never mind the press

Alisa Golden
I always imagined I would have to choose between writing and art but found that creating books is a natural way to combine my two interests.

In a Graphic Arts class at Lincoln Jr. High School, Santa Monica, CA in 1974, I learned how to set metal type by hand and print on a letterpress. I returned to printing nine years later, when I transferred to California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from University of California at Berkeley. I enrolled in Betsy Davids' Letterpress Printing and Creative Writing class; the course description suggested we would merge words and images. never mind the press was born in 1983 with my first book of poems, never mind the crowd.

The atmosphere at California College of the Arts (formerly CCAC: California College of Arts and Crafts) inspires experimentation. Books created there or by artists who have studied there usually involve a lot of "hand work" such as collage, pockets, inserts, fold-outs, and rubber stamps; I followed this path as well. Even while encouraging us to pursue our own interests, Betsy Davids also stressed the importance of the relationship between the book's structure, materials and the content. I created many books and in 1985 I received a BFA with High Distinction in printmaking.

March 1995 marked the move of my Challenge cylinder press (purchased in 1987) from the laundry room of my house to a new studio. The larger space made teaching printing and book collaborations possible. The first collaborative project was Tidal Poems, with Anne Schwartzburg, another poet and artist.

In addition to making books, I have taught book structures and printing in the San Francisco Bay area, including CCA, the San Francisco Center for the Book, and Ocean View elementary school. I am a former program director and board member of the Pacific Center for the Book Arts. As a result of my teaching experience I wrote Creating Handmade Books, a how-to book; it was published in 1998 by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. I pursued my investigation of interesting book structures and wrote a second how-to book called Unique Handmade Books (November 2001: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.) A third book, Expressive Handmade Books, will be available from Sterling in the Fall of 2005.

I resumed teaching classes in the Fall of 2003.

note: CCAC changed its name to CCA in 2003.