California continues to inspire book artists to put down firm roots in the traditions of fine printing and bookmaking with a spirit of innovation and freshness. The artists mentioned here represent only a few of the many California printers and book artists who print with letterpress and are included in the collections of the Denison Library at Scripps College and Special Collections in Honnold/Mudd Library.

The Libraries have a subscription for publications of the Arion Press, founded in 1974 by Andrew Hoyem, a Pomona College alumnus. Among recent publications are the monumental Holy Bible in 2000, and a smaller and exquisite 2002 Ballad of Lemon and Crow by Glenn Todd with photogravures of collages of wood engravings by Bruce Conner.

Several teaching presses can be found in California. Mills College has had a book arts program since the 1930s that is thriving under Director Kathy Walkup. Her students printed Pride of Place, Mills Women and the Book in 1998 to mark Walkup’s 20th year of teaching. At UC Santa Barbara Linda Ekstrom teaches a book arts course in the College of Creative Studies. Kitty Maryatt has taught for nearly 20 years at the Scripps College Press established in 1941. Her students produce a collaborative work each semester in the book arts course. Unbuttoned¹, from the spring of 2005, utilizes collages and popup illustrations. The San Francisco Center for the Book reports increasing numbers of courses offered each year. The Armory in Pasadena has added several letterpress courses to meet the demand.

How does California inspire book artists? Peter Koch, who settled in the Bay area in 1979, proclaims that he is a Westerner, he is of the West. In addition to designing, printing and publishing limited editions of ancient Greek philosophers, he accepts commissions such as Salon at Larkmead, 1999, which he printed letterpress and illustrated with 19th century photographs for the Mills College Center for the Book.

In Santa Cruz, Peter and Donna Thomas continue to produce serious books on hand papermaking and more whimsical pieces such as An Excerpt from John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row², 2003, with watercolor illustrations of Monterey’s Cannery Row. Thomas says that living in a region with such beauty, it is difficult not to be influenced by place. Covering Ground, a Chronicle of the John Muir Trail, 2003, describes a hike in the mountains and meadows of California.

Mary Heebner is a book artist who issues books from her simplemente maria press in Santa Barbara. Her work combines letterpress and her paintings as in The Ocean³ from Western Trilogy One, 2000, and Mountain from Western Trilogy 2, 2001. Describing a California spirit that informs her work, Heebner says, “California is a long stretch of risky landscape nakedly facing the open sea. There is an openness here, a sense of going for it and seeing what happens.”

In the southernmost part of the state, in San Diego, Michelle Burgess and Bill Kelley are proprietors of the Brighton Press. Reflecting their love of color is Blue Vein, 2004, a poem about the redemptive power of art by Sandra Alcosser and hand colored etchings by Michelle Burgess printed on watercolor paper hand dyed from gathered plants—and then dried in the California sun! Figures Made Visible in the Sadness of Time⁴, 2003, by Peter Everwine has etchings by Bill Kelley who also did the stencil for the linen cover. Kelley speaks of openness in California and “a variety of cultural experiences that has saturated our work—even if it doesn’t show!”

Using only metal type and letterpress, Carolee Campbell of Ninja Press in Los Angeles makes inventive and adventuresome books. The Architextures 1-7 by Nathaniel Tarn, 1998, has woodblock illustrations by Campbell and boards covered in thin brass. Her 2004 Burn Down the Zendo⁵ with poems by Michael Hannon, in content and treatment looks west across the Pacific. The text and images relate to Zen Buddhism, and the structure is based on ledger books, or chomen, of the Edo period. Campbell speaks of a sense of personal freedom in California that is a “function of the scent in the air, the nature of the light and the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains.”