Artist in Residence Program
The SFCB Artist in Residence Program ran from 2005 to 2012. The program provided emerging and established artists with technical and studio support to create handmade limited-edition books, and we’re excited to revive the program in 2025.
Participants were chosen from a creative community of San Francisco Bay Area artists ranging from those in the fine arts and multi-media to photographers, poets and writers. The goal of the Artist in Residency was to raise awareness of book arts as a vital genre in contemporary art, to bring fresh perspectives to the field, and to support artists in their vocation. Residency artists shared their skills, processes and perspective through public lectures, workshops and by welcoming volunteer participation in the production of their editions which are printed and bound at the SFCB. The Residency hosted one artist (or artist team) per year, and concluded each December with a signed and numbered artist's book project issued in trade edition and deluxe edition versions. The artist-in-residency program was made possible through book sales, donations and artist sponsorships.
Publications of the Imprint of the San Francisco Center for the Book are available for purchase. Visit our online store or the San Francisco Center for the Book during regular business hours.
29 Degrees North by Michael Bartalos (2005)
The 29th parallel north is the circle of latitude shared by six destinations depicted in this artist's travelogue. The images progress from Mexico to Morocco, India, China, and Japan from west to east before terminating in Hawaii. Illustrations and book format designed by Michael Bartalos. The two-color iconic images extend over an accordion-fold structure that can be unfolded in an attractive display.
About the Artist:
Michael Bartalos attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Pratt Institute. Best known as an illustrator, Bartalos works extensively in the graphic arts in the U.S., Europe and Japan. His fine art work includes limited print editions, artist's books and sculptural assemblages. Bartalos has created limited book editions with New York's Purgatory Pie Press, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where he served as an artist in residence, and the Maryland Institute College of Art. He lives and works in San Francisco.
About the Publication:
Edition of 29; 6 pages
Letterpress printed; 2 color, fully illustrated
Dimensions: 15 1/4 in. x 16 1/8 in. x 1 in. {closed}; pages unfold to a length of 7 feet
Accordion folded pages inside a custom clamshell box with printed belly band closure
De Rekening by John DeMerritt and Nora Pauwels (2006)
De Rekening is a work built upon an artist-created system of "fake writing" used to mark the passing of time.
Inspired by the anonymous entries in 19th-century ledgers and account books, De Rekening borrows its form and repetitive structure from those utilitarian yet evocative receptacles of time. The ruled lines in the book were mechanically drawn using a pen ruling machine at Golden Business Forms in West Burlington, Iowa (now closed), especially for this edition.
Pen ruling was widely used in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the ledger and account book trade; Golden Business Forms was one of the last purveyors of this technology. Bound in Japanese buckram with foil stamped title, the book was letterpress printed by the artists at SFCB.
About the Artists:
John DeMerritt operates a bindery in Emeryville specializing in small editions and boxmaking. His client list includes many well-known artists, photographers and galleries. He has taught at the San Francisco Center for the Book, the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley and currently teaches bookmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is married to printmaker Nora Pauwels, with whom he collaborated on De Rekening.
Nora Pauwels is an internationally recognized printmaker. Originally from Belgium, where she was educated in fine arts and fine art restoration, Pauwels is notable for her exploration of unusual means of creating intaglio prints, such as using the Dremel tool with various plexigravure processes. Pauwels has been actively involved with the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, where she has created several portfolios of prints that have been collected both nationally and internationally.
About the Publication:
Edition of 60; 72 pages
Letterpress printed on pen-ruled paper
Dimensions: 6 1/2 in. x 11 5/8 in.
3 color with foil stamped title page; flat-back case binding
The Relative Value of Things by Nigel Poor (2007)
The Relative Value of Things consists of three physical attributes of the work: investigating the joy, folly, and contradictions of collecting, desire, and valorization. The first attribute is the work's front covers, each uniquely embellished with encapsulated hair or lint donated by many individuals. The second attribute consists of the book's contents: color images and letterpress-printed lists documenting personal possessions discarded by the artist over time. The third and final attribute focuses on the work's back cover, which features meticulously drawn text addressing the challenge of finding reassurance and meaning amidst life's mysteries and uncertainties.
About the Artist:
Nigel Poor's work has been shown in various national venues and can be found in the collections of the SFMOMA, the M. H. de Young Museum, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. She has received several nationally recognized awards, including a San Francisco Arts Council Grant and Polaroid Artist Support Grant. She received her BA from Bennington College in Vermont and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Poor is an Assistant Professor of Photography at California State University, Sacramento; Haines Gallery in San Francisco represents her.
About the Publication:
Edition of 120; 32 pages
Dimensions: 8 3/8 in. x 10 1/2 in.
