From the Bench of Mita Mahato
From the Bench is SFCB's series of short studio tours with friends near and far. From favorite tools to works in progress, you never know what you'll learn about from these amazing artists.
April's guest is Mita Mahato, a comix artist and poet who assembles her panels and pages with cut and collaged papers. Her work joins fragments of used and discarded materials—old newspapers, obsolete maps, junk mail, packaging scraps—in poetic experiments that dramatize entangled processes of death and renewal, specifically within the context of ecosystemic loss under capitalism.
Her new book Arctic Play is published by The 3rd Thing, and her poetry comix have appeared in places including PRISM, Ecotone, Iterant, Shenandoah, Coast/NoCoast, ANMLY, and Drunken Boat, as well as in the collection In Between, published by Pleiades.
In her talk, Mahato will share insight into how place-making inspires the hybrid poetics in Arctic Play and its companion activity book "TROPSSAP" which will be featured in the upcoming SFCB gallery exhibition Crossing the Line: The Passport Re-Imagined, April 19-June 15, 2025.
You can find out more at her website, mitamahato.com.
Please visit our Vimeo page to see our past tours, previously known as Shelter in Studio.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
12:30 PM (Pacific Time)
This is an online event.
Registration will close at noon on the day of the event. The zoom link will be emailed at 10:30am Pacific time, two hours before the start time.
West Berkeley Community Print Festival 2025
Visit the SFCB table at Kala Art Institute’s annual printmaking festival!
From community art workshops and artist demonstrations to artist vendors and print studio tours, stop by throughout the day and see what’s happening as Kala Art Institute brings together the local community of artists, youth, and families for a day of sharing and experiencing art in West Berkeley.
Find the full schedule of events here.
Location
Kala Gallery & Community Classroom
2990 San Pablo Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94702
Saturday, April 5, 2025
12 pm–4 pm
Free and open to the public. No RSVP required!
St. Rita's Amazing Traveling Bookstore at SFCB
Bookstore proprietress Rita Collins will be bringing her bookstore-on-wheels back to SFCB! Visiting 23 cities in six and a half weeks, St. Rita's Amazing Traveling Bookstore and Textual Apothecary will be open for business in our parking lot. Visitors are invited to peruse used books (Fiction? Biographies? Art? Kids books? St. Rita's got 'em!) and other printed paper items for sale. If you've never visited a bookstore-on-wheels, this event is for you!
Location
San Francisco Center for the Book
375 Rhode Island Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Sunday, April 20, 2025
10 am–4 pm
Free and open to the public. No RSVP required!
Tension, Harmony, Movement: Exploring the Works in OPEN•SET
Join OPEN SET organizer Lang Ingalls and exhibiting artist Beth Redmond—recipient of the Highly Commendable award in the Design Tension in Foretelling Content category—for a discussion on contemporary design bookbinding and selected works from the OPEN SET exhibition.
Exploring themes of tension, harmony, and movement, the evening will highlight prizewinning works and design bindings that feature unique structures and content. Don't miss this rare opportunity to view these exquisite pieces outside their exhibition cases!
Doors open at 6:00 pm; event will begin promptly at 6:30 pm.
Location
San Francisco Center for the Book
375 Rhode Island Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Thursday, March 27, 2025
6:00 PM
From the Bench of Rae Lanzerotti
Welcome to From the Bench, SFCB's series of short studio visits with friends near and far. From favorite tools to works in progress, you never know what you'll learn about from these amazing artists.
This month we'll chat with Rae Lanzerotti, a disabled access artist and maker of memoir comics and zines based in San Francisco.
Rae Lanzerotti uses disability access tools to make touchable, audible, and graphic memoir comics, zines, and art books. They have shown multimodal pieces locally at the Museum of Craft and Design and the gallery of Ruth’s Table. Rae's memoir comic, “Embodied,” at the forefront of innovating accessible comics, will be featured in the display ‘Zines Forever: DIY Publications and Disability Justice (Wellcome Collection, London UK, March - Sept 2025).
As a 2025 “Hearts in San Francisco” artist, Rae’s heart is always here. You can find out more at their website, rlanzerotti.com.
Please visit our Vimeo page to see our past tours, previously known as Shelter in Studio.
March 6th, 2025
12:30 PM
Registration will close at noon on the day of the event. The zoom link will be emailed at 10:30am Pacific time, two hours before the start time.
In the Studio: Devils Night!
In the Studio: Devils Night!
SFCB is pleased to invite all interested volunteers to a Devils Night of fun and cleaning in the print studio on Tuesday, February 4th from 5-8pm. Bring some grubby clothes and good stories to swap as we dig through our cases and galleys to get a bit dirty while helping to make the studio a bit cleaner.
BOOK TALK: Julie Beeler & Wynne Au-Yeung
Join author, artist, and educator Julie Beeler and book designer Wynne Au-Yeung for an engaging discussion about their collaboration on the bestselling book The Mushroom Color Atlas. This evening event will feature a captivating slideshow presentation and an informal conversation, offering attendees a behind-the-scenes look at the book design process—from initial concepts to the finished product—and the discoveries and creative decisions that brought the project to life.
SFCB will have copies of this book for sale during the event, and in our online Biblioshop.
About the Presenters
Julie Beeler is an acclaimed designer, artist, and educator inspired by the natural world. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Popular Science, The Smithsonian Institution and The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, among others.
Julie created the Mushroom Color Atlas website to unveil and celebrate the resplendent chromatic universe hidden within the fungi kingdom, making it accessible to people around the world. Her book The Mushroom Color Atlas, recently published by Chronicle Books, is a comprehensive primer on the universe of colors lurking inside fungi. It is equal parts art book, field guide, and dye-making workshop. In every form her effort is a timeless reference that will be used for years to come.
After a 20-year career at the vanguard of interactive design, Julie founded Bloom & Dye, a natural dye studio and farm in the Pacific Northwest ideally situated for foraging mushrooms, growing fresh-cut color, and creating fine art. She can be found online at juliebeeler.com.
Wynne Au-Yeung is a graphic designer at Chronicle Books and a mixed-media artist who specializes in creating designs that invite touch and interaction. With a passion for collaboration, she brings diverse ideas to life, making books more than just something to read—they’re experiences to explore.
Location
San Francisco Center for the Book
375 Rhode Island Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Friday, February 27, 2025
Doors will open at 6:00 pm; the event will start promptly at 6:30 pm.
From the Bench of Gino Robair
Welcome to From the Bench, SFCB's series of short studio visits with friends near and far. From favorite tools to works in progress, you never know what you'll learn about from these amazing artists.
This month we'll chat with Gino Robair, a papermaker, printer, composer, and percussionist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Gino Robair’s artistic practice examines how systems of human interaction are influenced by perceptions of materiality. His PhD research at the UC Davis focuses on papermaking and letterpress printing as forms of embodied choreography; a performative process that puts artists in conversation with their tools, materials, and ambient environment. The results of this interaction are ephemeral memory-objects carrying traces of their materialization that can be used as resources for interpretation within a performance context.
You can find out more at his website.
Please visit our Vimeo page to see past recordings, previously known as Shelter in Studio.
Registration will close at noon on the day of the event. The zoom link will be emailed at 10:30am Pacific time, two hours before the start time.