Jace Graf

Jace Graf

Bookbinder

JACE GRAF BOOKBINDER

Since 1997, Jace Graf has been at the helm of Cloverleaf Studio, a distinguished establishment renowned for its expertise in crafting bespoke enclosures for books and prints. With a sterling reputation built over 25 years, Cloverleaf has become synonymous with meticulous design, edition binding, slipcase construction, boxes, and various other forms of book and print related enclosures. The studio boasts an impressive clientele, including esteemed institutions like MoMA, The Museum of Fine Arts-Houston, and the National Gallery of Art, alongside academic special collections at prestigious universities such as Princeton, Southern Methodist, and Vanderbilt. Additionally, Cloverleaf serves small publishers, discerning booksellers, and private collectors, leaving an indelible mark with its work gracing the halls of major museums, university archives, and private collections across the United States and beyond.

Graf’s journey to founding Cloverleaf Studio began with his training as a bookbinder at BookLab in Austin, Texas, under the guidance of luminaries such as Craig Jensen, Gary Frost, and Priscilla Spitler. BookLab, revered as the premier fine press hand bindery in the nation, provided Graf with invaluable experience in edition binding and various techniques, laying the foundation for his future endeavors.

Furthering his expertise, Graf pursued a Master of Arts in Book Arts from Mills College in Oakland, California, delving into disciplines such as calligraphy, letterpress printing, hand binding, and book history. His academic pursuit was enriched by private classes with the esteemed calligraphic artist Thomas Ingmire, adding a nuanced dimension to his craft. Prior to his immersion in book arts, Graf acquired a solid academic foundation with a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in Government from the University of Texas at Austin, blending artistic acumen with strategic business insight. He also teaches domestically and abroad, as well as shoots a cool headed game of pool.

www.cloverleafstudio.com
jace@cloverleafstudio.com

Photo by Kenny Braun

Patrick Reagh

Patrick Reagh

Fine Printer and Type Caster

Patrick Reagh became a printer at age eleven, when his father purchased a small used, Kelsey press for him as a gift. Beginning in 1968 he apprenticed as a union type compositor at Andresen Typographics for five years, where his training encompassed the transition from hot metal to the new “cold type” (phototypesetting) technology. Once he attained journeyman status, Reagh’s desire to be a musician took precedence over his interest in printing, and he took a break from the trade to work as a jazz pianist.

Following the death of Saul Marks in 1974, Lillian Marks (both Saul and Lillian were friends of Reagh’s father, William), hired Patrick to work at the Plantin Press in Los Angeles. Here he learned the basics of classical typography and presswork, and when the Plantin Press ceased its commercial operation in 1981, he was able to purchase the press’s equipment and go out on his own. After a one-year partnership with Vance Gerry, Reagh established his own imprint and moved his press from the Los Angeles area to Sebastopol in 1995.

Today, nestled among tall redwoods, surrounded by a few intrepid cannabis cultivators, Patrick’s studio (affectionately known as the Printing Barn) is a combined type foundry and printing atelier. There are four Monotype casters, one Supercaster, and three composition casters. There is also an Elrod machine that casts leads and slugs, or “clumps” as the British call them. Reagh has a complete run of many typefaces for casting including: Bembo, Ehrhardt, Fournier, Bulmer, Baskerville, Janson, Gills Sans, Univers, and among others. Patrick’s Printing Barn is also home to a Vandercook SP-15 proof press, a Colt’s Armory 10 x 15 handfed platen, a Heidelberg 10 x 15 Windmill, and a 28-inch Heidelberg cylinder press. The original 3 x 5 Kelsey tabletop press that his father gave him now rests atop a type galley stand in the foundry.