Full color, offset printed
Flat-back case binding with custom lint design inlaid on the front cover
The Art of Stepping Through Time by Ala Ebtekar (2008)
The Art of Stepping Through Time is the artist's response to a poem by the renowned Iranian poet and scholar H. E. Sayeh, whose Farsi and English texts read in opposite directions across a 7-panel accordion structure. Three layers of letterpress-printed paper, bristol, Japanese kozo, and vellum create a continuous loop of overlapping text and imagery in an upright star-shaped display. The book cover front and back features blind-embossed Persian motif covers drawn by the artist with the title in each language. The accordian style structure has interleaved japanese kozo and vellum sewn in and is housed in a felted, hand-stitched wool pouch. Ala Ebtekar describes his works as visual narratives that are a "crossroads where present-day events meet history and mythology." He draws on Persian culture, diaspora, and migration to create "synthetic epics" with multiple interpretations and outcomes.
About the Artist:
Ala Ebtekar's work has been exhibited widely throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. As a teenager, he worked with Tim Rollins' seminal group Kids of Survival (K.O.S.) and later studied traditional Persian painting in Tehran. He earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA from Stanford University. He is a visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford University and is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco.
About the Publication:
Edition of 30; 7 double-sided, letterpress printed panels
Dimensions: 4 3/4 in. x 6 3/4 in.
3-hole pamphlet stitched pages sewn into an accordion structure with handmade felt pouch enclosure
Restless Dust by Gail Wight (2009)
Artist/author Gail Wight created Restless Dust as a multimedia installation housed in a two-tiered wooden box. The top portion holds a three-color, letterpress-printed, leather-bound artist's book. Plexiglas separates a velvet-lined bottom chamber containing two illuminated paper birds (activated when the box lid is removed). The custom-made cigar-style box was stained and silkscreened for the final piece. Wight's text invites Charles Darwin's ghost to sail to present-day San Francisco and wander through the diverse Bay Area terrain with the artist. The journey's focus is threefold: to celebrate Northern California's unique species, examine Darwin's legacy and impact in the Bay Area, and acknowledge the fragile and endangered state of local flora and fauna caused by environmental degradation. The artist carved and printed the book's images from linoleum blocks and hand-set the body text entirely in metal type.
In Wight's own words: "In attempts to understand life, I have made maps of various nervous systems, practiced art while under hypnosis, conducted biochemical experiments on myself and willing others, executed medical illustrations in black velvet, documented dissections of humans, dissected machines and failed to put most of them back together, made drawings with bones, and have attempted to create models of my own confused state. My artwork investigates issues in biology and the history of science and technology. It explores the cultural impact of scientific practice and our ongoing redefinition of self through epistemological constructions. I try to follow the ways in which these ideologies, both metaphysical and manifest, travel through time, moving from the scientific to the social sphere, the social to the scientific, and so often become the overlooked of the everyday."
About the Artist:
Gail Wight works in experimental media focusing on issues of biology, the history of scientific theory, and technology. She is currently Associate Professor at Stanford University Department of Art and Art History and Director of Graduate Studies in Studio Art and Experimental Media Arts.
About the Publication:
Edition of 40; 36 pages. Additional multimedia installation inside wooden housing.
Letterpress printed pages; screenprinted box; paper mache sculptures
Dimensions: 6 3/8 in. x 8 3/8 in. {book}; 7 7/8 in. x 9 7/8 in. x 3 3/8 in. {box}
Link-stitch bound soft leather book
Erratum: Brief Interruptions in the Waste Stream by Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine (2010)
An artist's book project issued in a deluxe Book + Brick edition of 40 signed and numbered copies, and a Poster + Chess trade edition of 70 signed and numbered copies.
The 2010 IMPRINT Artist in Residence focuses on the process, production and finished work created by our 2010 artists in residence, Amy Franceschini and her collaborator Michael Swaine, in the context of related work that spans a broad range of media. Their work takes a visual approach to articulating perceived conflict between humans and nature, and the individual to a community.
"The San Francisco artists Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine, of Futurefarmers, have developed a body of work about the nature of our waste processing systems that challenges that most essential element of a civilized home, indoor plumbing. They suggest replacing every last one of them. " - Renny Pritikin
About the Artists:
Amy Franceschini is an artist deeply interested in how humans interact and impact the world around them. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between humans and nature. She creates websites, installations, and public programs that provide platforms for questioning this divide. She draws inspiration from the improvisation, innovation, and collaboration that emerges from the choreographed farming activities both big and small. In 2004, she co-founded Free Soil, an international collective of artists, activists, and researchers who work together to propose alternatives to the current social, political, and environmental organization of space. Her individual and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally at the Zentrum Kunst Media in Karlsruhe Germany, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York Museum of Modern Art, SF MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. She has received numerous awards, including the SF MoMA Seca Award, Artadia Award, Eureka Fellowship, and Creative Capital. She is recently the recipient of a Graham Foundation and Art Matters grant. She received her BFA from San Francisco State University and her MFA from Stanford University. Amy is a visiting faculty in the California College of the Arts graduate program.
