Announcing Our 2022 McKnight Book Artist Fellows

Left: CB Sherlock (photo by Joanna Holstrom). Right: Corinne Teed (tintype by Blkk Hand).

Please join us in congratulating the 2022 McKnight Book Artist Fellows, CB Sherlock and Corinne Teed! CB is a letterpress printer, book artist, and paper engineer, and Corinne is a research-based artist working in printmaking, book arts, time-based media, and social practice.

CB and Corinne will both be awarded $25,000 in unrestricted funds to explore and deepen their art practice thanks to our partnership with the McKnight Foundation, which supports two exceptional Minnesota-based book artists annually. The pair will also receive a range of professional benefits through MCBA, including studio visits from a national figure in the book arts, a travel honorarium, featured participation in an artist panel at Open Book, funding for artwork documentation, 24/7 studio access for two years, career consultation, and a residency opportunity.

According to CB Sherlock, the McKnight Fellowship in Book Arts will give her the chance to take risks and to make the bold choices necessary to initiate larger-scale projects. “As I generate more work and the scope expands, I am excited about the opportunities to collaborate with other talented artists and technicians on my projects,” shares CB. “I get to work in community, sketch, expand my technical skills, and create innovative book structures.”

I get to work in community, sketch, expand my technical skills, and create innovative book structures.

During their McKnight Fellowship year, Corinne Teed will develop a series of collaborative books. Currently in production is a collaborative book of woodblock prints with 2021 McKnight Fiction Writer Fellow Abbey Mei Otis. The book is a series of illustrated fables on interspecies intimacies based on both the written and print history of Aesop’s fables. Corinne will also be working on a risograph-printed book with collaborator Dr. María Rebolleda-Gómez, an evolutionary microbiologist. Additionally, they will be working with Women’s Studio Workshop to produce a letterpress artist’s book on queer intimacies in other species in Fall 2022.

Currently in production is a collaborative book of woodblock prints on interspecies intimacies based on both the written and print history of Aesop’s fables.

“Access to MCBA’s studios, equipment, and expertise will provide crucial support for these projects,” shares Corinne. “As handmade books proliferate in my studio, I am eager to engage in community with other book artists and scholars of book arts in Minnesota and through attending book arts conferences and residencies.”

The fellows were named finalists at the beginning of May when our panel of notable jurors, Alisa Banks, Macy Chadwick, and Tate Shaw, traveled to Minnesota to conduct studio visits. Juror Macy Chadwick praised the maturity of both CB and Corinne’s work.

“CB Sherlock is an accomplished book artist,” shared Macy. “Every book considers form and content in a new way. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!” Of Corinne’s work, Macy wrote,”By including books in their multi-media practice, they explore narrative in its many contemporary iterations,” adding that Corinne helps “expand the definition of the book.”

We invite you to learn more about the 2022 McKnight Book Artist Fellows below, view their winning portfolios, and get acquainted with their artistic practice. Beneath that, you can also find biographical information about our jurors.

Congratulations to our 2022 fellows!


Corinne Teed

to excavate potential animality, 2015. Handmade artist’s book, letterpress, hand-set type, edition of 10, 2” x 3.5”.
Feral Utopias pamphlet, 2015. Letterpress and digital print, 4.75” x 6” folded, 16” x 9.5” open.
Prompt Press 4, 2016. Handmade artist’s book and case, screen print on French paper, letterpress, digital print, feather, edition of 50.
Amongst Relatives, 2021. Risograph and digital print, 5” x 8”.
Collaborative Blocking, 2021. Letterpress and digital print, 4.75” x 6” folded, 16” x 9.5” open.

Artist Statement

Through book arts, printmaking, public art installation, and video, I engage in public dialogues on relationships to land, climate change, human communities, and more-than-human others. Using collaborative projects that engage literary forms, eco-poetics, oral history, and community participation, my work questions how we understand our entanglements with other species and with complicated social histories.

My studio work delves into queer ecology, a concept in critical theory that refers to interdisciplinary practices that disrupt patriarchal and homophobic constructs of nature, while also re-envisioning evolutionary relationships and environmental politics in light of queer theory. Through my investigations, I document voices and portraits of those on the margins of mainstream environmentalism. While working with participants in projects, we collaboratively redefine our existent, ecocidal dystopia while articulating possibilities of alternative futures. The work functions as an archive of ecological thought, while also engaging with critical conversations on archives in contemporary art.

Corinne Teed is a research-based artist working in printmaking, book arts, time-based media, and social practice. Their work lives at the intersections of queer theory, ecology, critical animal studies, and settler colonial studies. Much of their creative practice centers on relationships, whether through collaboration, participation, interviews, or encounters with the more-than-human. Teed currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Art Department of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on unceded Dakota territory.