Patrick Reagh has received numerous awards for his work, among them the Western Books Awards, The Carl Hertzog Award, and The Oscar Lewis Award from the Book Club of California. The UCLA Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library holds his archives. Patrick has collaborated on several titles for Nawakum Press, including Herman Melville’s The Chola Widow and Alan Loney’s In a Single Gesture. Reagh cast the type for and printed LOOM.

www.patrickreagh.com
patreagh@sonic.net

Barry Moser

Barry Moser

Artist

Barry Moser is an American book designer, illustrator, printmaker, educator, and writer who is best known for his incomparably beautiful, stark, and atmospheric relief engravings. The list of books Moser has illustrated and/or designed comes to over three hundred titles, many of which were published under the imprint of his Pennyroyal Press, which began publishing in 1970. His work is represented in numerous collections, including The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Metropolitan Museum, The British Museum, The Library of Congress, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Pierpont Morgan Library, and The Vatican Library. 

Among Moser’s most celebrated works are Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (University of California Press), Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Pennyroyal Press), which was awarded the National Book Award for design in 1982, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (all from Pennyroyal Press). His magnum opus, the magnificent Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, was published in 1999. 

Barry Moser was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1940. He attributes his disciplined and often systematic approach to design and engraving to his early education at The Baylor School, a local military academy. Moser wanted to become an animator but his family frowned on that path, so he went to Auburn University to study industrial design. He later transferred to the University of Chattanooga from which he graduated in 1962. Tiring of the racism and bigotry of the South at that time, he moved his family to Massachusetts in 1967. There, at Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press, he discovered the book as an art form, and that is where his life as an artist flourished. 

Barry Moser is currently on the faculty of Smith College, where he is the Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Art and the Printer to the College. He and his wife live nearby on some forested acres with an elderly English mastiff. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill will be publishing Moser’s memoir, Portrait of Two Brothers, in 2015.

www.moser-pennyroyal.com
bmoser@moser-pennyroyal.com

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Collaborators

Coleen Curry

Coleen Curry

Design Binder

Perched on a steep hillside overlooking the outflow of Redwood Creek into the Pacific Ocean, just a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, sits the hand book bindery of Coleen Curry. Originally from Canada, Coleen spent fourteen years living in Singapore, Hong Kong and later, Bejing. 

Curry developed her skills as a design binder with five years of study at the American Academy of Bookbinding in Telluride, Colorado, where she was a student of Monique Lallier. Later she studied with Eleanore Ramsey, Dominic Riley, Hélène Jolis, and is an assistant to master binder Don Glaister. Coleen has exhibited internationally, is a past president of the Hand Bookbinders of California, teaches at the American Academy of Bookbinding, and is on the board of the San Francisco Center for the Book. 

Coleen creates unique, personal and exquisitely crafted design bindings and boxes. “My design ideas stem from both the text and illustrations of the books I bind. My inspiration is derived from a collection of experiences, observations from daily life, found objects and the natural world. I’m always striving to improve my technique and avidly explore other crafts in order to render visually rich and technically evocative bindings.”

Curry is fascinated with contrast of texture, form and movement, incorporating asymmetry and Earth elements. She tends to work on one book or small editions at a time, utilizing a combination of traditional materials, found objects, and modifying or manipulating decorative techniques to realize the final design. Her aim is to craft bindings that provide a visual, sensual, and tactile experience. 

www.coleencurry.com
coleen.curry@gmail.com

Nawakum Press Fine Bindings by Coleen

Craig Jensen

Craig Jensen

Fine Edition Binder

Craig Jensen received the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Guild of Book Workers in 2011. Craig began his career in 1977 when he was appointed Library Conservator for the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. From 1977-1978 Craig served an internship at The Library of Congress Restoration Office under the keen direction of Peter Waters and Don Etherington. He then became a bench conservator and bookbinder at the LOC. In 1981 Craig was recruited by Don Etherington to Austin, Texas, to serve as the Head of Book Conservation at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Conservation Department at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Jensen left the HRC conservation lab in 1984 and established the Jensen Bindery, first for book conservation and boxmaking, then with a focus on limited edition binding. At the onset of establishing his own workshop, Craig incorporated a refined, northern European style of case binding for his editions with elegantly thin boards, small squares and more defined and well-formed joints. After growing steadily for years he took on a partnership and established BookLab, Inc. to offer yet more services.

