REGARDING TEACHING AND LEARNING

When We Fight We Win, A Public Advocacy Tool Box
Art Build Workers, 2021, edition of 25, $4,800
Milwaukee, WI; Los Angeles, CA; Oakland, CA

This box set both documents one of the most important and successful teacher’s union movements of the 21st century and provides a template for using “art builds” as an effective strategy to amplify the impact and effectiveness of social justice movements and union organizing.

https://booklyn.org/catalog/when-we-fight-we-win-box-set/

Freedom of the Presses
2018, trade edition, offset lithography, $25
Booklyn, Inc (Brooklyn, NY)

A great place to start—the definitive textbook on artists’ books in the 21st Century! Featuring essays by groundbreaking teachers like Tia Blassingame, Bridget Elmer, and Florencia San Martín, and innovative librarians such as Richard J. Lee, Janelle Rebel, Suzy Taraba, and Deborah Ultan. 

https://booklyn.org/catalog/booklyn-freedom-of-the-presses/
REGARDING BLACK AMERICAN HISTORY
Booklyn is thrilled to introduce our newest artist Sauda Mitchell. Among her numerous accomplishments, Sauda holds a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archival Studies from Drexel University and is Archives and Special Collections Librarian at the Jen Library of the Savannah College of Art and Design.  

Never Forget (Volumes #1 and #2)
Sauda Mitchell, 2021, variant series, volumes in editions of 5, linoleum print, $500 (each volume)
Savannah, GA

“Each numbered volume serves as a visual response to crimes committed against Black bodies, both past, and present… Each bookend is adorned with matted fibers mirroring embellishments seen in the elaborate headdresses of African masks. Adinkra symbols occupy the background signifying ceremonial clothes worn by the Asante when bidding farewell.”   —Sauda Mitchell

https://booklyn.org/catalog/never-forget/
Voyage
Sauda Mitchell, 2021, edition of 5, linoleum cut, handmade textured paper, synthetic leather, hemp cord, pigment dyes, fiber, $6,200
Savannah, GA

“Voyage intends to link viewers to history through type, text, and image. I want the ‘wind sails’, artists’ book, and poem to take viewers on a visual journey of the Middle Passage, the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean and to the Americas.”
—Sauda Mitchell

https://booklyn.org/catalog/voyage/

Black Panther Party Stamp Book
Kyle Goen, 2021, edition of 100, offset printed on dry gum adhesive paper with pinhole perforation, in a blue handmade screen-printed clamshell box. $875
Maplewood, NJ

We’re also happy to introduce activist and artist, Kyle Goen, who has a decades-long background in graphic design, printmaking, and activism. 

https://booklyn.org/catalog/black-panther-party-stamp-book/
REGARDING CLIMATE CHANGE & THE COVID PANDEMIC

Seven Elemental Forces
Roger Peet, 2021, edition of 15, letter-pressed linoleum relief prints, $800
Portland, OR

A powerful and stark graphic primer regarding climate change that is an artists’ book equivalent to the “red pill”. The book features stinging quotes from scientists and activists on the frontlines of climate change, chillingly illustrating the causal relationship between the climate catastrophe and the Covid pandemic and evoking the all-encompassing nature of our species’ current existential crisis.

While Roger Peet has contributed evocative prints to many Booklyn/Justseeds co-published portfolios and box sets we’re very excited to be distributing Seven Elemental Forces, his first artists’ book. We look forward to more artists’ book projects from him in the future.

https://booklyn.org/catalog/7-elemental-forces/

Fracktured Lives
Bullet Space, 2021, edition of 100, offset, 50 screenprints, sheet metal covers, $9,800
New York, NY

Fracktured Lives is a massive, 25-pound book, bound in sheet metal-covered wooden boards, which comprehensively takes on the massive subject of fracking with a focus on the history of the resistance to this despicable extraction practice in New York State. The book features 50 screenprints by a diverse and inter-generational selection of artists, a veritable exhibition in an easily unbolted codex form.

https://booklyn.org/catalog/fracktured-lives/  
REGARDING AFGHANISTAN & THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

Kill Them All
Stephen Dupont & Marshall Weber, 2018, edition of 12, (oversized AP copy), inkjet, $8,600
Scarborough, Australia & Brooklyn, NY

The images of war-torn Afghanistan used in this provocative accordion fold book were taken in Afghanistan from 1993 to 2012 by award-winning Australian photographer Stephen Dupont (Robert Gardener Award, W. Eugene Smith Award, and numerous others) and collaged by American artist Marshall Weber (recipient of the Herzog August Bibliothek Artists’ Book Prize, and the McKnight Fellowship).

https://booklyn.org/catalog/kill-them-all-stephen-dupont-marshall-weber/

1863
Dana Smith, 2021, edition of 45, a variable set of 5 screenprints and 5 inkjet prints, $2,400
San Francisco, CA

1863 is a vibrant re-imagining that challenges the standard visual tropes of the sepia-toned romanticism that has erroneously implied (and even insisted) that the Civil War in the United States of America ever really ended. This bold re-presentation was catalyzed by (and documents) lucid and detailed Civil War-era letters handed down by members of the Fisher/Fuller/Smith family over the centuries to finally ‘unrest’ in the capable hands of family member and artist Dana F. Smith.

https://booklyn.org/catalog/1863/
REGARDING GENDER JUSTICE

How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day
Leopoldo Bloom, 2013, edition of 163, collage, inkjet, letterpress, $350
Portland, OR

How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day is a self-published memoir that details the author’s cross-country migration to access transgender health care. Set in the early 2000s, Leopoldo Bloom uses enigmatic ephemera including 31 unbound postcards that are addressed to his mother in order to weave a non-linear travelogue of his transition.

https://booklyn.org/catalog/leopoldo-bloom-how-to-transition-on-sixty-three-cents-a-day/

The Monument Quilt Project
FORCE, Upsetting Rape Culture, 2020, box set, edition of 10, embroidery and ephemera, $5,600
Baltimore, MD, Mexico City

As the end of Andrew Cuomo’s disgraceful Governorship starkly reminds us, sexual violence is also pandemic and needs to be continually addressed. Containing all original material, this box set documents The Monument Quilt, which was a project of FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, a Baltimore and Mexico City-based organization. The project collected more than 3,000 stories by survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence and were written, painted, and stitched onto red fabric. These stories literally blanketed highly public, outdoor places, creating and demanding space to heal, while resisting any singular narrative about sexual violence. 

https://booklyn.org/catalog/monument-quilt-project/
REGARDING GRAPHIC ART & SOCIALIST HISTORY 

We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here
Josh McPhee, 2021, edition of 15, hand-cut, risograph, screenprint, $2,400
Brooklyn, NY

An intricate and exquisitely hand-cut homage to the Red Flag, in an edition of 15 with comprehensive historical context described in an accompanying booklet. A powerful and delicate contemplation on how “la lotta continua.” 

https://booklyn.org/catalog/well-keep-the-red-flag-flying-here/