Artist Bios
Amanda Degener
From 1985-1992, Amanda Degener worked at Hand Papermaking, a journal devoted to the art and craft of handmade paper which she co-founded with Michael Durgin. Degener taught papermaking, artists' books, 2D and 3D Foundation and sculpture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design from 1994-2005. At the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA), Degener was first artist-in-residence (1984-1987) and first Artistic Director (1997-1998). From 1992-2020 Degener was the co-founder and president of Cave Paper whose papers are desired by artists, bookbinders and fine publishers worldwide as indicated by an increase in production from 1990 (400 sheets per year) to 2019 (10,000 sheets per year). The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC purchased Cave Paper’s archives and hosted a group exhibition called Paper Legacy. Other accomplishments include exhibitions, publications (writing and publishing), collaborations, commissions, residencies, and grant awards. Degener often exhibits and teaches internationally in places like China, Sweden, Taiwan, Italy, Japan, Korea, and Canada.
Visit Amanda Degener's website.
Brenda Gallagher
Brenda Gallagher is a graphic designer, book artist, and fine bookbinder living in Niwot, CO. She has designed books and magazines professionally for 25 years and serves on the Boulder Book Arts League board. She enjoys using her experience with professional design to self-publish works with her own illustrations, which she then binds using the ancient skills of fine bookbinding.
Brenda graduated from the American Academy of Bookbinding in 2023 and received her diploma from the fine binding program. She is an enthusiastic teacher of bookbinding and letterpress printing for students of all ages.
Visit Brenda Gallagher's website.
Emily Martin
Emily Martin tells stories sometimes with words, sometimes with images. Sometimes the stories are dark, sometimes they are funny, often they are both. She is a visual artist living in Iowa City, IA with her Vandercook SP15 printing press and three bicycles. She has been making movable and sculptural artist’s books since the 1990s. Her subject matter has ranged from autobiographical stories to the writings of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and 16th century mathematician Peter Apian. Martin is very detail oriented and works to determine the proper materials and bindings for her books. Most recently, current events such as the 2024 presidential election, the state of the world, and social justice have intruded into her content. Martin has an inquisitive and irreverent nature and is bravely attempting to make sense of a world gone mad. Her artist’s books are held in private and institutional collections in the United States and internationally, such as the Library of Congress, the Victoria and Albert Museum National Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Harry Reese
Harry Reese taught letterpress printing, printmaking, papermaking, book art, and media ecology at UC Santa Barbara from 1978 until his retirement in 2018. He has given lectures, print demonstrations, and workshops at over 150 college, university, and community programs in this country and abroad, including: University of Alabama, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Iowa, Michigan State University, University of Nevada Reno, University of Utah, Washington University, San Francisco Center for the Book, Penland School of Crafts, Centro Cultural Estación Indianilla (México City), and Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango (Bogotá, Colombia). With his partner, Sandra Liddell Reese, he continues to produce limited books and prints for their Turkey Press and Edition Reese imprints, in Isla Vista, CA. The 50+ years of their fine press, papermaking, and visual art archives belong to the Getty Research Institute and Stanford University. He has received grants and awards from a number of organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, American Institute of Graphic Arts, Book Club of California, and the American Printing History Association.
Jonathan Gerken
Jonathan Gerken is a letterpress printer and book designer who has been working at Peter Koch Printers in Berkeley, California since 2004. There he designs, prints, and binds books that come through the shop, manages smaller projects, and wrangles the computers. On top of this, he assists with the CODEX Foundation, helping to produce publications and run the biennial book fair. In his spare time, he works on his own projects. He received his BA in Book Arts from the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara, and his MA in Visual Studies - focusing on the history & future of the book - from UC Berkeley.
Visit Jonathan Gerken's website.
Stephanie Stillo
Stephanie Stillo is the curator of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Graphic Arts collection in the rare book and special collection division at the Library of Congress. She served as the Mellon professor of history and digital humanities at Washington and Lee University, where she also taught classes on digital exhibition and design, public history, and digital storytelling.
Stephanie has also served as a CLIR/Melon fellow in the Library of Congress’ preservation, research, and testing division, researching how preservation technology can reveal important historical information about the Library of Congress’ rare book collection.
Visit Stephanie Stillo's website.
Cristina Favretto
Cristina Favretto is the Head of Special Collections at the University of Miami Libraries. She has worked in a variety of bookish capacities at the Boston Public Library, Harvard, Duke, San Diego State, and UCLA, curating and building collections on zines, culinary history, surfing, and Aldus Manutius, to name a few. Her areas of focus are women’s history and book arts, but she has also had a shadow life as a performance artist and the lead singer in a post-punk cabaret band. She was instrumental in building substantial artists’ book collections at Duke University’s Sallie Bingham Center for Women and Culture at Duke (where she was the first Director), at UCLA Special Collections, and now at the University of Miami.
Visit the Tropic Bound website.
Richard Wagener
Richard Wagener grew up in southern California spending a lot of time in remote parts of the high desert and 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. Richard has an undergraduate degree from the University of San Diego and a graduate degree from ArtCenter College of Design. He has been engraving wood for over forty years and his work has been in a number of fine press editions, most notably with Peter Koch in Berkeley and the Book Club of California. In 2006 Richard established his own imprint Mixolydian Editions to publish his own fine press editions of his work. He has collaborated with David Pascoe of Nawakum Press, Santa Rosa, California, co-publishing three fine press books, one of which, Loom, earned them the 2016 Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. Richard was also awarded the Oscar Lewis Award for contributions to the book arts. He currently lives and works in northern California.
Visit Richard Wagener's website.
Christopher Stinehour
Christopher Stinehour is a letter designer, stonecutter, calligrapher, and engraver from a family of printers. He runs a stone cutting studio in Berkeley, CA and collaborates on everything from headstones and bank buildings to replicas of ancient Greek tablets. Christopher has collaborated with printers and artists designing type such as DIOGENES GREEK for Editions Koch’s PARMENIDES, and logo design, and lettering for architecture and books.
Visit Christopher Stinehour's instagram page.
Peter Koch
Beginning a career in Missoula, Montana Peter Koch started with one platen press. He since settled in the San Francisco Bay area and following the San Francisco literary tradition of fine printing, has acquired an international reputation and several more presses. His clients and collectors range from major international research libraries to bibliophilic organizations and private collectors and publishers. Between commissions, Koch and his team design, print and publish limited editions of ancient Greek philosophers, the musings of maverick poets, and the images of world-renowned wood engravers and photographers. Editions Koch specializes in publishing limited edition artist books, broadsides, portfolios, and text transmission objects.
"In pursuit of my art, I am deeply committed to the crafts of typography, papermaking, printing, bookbinding and the design of books and I support these crafts as intensely as I can. A duality of commitment defines my art. I firmly stand on the side of the argument that there is no art without craft.
Debra Magpie Earling
Debra Magpie Earling is the author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea. An earlier version of the latter, written in verse, was produced as an artist book during the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She has received both a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She retired from the University of Montana where she was named professor emeritus in 2021. She is Bitterroot Salish.
Read Cutbank Magazine's interview with Debra Magpie Earling.