BookLab, Inc. expanded from less than half a dozen employees to over thirty, with departments in library book repair, preservation photocopy, clamshell box making, and edition bookbinding. After ten years of operation BookLab, Inc. was dissolved in 1998. It left behind a remarkable body of work as true testimony to the vision and standards originally set by Craig in his first small garage bindery. Craig worked for Acme Bookbinding as Vice President of Imaging for a number of years before, in 2002, he and his family moved to the outskirts of San Marcos, Texas.

In 2003 Jensen returned to the concept of a small book bindery, reestablishing a workshop, BookLab II, with his original partner Gary McLerran. Fine master craftsmanship and exceptional attention to detail remain the hallmark of his work. Today Craig continues to produce custom designed housings and fine limited edition bindings, executing them for some of the best-known libraries and private presses in the world.

www.bookways.com
craig@bookways.com

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Collaborators

Richard Wagener

Richard Wagener

Wood Engraver and Publisher

Richard Wagener grew up in southern California spending a lot of time with his grandfather in remote parts of the desert and up in the Sierra. Early art classes introduced him to Maynard Dixon and Edgar Payne. After school activities included selling the evening newspapers at the Disney studios where he met many of the illustrators and animators. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of San Diego and a graduate degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. 

Wagener started teaching himself how to engrave in wood in 1980 after a chance encounter with a commercial engraving in a book. It allowed him to recognize the potential use of the medium to create a high degree of detail and a wide variety of tonalities in print. He consciously rejected the idea of buying a book on how to engrave because he was only interested in seeing how he might use the medium to further his ideas. 

Wagener entered the fine press book world after meeting Peter Koch at Kala Institute in Berkeley. Richard had been engraving for ten years, creating a blend of realistic and abstract imagery that often used letterforms as a compositional device. It was suggested that they do a book project together. They ended up working on four books: Zebra Noise with a Flatted Seventh, The Fragments of Parmenides, California in Relief published by The Book Club of California, and later a companion book, The Sierra Nevada Suite.

In 2006 Richard established the imprint Mixolydian Editions for publishing his own projects. The first endeavor was a series of vignettes and prose poems that captured his growing up in a particular part of Los Angeles during the 1950s -1960s titled Cracked Sidewalks. After relocating to northern California in 2010, Richard published a second book in 2011 featuring a series of engravings based on a 1995 trip to Nepal and Tibet. The images are from the Kathmandu valley, up the Kali Gandaki valley in the Annapurna region of Nepal, then a journey to Lhasa, Shigatse, and the countryside of Tibet. In 2015 he co-published LOOM with Nawakum Press comprising sixteen conceptual engravings with poetry from New Zealand poet Alan Loney.

www.richardwagener.com
richard@richardwagener.com

John DeMerritt

John DeMerritt

Bookbinder

John DeMerritt owns a bookbinding studio in Emeryville, California just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco.  He focuses on short run edition binding and boxmaking for fine press printers, publishers, galleries, graphic designers, and artists.  

Originally DeMerritt wanted to be a writer, but at an early age he was also very crafty, and good with his hands. His mother was the manager of a bookstore in Denver in the 1970s, and he took advantage of all kinds of crafts classes that were offered down in the basement. As he got older he left that all behind, though he was not surprised that he did eventually return to working with things made by hand. Bookbinding he feels is a wonderful trade for him because it satisfies all kinds of interests both literary and visual, and deals in a world of ideas. 

DeMerritt began his bookbinding career in 1986, working for Klaus Roetzscher in San Francisco and later worked at Taurus Bookbindery in Berkeley. John feels lucky that he got into the field in the first place. He was living in San Francisco and at the age of twenty-four and was looking for a job at the time. Someone he knew was sharing a space with a remarkable bookbinder by the name of Roetzscher, who had honed his craft in Lepzig, Germany. John met Klaus and pestered him until he finally hired him. Together they worked for a number of years, including work on artists’ books for Ed Ruscha, David Hockney and Francesco Clemente.

