RISO-relations & Bookish Behaviors

with Madeleine Aguilar & bex ya yolk
PRINT 668 001 | 3 credits | $150 Lab Fee
June 23 - July 6, 2024

This course is an introduction to the RISOgraph as a tool for high volume printing, editioned objects, and bookmaking to produce publications in printed bookish form. Students will experiment with a range of binding, printing, and sculptural tools to create publications while learning a variety of book structures and binding techniques. Equipment and praxis include but are not limited to: the RISOgraph printer, screen printing, xerox copier, comb binder, Epson scanner, laminator, spiral bound machine, and hand bookbinding tools. Daily in-class technical demonstrations in tandem with lectures on independent presses, zine makers, works by artists and publishers that utilize the RISO as both an economic and artistic tool, and prominent book artists will all be explored. The class will culminate in the production of a publication for the Ox-Bow Artists’ book and Zine Library (est. 2023). Each student will donate at least one book from their edition(s) to the collection. This gesture in fostering community by means of leaving ephemera and art objects for future artists to engage with, is the very core of what arts publishing can be.

Madeleine Aguilar tells stories, builds archives, maps spaces, constructs furniture, records histories, organizes data, catalogs objects, prints publications, creates frameworks, collects imagery, acquires trades, ties knots, re-purposes materials, imitates structures, utilizes chance, plays instruments, follows intuition, prompts participation, guides observation, leaves evidence, develops routines, takes walks, breaks habits, and makes lists. Using the archive as form, she acknowledges the passing of time by cataloging lived spaces, collected objects, familial histories, personal relationships, natural phenomena, mundane routines, and ephemeral moments. She runs bench press, a collaborative Risograph press based in Chicago, and is currently Print & New Media Studio Manager at Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency.

bex ya yolk (they/them) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, book maker, scholar, and professor. yolk runs an independent artists’ book bindery, THUNGRY founded in Atlanta, GA now residing in Chicago, IL. With a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a full merit scholar—yolk has received grant endowment and recognition from the Atlanta Contemporary, the College Book Art Association, CODEX International Biennial Artists' Book Fair and Symposium, and the Judith Alexander Foundation. To date, THUNGRY operates as a publishing initiative focused on disrupting what we’ve come to understand qualifies a Book, complicating traditional ways of book building + semantics, through experimentation and queering praxis. yolk also maintains an extensive, generative, multi-year research study into the 'maternal complex', made up of subgenres like mothernism, the maternal identity, care work, reproductive design, rematriation, reproductive justice, container technics, matrescence, and the gestational state especially in queer folx exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + this kind of body.

Madeleine Aguilar & bex ya yolk, Prototypes for Compatibility (1 of 3), 2023, paper, PVA, and sandstone

bex ya yolk, The Mother and the copy, the copy, the copy..., 2022, paper, poplar wood, walnut stain, wood glue, 11 x 26 in.