Gender Studies at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

Clark, Jr. invested in the golden age of California fine printing; the English Arts and Crafts presses; and the printing revival of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Clark Library continues to collect in the book arts, including archives of printers, publishers, and book artists who are women. The fine press books listed below involve themes of queer love, mental illness, mythological figures, being a marginalized person in the book arts and in the United States, landscape, British colonialism, linguistics, violence against immigrants, and enslavement. The following subsections are a sampling of the collection.

Examples:

• Alvarez, Julia. Seven Trees. North Andover: Kat Ran Press, 1998. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Kat Ran F001: Seven autobiographical poems by Dominican-American novelist and poet Julia Alvarez (1950–), with lithographs by Sara Eichner. The poems are titled “Family tree,” “Samán,” “Weeping willow,” “Maple, oak, or elm?,” “Arborvitae,” “Locust,” and “Last trees.” The book is bound in handmade flax paper by David Bourbeau. 
• Beckman, Laurel. 2 bdrm., 1 ba. Pasadena: Kenmore Press, 1978. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Kenmore 001: Laurel Beckman explores a relationship between three women in one apartment through floor-plans with red, blue, and yellow dots. This book is an example of queer love between women in the Clark Library’s fine press collection.   
• Cummins, Maureen. Crazy Quilt. Rosendale: Women’s Studio Workshop, 1998. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Cummins 002: Maureen Cummins (1963–) highlights the experiences by women who were institutionalized in asylums from 1865 to 1963. Each square page is patterned and features a quote by one of the women. Together the pages fold out to form a literal patchwork quilt. 
• Stuart, Gloria. Eve, Venus, and Others: Keats, Sappho, Baudelaire, and Others. Los Angeles: Imprenta Glorias, 1991. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Glorias F003: The acclaimed actress Gloria Stuart (1910–2010), known for her role in Titanic, began creating artists’ books in the late 1980s. The Clark Library holds a handful of Stuart’s books and other books published by her press. In this book, Stuart is responsible for the sketches, embellishments, printing, and book design.

• Ceballos, María Carolina. Un libro: body and words from a carer of books. Iowa City: Canto Press, 2020. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Canto 001: María Carolina Ceballos explores the experience of being a woman in the bookbinding and conservation fields and a Colombian in the United States. It has a bradel binding made of leather, flax-abaca handmade paper, and photographs printed on Japanese paper made by Ceballos. The text is in both Spanish and English. 
• Krähn, Tiana. Matriarch. Penngrove: Tiana Krähn, 2022. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Spell & Bind 001: Tiana Krähn’s triptych is an ode to Queen Elizabeth II and Alice Watson Ford, a British monarch and a Jamaican woman. She discusses the connections between the matriarchs via the lives and afterlives of British colonialism in Jamaica. The triptych includes framed photographs of Queen Elizabeth II and Alice Watson Ford. 
• Morrison, Toni, Peter Rutledge Koch, Jace Graf, and Kara Walker. Five Poems. Las Vegas: Rainmaker Editions, 2002. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Koch F009: The book includes five poems by Toni Morrison (1931–2019)—“Eve remembering,” “The perfect ease of grain,” “Someone leans near,” “It comes unadorned,” and “I am not seaworthy.” The poems are paired with silhouettes by Kara Walker (1969–) by printer Peter Rutledge Koch (1943–). 
• Scripps College Typography and Book Arts Class, ArjoWiggins, and Kitty Maryatt. Good Data. Bad Data. Created and Produced by the Typography and the Book Arts Class at Scripps College: Assisted by Prof. Kitty Maryatt. Claremont: Scripps College Press, 2014. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Scripps 021: Eight students in Professor Kitty Maryatt’s Scripps College course created a book about big data and its ramifications. The Clark Library holds the complete Scripps College Press Collection. 
• Sim, Jana. Both but between. Chicago, Seoul, 2021. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Jana Sim 001: In this artist book Jana Sim creates a dialogue between the English and Hangul alphabets to reflect her identity as a Korean artist who studied and lived in the United States from 2002–2017. She uses the English alphabet but employs the structure of Hangul to represent her struggles learning a foreign language to an English-speaking audience. She began the book at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book and Paper Arts and finished it in Korea. It was printed and hand-bound in both Chicago and Seoul. 
• Victor, Divya. Curb. Colorado Springs: The Press at Colorado College, 2019. Clark Library Press Collection; Press coll. Colorado College F002: Curb combines poems and images to chronicle the assaults and murders of Indian-Americans and Indian immigrants in the United States. Divya Victor (1983–) uses the Kohinoor Devanagari and Kohinoor Gujarati typefaces designed by Satya Rajpurohit, among others. The rubbings were made using sidewalks and curbs. 
• Wilson, Carletta Carrington and Bonnie Thompson Norman. k/not free, k/not human. Seattle: The Windowpane Press and A Thunderhoney Production, 2023. Clark Library Cage; Press coll. Windowpane FF001: Carletta Carrington Wilson depicts the figures of two fugitives based on woodcuts from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century runaway slave advertisements. The man and woman represent resistance to transatlantic slavery as they escape to an unpredictable future. The accordion book is handbound with knots and opens to almost 16 feet. The book covers and clamshell box are painted with Wilson’s hands and feet.  

To find printed books, art objects, manuscripts, and fine press books go to UC Library Search. Click on “Advanced Search,” select the “Subject” field, and type “Artists’ books.” To find works by specific authors, select the “Author” field and type “Stuart, Gloria,” for example. You can also do a keyword search either in the simple search or in the “Any field” field of the “Advanced Search.” Once you have search results, you can limit to the Clark Library by selecting it from the “UCLA Locations” facet.