John went on to eventually form his own bookbindery in 1995 which he continues operating to this day, expanding into publishing as well. He is the past President of the Hand Bookbinders of California and board member of the Pacific Center for the Book Arts. John has taught countless workshops over the years for the SF Center for the Book, The Kala Institute, The Guild of Book Workers and for Mills College.  From 2000-2012, he taught bookmaking in the Photography Department of the San Francisco Art Institute. John and his wife, Nora Pauwels, have been Artists in Residence at the SF Center for the Book. In 2014, John and Nora founded DeMerritt | Pauwels editions, a small imprint focusing on publishing books with visual artists.

www.johndemerrittbookbinding.com
jd@johndemerrittbookbinding.com 

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Collaborators

Lisa Van Pelt

Lisa Van Pelt

Fine Edition Binder

Lisa Van Pelt spends her days in the territory of handmade books, surrounded by beautiful materials, heavy cast iron equipment manufactured in the late 1800’s and all manner of glue. She is an edition bookbinder, hand binding fine press books mostly in the French tradition of the livre d’artiste, finely crafted, small editions featuring original art, along with the cases, boxes and paste papers that go along with them.

As an undergraduate at Hampshire College she studied architectural design and now finds that many of the same skills are employed in designing and building books, albeit on a much smaller scale. The book content and text paper establish the initial parameters, like the terrain and climate of a building site. Choices regarding structure and materials proceed from there and are realized in collaboration with the artists, writers, printers, and publisher behind the work. The overall goal is to bring together the visual and tactile elements in a manner that allows the text to emerge effortlessly. 

It was in Western Massachusetts that she learned her craft, a hotbed of bookmaking populated by an established array of skilled craftspeople. There she trained as a hand bookbinder with Claudia Cohen, in a modern-day apprenticeship. As part of her training she learned the technique of making paste paper, which has been used in books for over 400 years as endsheets and cover material. This technique of painting pigments and starch on paper, then imprinting with designs lends itself to all sorts of creative work within and outside of the realm of books.

In 2003 Lisa established her own bookbinding shop in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Then in 2007, as a result of her effort to flee the ice and snow of New England winters, she relocated her bindery, eventually landing in the middle of an apple orchard in the Anderson Valley of Northern California. 

www.lvpbookbinding.com
lisa@lvpbookbinding.com

Norman Clayton

Norman Clayton

Fine Press Printer

Norman Clayton was more interested at an early age in drawing endless variations of letterforms than in much of what his early schooling offered. Later his creative drive and talent would allow him, in 1986, to enter the Rhode Island School of Design where he focused on typography and photography. While there Clayton discovered he could put his artistic interests to use in one fulfilling form: a letterpress printed book. Typography, hand-made paper, letterpress printing and hand book- binding were brought together in one heavenly place, the type shop. 

After graduating from RISD in 1990 with a suitcase full of books he had designed, printed, and bound by hand, Norman was hired as a graphic designer at Michael Osborne Design in San Francisco. During the summer of 1991 Norman fortuitously asked Osborne if he was interested in putting a letterpress shop together, which was an idea they had spoken about the day they first met. Michael said “yes,” and then suggested Norman find the equipment. 

With great serendipity they met Wesley Tanner of Arif Press, who was moving from Berkeley and wanting to sell most of the equipment in his shop. Osborne made the purchase and Norman was hired to run the shop, which they named One Heart Press because the two shared the same love of letterpress. For twelve years he worked as the manager and printer of the Press in Berkeley, and later San Francisco, printing myriad com- mercial letterpress projects and fine press books.

