Announcing the MCBA/Jerome Foundation Book Arts Mentorship recipients

September 22, 2022

Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) is pleased to announce the recipients of our eighth series of the MCBA/Jerome Foundation Book Arts Mentorships program:

  • D’Angelo Christian, photographer
  • Suriya Khuth, independent curator and lens-based collage artist
  • Leah Klister, artist and art educator

Three jurors, reflecting diverse perspectives and considerable expertise, reviewed the two dozen applications received. They were: Christopher Alday, Latinx artist and printmaker; Regan Golden-McNerney, artist and writer, and Cecilia Ramón, ecological artist, bookmaker, teacher, and meditation practitioner.

Mentorship recipients will now embark on a year-long study of the foundational skills of bookbinding, letterpress printing, and papermaking, which they may employ to develop their individual book arts projects. The mentorship program will culminate in an exhibition in MCBA’s main gallery in November 2023.

Hear from the new recipients and learn about their work at the Jerome Mentorship Virtual Presentations on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 6pm.

Since 1985, the Jerome Foundation has helped artists push the boundaries of contemporary book arts by supporting the creation of new book works. Through fifteen series of fellowships/residencies and seven series of mentorships, Minnesota artists of extremely diverse disciplines—including printers, papermakers, binders, painters, sculptors, poets, photographers, choreographers, filmmakers and others—have created projects ranging from exquisitely-crafted fine press volumes to documented performances to one-of-a-kind installations that “break the bindings” and redefine conventional notions of book form and content.

Minnesota Center for Book Arts celebrates the book as a vibrant contemporary art form that takes many shapes. From the traditional crafts of papermaking, letterpress printing and hand bookbinding to experimental artmaking and self-publishing techniques, MCBA supports the limitless creative evolution of book arts through book arts workshops and programming for adults, youth, families, K-12 students and teachers. MCBA is located in the Open Book building in downtown Minneapolis, alongside partner organizations The Loft Literary Center and Milkweed Editions. To learn more, visit www.mnbookarts.org.


Mentorship Recipient Bios

D’Angelo Christian’s photographs contain day-to-day scenes and acknowledgment of love and gestures contained within families, loved ones, and the natural world. To collect and preserve his own personal history and give agency to his own identity is why he photographs.

Suriya Khuth is a queer Khmer-American independent curator and lens-based collage artist. Through acts of tearing, taping, writing over, cutting, and rearranging images, their practice utilizes photography and collage as languages to articulate and reflect on queerness, memory, fluidity, and transformation. Khuth holds a BA in Media and Cultural Studies from Macalester College. They are the founder and curator of Generation Magazine, a publication that gathers the voices of artists throughout the Cambodian diaspora. Upon graduating in 2020, they are grateful to have been awarded grants, fellowships, and residencies from the Chautauqua School of Art, Cuttyhunk Island, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the Southeast Asian Diaspora Project, the Emerging Curators Institute, the Midway Contemporary Art Visual Arts Fund and Public Functionary’s Studio 400 Incubator Program.

Leah Klister is an artist and art educator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has a BA in Studio Art from St. Olaf College and an MA in Art Education with a focus on social justice and community practice from NYU. As an art educator, Leah taught almost all types of media to grades 7-12 for twelve years. After becoming pregnant with her second child, Leah left her classroom to take care of her daughters and focus more on her art practice. Much of her artwork is inspired from life—people and landscapes are recurring themes. Her current project is a relief printmaking series about the intimacies of motherhood, focusing especially on the early days as a new mother.


Juror Bios

Christopher Alday is a Southern Californian Latinx who moved to the Midwest to study printmaking. His work explores repetition, simple shapes, print as a material, and repetition. He received a BFA in Print Paper Book from the Minneapolis College of Art of Design in 2013, was awarded the 2014-2015 Jerome Emerging Printmakers Residency hosted at Highpoint Center for Printmaking and the 2017 Minnesota Center for Book Arts Summer Artist in Residency.

As an artist and writer, Regan Golden-McNerney‘s images and essays explore how relationships within nature are constructed and evolve overtime. Golden’s large-scale collages and intricate drawings are inspired by persistent plants thriving in the wild urban prairies and forests found across the Twin Cities. Her artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally, including Gallery 44: Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto, Gallery 400 in Chicago, the Cue Foundation in New York City, and the Soo Visual Art Center in Minneapolis. She has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Recent publications include,“Seeing Plants: Vision and Botany in Contemporary Art” in *MnArtists* and “Collage as a Way of Living” in *March International Journal*. Instagram: @regangoldenmc

Cecilia Ramón is an ecological artist, bookmaker, teacher and meditation practitioner. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today, I am based in at the shores of Lake Superior. Some of the fields that inform my life are: daily buddhist practice, the immigration experience, poetry, an ecological lens that I owe in a significant way to studying at Schumacher College in the UK during 2015 and 2016. My art-life practice involves hand-made books, watercolor, drawing, twining, woodcarving. I make botanical inks, develop walking based artworks and meditation workshops.


About the Book Arts Mentorship

The Book Arts Mentorship is an artist development program aimed at introducing book arts to emerging artists whose primary medium is in another discipline. There are many reasons to explore book arts as a new artistic medium. As a highly malleable and versatile form of expression, book arts extend the possibilities of other art forms. You can create a conceptual space. Experiment with sequence and visual or verbal narrative. Use book art forms to extend, explore, document or reexamine work produced in other artistic disciplines.

Mentorships are awarded to three emerging artists selected from among the following disciplines:

  • Literary arts (poetry, spoken word, fiction, creative nonfiction)
  • Visual arts (drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, new media)
  • Music (composing)
  • Film / video (filmmakers, animation)
  • Theater (playwriting)
  • Dance (choreography)

Only originating artists in these disciplines are eligible for Jerome support; musicians, actors, directors, dancers, screenwriters and other such categories are not eligible.

For more information about the Book Arts Mentorship program: visit www.mnbookarts.org/mentorship