“Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.”
Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination

A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible. For nearly fifty years our work has orbited around the imaginative possibilities of the form of the book as a vehicle and container of thought, emotion, and pleasure. Our books were first concerned primarily with poetry and how it is shaped and read on the page. From the start of the press, we have also tried to do something new (at least for us) with the process of each new publication. We often merge traditional bookmaking processes and materials, such as letterpress printing and handmade paper, with non fine-art supplies, including carbon paper, double-stick tape, photocopies, and recycled matter. We like to mix the reading of text with pictorial and tactile experience. Making books and prints by hand – along with the opportunity of having taught handmade art work in the age of electronic reproduction – allows us numerous opportunities to pay attention to the many forms of traditional and contemporary art practice. When we make books, prints, and paper, we stimulate our imagination and curiosity. A work of art does not always need a purpose. At times, it is made out of our desire for beauty. Or it may have emerged from our own vernacular ways of seeing, speaking, listening, and feeling. Other times we deliberately tried to create an anti-environment in the midst of the electronic wind and political disruptions of our information society and its consensus culture. The commitment to make an immutable, finite set of bound or printed pages can lodge a protest against the tyranny of time, and its mechanistic sidekick: timeliness. To make works of art together by hand is to opt for slowness, rumination, dialogue, generosity, and patience. Good relationships are also made slowly. We select the texts and the collaborators for our projects, and our relationships endure far beyond the planning, production, and completion of the artwork.

Harry Reese and Sandra Liddell Reese
March 2024 · Isla Vista
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