Following One Heart Press Clayton began working more closely with his mentor, master letterpress printer Jim Wehlage. Upon Jim’s retirement a few years later he sold his print shop, Classic Letterpress, to Norman. In the purchase of the shop he acquired Adrian Wilson’s Heidelberg Cylinder press, a Heidelberg Platen (Windmill) press, a platemaker, and paper cutter as well as the small library of Adrian’s ephemera, papers and books. Norman subsequently moved the shop to his home in Oakland where he worked for 4 years before moving to his current home and expanded shop in Ojai, north of Los Angeles.

Norman continues to work as a book designer, letterpress printer, and teacher, maintaining internship and apprenticeship programs as well. His work includes a number of projects for the Book Club of California, most recently a limited edition poetry book, designed by Carolee Campbell titled Poetry at the Edge: Five Contemporary California Poets.

www.classicletterpress.biz
norman@classicletterpress.biz

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Collaborators

Arthur Larson

Arthur Larson

Fine Printer

Arthur Larson has always been an avid reader. He began his printing career in 1979, training with Harold McGrath and Barry Moser at The Hampshire Typothetae in Northampton, Massachusetts. Both men, he says, were patient and generous with him as he learned his craft. Most of this early work was for Moser’s Pennyroyal Press—notably the two Alice books and Frankenstein. Larson also acknowledges a debt of gratitude to many other fine printers/teachers who over the years have helped him learn his craft, including Bruce Chandler, Leonard Baskin, Michael Bixler, Dan Carr, and Carol Blinn.

From 1983 through 1987 Art trained with Daniel Keleher at his Wild Carrot Letterpress in Hadley, Massachusetts, a short bike ride from Northampton, where he lives. Much of this work was for The Limited Editions Club. Art founded his own shop in 1987, Horton Tank Graphics, chiefly to print fine press books for Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press. He went on to print thirty books for the Press until 2005, most notably Icones and Zapf’s Civilité Disclosed.  Horton Tank takes its name from the water tower outside the building and is upstairs from Wild Carrot in the East Street Studios building.

Larson has printed fine press books for many publishers over the years in addition to Nawakum Press—Double Elephant Press, Granary Books, Khelcom New York, and Wiesedruck Press, to mention a few. More recently he has printed all the books for 21st Editions and Two Ponds Press.

Larson is especially adept at printing woodcuts and wood engravings. He also specializes in printing damp. He prints with Vandercooks (a No. 4 & a Universal IV) and a Heidelberg platen press. He does some commercial work and can print 10,000 cards a day with the best of them. He prints from Monotype, photopolymer plates, or hand set foundry type (his favorite). The shop is equipped with more than 200 fonts of wood type and more than 300 fonts of metal ornaments.

Art also teaches, gives workshops, takes on the occasional apprentice, and is an active member of the Book Arts community in the Pioneer Valley.

www.hortontankgraphics.com
artlarson@hortontankgraphics.com

Foolscap Press

Foolscap Press

Bindery and Publishers

Foolscap Press is Lawrence G. Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold. They started Foolscap Press in 1990 after many years in the business in order to publish books under their own imprint. All of the editions are designed, printed and bound at the Press. Peggy Gotthold worked as a bookbinder at Schuberth Bookbindery in San Francisco for a number of years, as well as at Arion Press. She trained in letterpress printing and typesetting at Cowell Press (UCSC), Yolla Bolly Press and Artichoke Press. Larry operated his own press and worked as a printer and typesetter at Arion Press. His father taught printing in technical high schools and was a letterpress printer who learned printing from his father, who published a newspaper printed on a handpress in the 1870's. 

Foolscap Press is located in the small coastal community of Santa Cruz, along the central coast of California, not far over the hills from San Francisco. The printing facility, bindery and their home surround a kitchen garden in the summer and bird sanctuary in the winter. The pressroom is set up with two platen presses, two proof presses and an assortment of other letterpress equipment. Books are printed from either lead type or from work generated from the computer and made into photopolymer plates, then mounted for letterpress printing. They publish their own original first editions or texts, and produce work for other publishers and fine presses as well. Peggy and Larry work as a creative team, collaborating on all aspects of book production, from conception through marketing.