Michael Swaine is an inventor and designer working across many mediums; he has collaborated with Futurefarmers since 1997. He is dedicated to working in the community; his "Mending Library" Generosity Project involves him pushing an old-fashioned ice cream cart on wheels with a treadle-operated sewing machine through the streets of San Francisco. He teaches at CCA and is currently working on his MA in Design at UC Berkeley.
About the Publication:
Edition of 40; letterpress printed 2 color text and illustrations
Dimensions: 9 in. x 5 in. x 2 5/8 in.
28 unbound "pages" & 1 brick, housed in wooden brick molds
Paper Space by Kota Ezawa (2011)
Paper Space is a four-page pop-up book consisting of paper cut-out dioramas based on film and TV depictions of historical events from the mid-19th century to the present. The book unfolds into a structure divided into four spaces, each housing one of the pop-up scenes. Each page spread creates a timeline of events that have disrupted and confused America’s view of itself and is based on a still frame of a widely circulated film or TV program. Paper Space meditates on space—the space of a book, the space of a page; the book as space, flatness, and three-dimensionality. In this way, two of the most persistent illusions surrounding us—time and space—form a pact to create a paper space for history.
About the Artist:
Kota Ezawa considers himself a video, film, and photography archeologist unearthing animations and still images hidden in archival footage. His projects include digital animations, slide projections, lightboxes, paper cutouts, intaglio etchings, ink drawings and wood sculptures. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Madison Square Park in NYC; Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH; St. Louis Art Museum; Artpace, San Antonio; and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. He has participated in group exhibitions at MoMA, New York ; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; Art Institute of Chicago; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; as well as the 5th Seoul International Biennale of Media Art and the 2004 Shanghai Biennale. Kota Ezawa is an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts and lives in San Francisco and Berlin.
About the Publication:
Edition of 40
Dimensions: 11 3/4 in. x 9 3/4 in. x 1 3/4 in.
Modified carousel binding with custom box enclosure
One for Each by Paolo Salvagione (2012)
Paolo Salvagione has created a sensory Wunderkammer. His elegant cabinet of curiosities contains five drawers, one for each of the human senses. Each drawer holds a distinct, self-contained object; three-dimensional visuals emphasize the tactile nature of printed images. Silhouettes of leaves ask you to gauge species by contour, yet the absence of color brings attention to the visual. Talking tapes acknowledge a tangible aspect of sound. A musky, smell-based exploration summons up mental images of physical activity. A unique taste enhancer promises to temporarily bond to your receptors, making all things sour seem sweet — but first, your fingers must negotiate the brittle blister pack. Overall, the work seeks to show readers/viewers how our senses often deceive us and, in the process, yield something akin to a child's surprise at the roles these senses play in helping us navigate the world.
Salvagione has enlisted Boon Design to oversee typography, and Marc Weidenbaum to develop a series of short interlocking essays.
About the Artist:
Paolo Salvagione is an artist who works at the intersection of engineering, participation, and levity. He was born in Chicago and at an early age moved with his family to Southern France, where he developed an affection for bullfighting. He spent his teen years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, living around the corner from Joel-Peter Witkin, whom he occasionally assisted with set construction and corpse transportation. He spent his college years in Manhattan reading philosophy. Grounded in the practice of thinking about thinking about things, he spent a half a decade circling the world setting up bicycle factories from Italy to Indonesia — mastering titanium fabrication after hours at Martin Marietta in Colorado, working on next-generation paint-application systems for Boeing, employing CAD software for hi-tech bike design in Marin, even designing an atmospheric-dust collection tool for NASA. And he has worked, for over a decade, as lead engineer on the 10000 Year Clock of the Long Now Foundation.
In his art, Salvagione has sent his studio visitors out one second-story window and in another on a 900-pound steel wheel. He has used a laser cutter to give negative space a razor-sharp edge, creating a frozen bellows of light. He has filled a World War I gymnasium with a mix of pure geometry and pure fun in the form of ten oversized swings, with the implicit suggestion that visitors compete. He has commented on the role of finance in the art market by selling uncut currency presented in a fetishized box, including a pair of paper sheers. And he has pushed kinetic sculpture past what the eye perceives as sufficiently balanced.