CB Sherlock

A Day Elsewhere; Chateau Laréole (box detail), 2021. Working with another binder, I combined German Bradel binding with the clamshell box with hand-dyed pink goat skin, creating graceful housing for this unique book. 9.5” x 12.5” x 1.25.”
A Day Elsewhere; Chateau Laréole, 2021. Excerpt by Honore ́de Balzac. Folio wrapper was relief printed, Mary Hark paper with letterpress and relief prints on Rives BFK, combining metal type, polymer plates and Chine Colle ́technique with laser cut paper. 9” x 12” x 1.25”, 9” x 22” open.
Blue, 2019. Quotes by Jane Goodall, Wendell Berry, Carl Sagan, and Jacques Yves Cousteau. 4” book board cubes covered in relief-and-letterpress-printed blue Kozo-Shi. 4” x 4” x 4”—4 cubes, 6 sides/pages housed under plexiglass vitrine on tray. 4.5” x 8.5” x 8.5” on tray.
5 in Tour, 2018. Book of sketches by five Minnesota artists of their weekend in Tours France. Letterpress on Rives BFK with polymer plates, screen printed cover, and bound small drum leaf binding with drop spine. 5” x 5” x 1”.
Settings: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2017. Letterpress and relief prints on Kozo-shi paper laminated with Lokta paper and Tai Mulberry. Polymer plate prints of handwritten text, 9 scenes of the forest setting of favorite play, with 8 layered color runs. The leaves’ size allows the viewer to know which characters are in a scene: The fairies are the largest leaves, the lovers are medium and the mechanicals are the smallest. 22” x 52” open concertina book, eleven 22’ x 4.5” pages.

Artist Statement

My work originates in themes of community, commonality, nature, and place. I combine my love of nature, wordplay, and unique book structures to create work that reflects the world around me, visually layering text, format, and image. Through my artwork I get to share what I love: nature, letterpress, and nontraditional book structures.

As a letterpress printer, book artist, and paper engineer, I create small-edition books, prints, and one-of-a-kind works of art. The intimate, versatile, and innovative structures I create are for the viewers to hold, capturing the nuances of their content with meticulous attention to detail, design, and print. I work on the printing press, intuitively adding color, shape, and words; each time bringing the components together in new arrangements that create something both unexpected and familiar.

Traveling is part of my practice; discovering new places and environments continually provides meaning and inspires me. I have been exploring my connection to the landscape of the Yellowstone River. This work is inspired by this environment and has helped me find new techniques and solve new challenges. I am working on a narrative of several pieces intertwining the text from the Lewis and Clark journals, specifically Clark’s writing during his month on the river. I layer Clark’s historic text with imagery of the river, weaving in a modern context to keep the piece grounded in the present day. This project stems from my relationship over many years with the Montana terrain. My childhood was filled with travel from Minnesota to Montana to visit my Papa’s farm, and later I would make the same journey parallel to the Yellowstone River with my own family. I have always been drawn to and inspired by the landscapes of Montana and my home in Minnesota.

CB Sherlock made her first book in third grade and has continued to create as a book artist throughout her life, focusing on small editions and one-of-a-kind artist’s books. She thrives in a community of artists; for over twenty years she was an Artist Collective member at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and is now a proud and active member of the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art Co-op. She founded both Accordion Press Collaborations with Regula Russelle and her own imprint, Seymour Press. Her books have been recognized at the Hertzog Awards and the International Competition of the Society of Bookbinders, and are found in many special collections across the country and internationally, including the Walker Art Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the British Library, and MoMA.


JURORS

Alisa Banks investigates connections to contemporary culture, her Creole heritage, and the African diaspora through the lenses of home, terrain, and the body, using Southern Louisiana as a point of entry. Her sculptural artist’s books, writings, and textile collages often incorporate fibers and found materials and reference traditional crafts. Alisa’s work has been exhibited internationally and is housed in several private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution, the US Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library.

Macy Chadwick received an MFA in book arts and printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and assisted book artist Julie Chen at Flying Fish Press in Berkeley for three years. After fifteen years of teaching at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco Art Institute, and San Francisco Center for the Book, Macy moved up to Petaluma, California, where she is the founder and director of In Cahoots Residency. The residency provides housing and studio space to both emerging and professional artists with a focus on artists’ books, letterpress, printmaking, writing, and collaboration. Macy continues to create books and limited-edition prints in her letterpress studio, and her work is in prominent collections in the US and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Yale University Special Collections, and the Jack Ginsberg Collection in South Africa.

Tate Shaw is an artist, writer, publisher, and curator living in Rochester, NY. He is the Director of Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) and VSW Press. Shaw is the author of Blurred Library: essays on artists’ books as well as several of his own artist’s books that are in public collections internationally. He is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Brockport.

 

 

 

 


About the McKnight Artist Fellowship Program

Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s arts program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in 15 different creative disciplines. Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond to the unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently the foundation contributes about $2.8 million per year to its statewide fellowships. For more information, visit mcknight.org/artistfellowships.

About the McKnight Foundation

The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts in Minnesota, neuroscience, and international crop research.