Foolscap Press is known for their inventive, finely-made, handcrafted books of literature published in highly limited editions. The proprietors’ complimentary backgrounds inform their publications, combining experiences of printing, drawing, literature, bookbinding, printmaking, and puppetry to bring both depth and performance to their work. Historical and newly conceived visual elements consistently compliment their well-told stories. This is more than evident in a varying array of titles including Cyrano de Bergerac’s Other Worlds: Journey to the Moon, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Direction of the Road, their own The Tower of the Winds, Michael Katakis’s Despatches, and their 2015 publications of The Story of a Fisherman, from the Arabian Nights, translated by Edward William Lee, and The Saint John’s Fragment: Against the Odds by poet David Annwn and calligrapher Thomas Ingmire.

www.foolscappress.com

Lawrence G. Van Velzer
Peggy Gotthold
foolscap@cruzio.com

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Collaborators

Rik Olson

RIK OLSON

Artist

Rik Olson grew up near the town of Clayton, California in the northern shadow of Mt. Diablo.  His received his first award in art in third grade at the Walnut Creek Art Festival. The certificate still hangs in his studio amongst his diplomas and many other parchments of distinction. Rik attended the California College of Arts and Crafts, now known as California College of the Arts, where he graduated with a BFA in Illustration. While in college Rik rented a room from the widow of William S. Rice, a prominent wood cut artist who worked during the 1920s and 1930s, and whose friend had founded what eventually became CCA. Rik’s room was just below Rice’s studio, where he was able to spend countless hours studying this master engraver’s work.

Soon after school Rik was drafted into the US Army where he served two years in Germany. Here he worked simultaneously as an MP and as an arts and crafts instructor for the military. Upon his discharge, and having met his bride Brita, the two of them remained in Europe for eight years. Rik taught art classes for the US military in Germany. They took in much of what Europe had to offer and he enjoyed the life of an expat artist. When the couple moved to Italy Olson managed the arts program on a military base outside of Pisa, and worked part-time at a print shop in Florence. He did a series of etchings at the studio Santa Reparata. The Palozzi Strozzi in Florence held three exhibitions of his etchings and photographs.

Rik Olson is an artist capable of working in a wide rage of media, but focuses primarily on painting and printmaking in linocut, wood engraving, and etching. He cites Barry Moser, John DePol, Richard McLean, and Ralph Borge, all of whom he studied with, as major influences on his engraving technique. He still uses the engraver’s sandbag he had to make on the first day of a Moser class in 1982. Rik’s prints are cut from wood and linoleum blocks and printed on one of his vintage Vandercook printing presses. The larger prints are printed on an Olivero Bendini etching press. 

Rik continues to work, as he has for over forty years, as an artist and freelance illustrator. His rural Sebastopol studio sits amongst a grove of tall redwoods. His work has been published in over two hundred books, and has ranged from exquisite multi colored block wood engravings to wine label designs, and even a crest for a bishop. He continues to teach workshops as an active member of the San Francisco Center for the Book, and is a partner of an art gallery in Graton, California.

www.rikolson.com
rik@rikolson.com 

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COLLABORATORS

Thomas Wood

Thomas Wood

Artist/ In Memoriam 1951-2022

Thomas Wood was an award-winning printmaker and painter who had exhibited nationally and internationally. His paintings and prints have been shown frequently in the Pacific Northwest where he had resided since the early 1970s.  He was the son of a wood carver and grew up working in his family business, a ten acre nursery, in Richland, Washington. Wood dreamed of becoming a scientist. After high school, he entered Western Washington State University in Bellingham with the intent of majoring in chemistry. 

A trip to Europe in 1973 changed all that. During the six-month sojourn abroad Wood experienced some of the great museums of the world, including the Prado in Madrid. He had always been interested in art, so when he returned home he switched his major to printmaking. “It was like a sea change in my whole psyche,” Wood recalls. “I was so inspired by the art in Europe, and art just seemed a more powerful thing to do with your life. I read Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and I wanted to follow my bliss.” 

