RISO-relations & Bookish Behaviors

with Madeleine Aguilar & bex ya yolk
PRINT 668 001 | 3 credits | $200 Lab Fee
July 21–August 2, 2025

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 & Jenn Eisner, I'm trying to show not tell but I really just want to tell you, 2023, Risograph, 4 x 5 in.

Madeleine Aguilar (she/her) 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. Madeleine runs bench press, a collaborative risograph press based in Chicago. She is currently a Senior Lab Specialist at the University of Illinois Chicago where she manages the Print Lab in the School of Design. She has performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the DePaul Art Museum, EXPO Chicago, and Experimental Sound Studio. Her work lives in the Franklin Furnace Archive in the Pratt Institute Library, the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the 8-Ball Library in New York, the Art Book Library at Virginia Commonwealth University, and elsewhere.

bex ya yolk, Texture Notes, 2022, handmade paper, stone, wood, and elastic, 16x 23 in.

bex ya yolk (they/them) is a visual artist, designer, book maker, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk received a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a full merit scholar. They have received grant endowment from the Atlanta Contemporary, Codex International Biennial Artists' Book Fair and Symposium, the College Book Art Association, VCUarts Adjunct Faculty Research, and the Judith Alexander Foundation. yolk is currently a BOLT artist-in-residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition. yolk is the founder of an artists’ book bindery + publishing initiative––THUNGRY which focuses on disrupting what qualifies a Book, complicating traditional ways of book building + semantics through experimentation and queering praxis. THUNGRY explores historical research, sociology, and speculative theory into 'the Maternal Complex' made up of subgenres like care work, reproductive design, abortion access activism, reproductive justice and health care disparity, maternal identities, and the gestational state especially in queer folx exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + these kinds of bodies.