Wood’s prints tend to be mostly allegorical, whereas his oil paintings are mostly naturalistic representations of a recognizable Pacific Northwest landscape. But he also does mix it up. His prints range from oneiric fantasies to naturalistic views, employing such varied techniques as etching, drypoint, mezzotint, Chine-collé and engraving. He is able to combine the technical virtuosity of old world printmaking with his uniquely subjective viewpoint, nimbly shifting from meditative to symbolist, from naturalist to surrealist, and from the aesthetic to the ironic.

When Tom was not painting or drawing he was usually figuring out how to, or he was in the garden. He lived with his wife Pam on a hillside home in Bellingham within view of their garden, and the islands at the northern end of Puget Sound. When the two of them needed to get away from it all, they would often sail west. Now he has heard the owl call his name.

www.lisaharrisgallery.com/artists/woodt-print.php

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Collaborators

Holly Downing

Holly Downing

Mezzotint Artist and Painter

Holly Downing, painter, printmaker and teacher, was born in San Francisco in 1948.  She studied art history and studio art at the University of California, Santa Cruz and in 1972, shortly before graduating, made her first mezzotint engraving at the suggestion of her mentor, Hardy Hanson and with assistance from her printmaking teacher Kathryn Metz. It was not entirely successful.  Her printmaking studies continued at the Royal College of Art, London in 1973 where no one knew much about mezzotints.  Then in 1974 she received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974 to further study mezzotints and produce a suite of prints.  She found a classical British reproductive mezzotint engraver, Lawrence Josset, who shared with her “secrets” of the trade that helped her resolve technical difficulties, and began making and exhibiting mezzotints in the U.K., where the technique was popular as a reproductive technique in the 18th and 19 centuries but had largely died out.  While in the UK she earned a M.A. from the Goddard College graduate program in Europe, and in 1980 returned to California with her husband, new baby, and a British Harry Rochat etching press.

Holly says she was seduced early on by the elegant simplicity and sensuousness of the mezzotint’s deep blacks and subtle grays. Forty years later, at her studio in Sebastopol, California, she still finds deep pleasure in scraping images out of blackness, and exploring their potential as quiet metaphors for the human condition.

Her mezzotints are prepared by “rocking” a copper plate with a small, toothed mezzotint rocker. This rocking is done until the plate has thousands of tiny holes, each with a raised burr holding ink, allowing her to scrape images out of darkness and create a rich velvety black unparalleled by any other medium. Through this process she infuses quietly dramatic imagery into seemingly simple and humble subject matter. Donald Kuspit, critic, writer and Professor of Art History, State University NY wrote: “Downing is in fact a master of chiaroscuro, as her mezzotints show: light and dark are fundamental to her geometry, and her geometry is complex and multidimensional, especially her extraordinary images of drapery.”

Holly taught art for twenty-three years at the Santa Rosa Junior College and prior to that she taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University and Brighton University, U.K.  Her paintings and mezzotints have been exhibited internationally. Besides the National Endowment for the Arts she is a recipient of grants from the Greenshields Foundation, Canada; the Arts Council of Great Britain; the Graham Foundation, Chicago; and the San Francisco Phelan Foundation. Holly is an elected member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London. Her work is in many museum collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum; Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford; Scottish National Art Gallery, Edinburgh; Bibliotheque Nationale de France; Chi-ba Art Museum and Nakasatsunai Art Museum, Japan; New York Public Library; Library of Congress; Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco; Stanford University Art Museum. Downing’s mezzotints are included in a number of publications, including The Mezzotint, History and Technique by Carol Wax, 1990; Holly Downing, 25 Years of Mezzotints, catalogue raisonné, 2001; and Printmakers’ Secrets edited by Tony Dyson, 2009.

Watch a Video of Holly Making A Mezzotint

Jay Daniel

Jay Daniel

Photographer and Digital Printer

Jay Daniel, born in Phoenix, Arizona,  grew up in San Anselmo, California just north of the Golden Gate. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley where he secured a degree in Bacteriology, and went on to graduate study of Public Health there. While later employed in the Clinical Lab of Pacific Presbyterian Hospital, San Francisco, he began less formal photography studies in Marin County after a lifetime interest. Taking classes that interested him in Art & Photography at SF State, San Francisco Art Institute, Academy of Art, College of Marin, and The Darkroom, he decided this was the direction he wanted to follow. Working casually in the field at first and assisting other experienced photographers in SF & NYC at first, he opened his first studio, Jay Daniel Associates, in Fairfax in 1980. He had his first magazine cover published for Wooden Boat magazine soon thereafter and was hooked. 

For 20 years Jay Daniel Associates provided in-house photographic services, commercial and freelance work for such clients as Apple Computer, The Oakland Athletics, Collins Harper, The Sierra Club, Fireman’s Fund, Autodesk, Fair Isaac, Oaksprings Impressions, and Sunset Magazine. He was on the faculty at the University of California Extension, Berkeley and the Academy of Art, San Francisco teaching art direction. He has given seminars on photographic lighting, the business of photography, marketing art, and digital skills for artists.

After over 30 years in the industry, Jay is currently president of Black Cat Studio in Novato, California where he is the principal photographer, while the studio also provides pre-press and large format, pigmented inkjet digital printing for art and corporate clients.

Jay works with many aspiring and successful artists, galleries and collectors, digitally documenting and printing their work. He believes that success comes from an accurate and literal interpretation of the original, and that all the technology that he operates in the background should be seamless, and unnoticeable to the clients. He spends his time outside of work with his family, wife Barbara, and 2 boys in school , Lucas and Jace, as well as riding his road bicycle long distances (50 to 100 miles) each weekend in Sonoma County (the most beautiful place in the world!).

Ingrid Butler

Ingrid Butler

Paper Artist

Ingrid Butler of Mill Valley, California has been passionate about marbling and decorating paper for well over thirty-five years. Ingrid is a master marbler, paper designer, painter and collage artist. She took early inspiration from her grandfather’s dark wood paneled library. It was a notable part of his Victorian home in New Jersey and is where she discovered marbled end papers in many of the fine, hand-bound books in his collection. The swirls and fine patterns of the papers struck a deep cord within her, and she recalls being truly smitten by the beauty and visual mystery of these remarkable papers.

Ingrid wanted to become an artist. She graduated from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Graphic Design, having developed a keen aesthetic and a solid background in color theory, after taking instruction from the likes of Joseph Albers. But she had not found any instruction available on the specifics of paper marbling, or working with paper and the book arts in the way she had envisioned earlier. After leaving Providence she headed off to Italy for a three-year design apprentice program in Rome where she learned among other things to appreciate Italian art and architecture. After that she landed in San Francisco, where in 1983 she finally found instruction on marbling and working with paper. She soon opened her paper studio in Sausalito, and continued her studies over the years through numerous workshops in San Francisco, Venice, and New Mexico.

Ingrid Butler’s one-of-a-kind, hand decorated papers are true works of art, always creative and intensely colorful. She has left one bedroom in her house entirely white so she can rest there and clear her head of color for a moment, for each day is an intense immersion into color. She uses rakes, combs, bamboo sticks and any number of implements to manipulate intricate designs, which range from subtle to bold, traditional to modern. Her work is in the collections of The American Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, Georgia, The Houghton Library at Harvard, The Royal Hague Library in the Netherlands, The Newberry Library in Chicago, and The Allen Library at The University of Washington. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 2018 acquired a collection of her hand bound book, “Twenty-Five Years of Marbled and Decorated Paper” and marbled silk yardage for their new “Legacy Paper Collection”.

Ingrid Butler
ingridbutler@comcast.net