*This event is run by Colophon Club and requires an RSVP. If you are interested in attending this event, please contact Colophon Club at co**********@***il.com indicating how many guests are coming. A $20 fee covers food and drink and can be paid at the door. Electronic funds or cash accepted. 

Colophon Club:
Gail Wight

Tuesday, April 14, 2026, 6:00 pm
The CODEX Foundation
Logan Book Arts Center
1331 Seventh Street, Unit D
Berkeley, CA 94710

Gail Wight will discuss the making of Ostracod Rising, a book outlining the history of Earth from the Hadean Eon 4.5 billion years ago to the Ostracocene, 140 million years in the future. Developed during a 3-year residency with UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art & Technology, Ostracod Rising was initially inspired by images of microfauna in a deep lake core sample. It eventually became a 35-pound accordion book displayed as a 45-foot arc for six months, then evolved into a more manageable editioned version in a soft and flexible washi, all based on large format school primers and bicycle playing cards. 

Gail Wight is professor emerita at Stanford University, where she taught experimental media for twenty years, including book arts and hybrid printmaking in the Department of Art & Art History. Her home, studio, and imprint Salt Point Press are based near Salt Point in northern California.

Theresa Whitehill and
The Real Lead Saloon

Friday, March 13, 2026, 5:00 pm
The CODEX Foundation
Logan Book Arts Center
1331 Seventh Street, Unit D
Berkeley, CA 94710

Poetry Reading

Join us at The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center for a poetry reading by Theresa Whitehill celebrating the newest Real Lead Saloon publication of her book Divan del Tamarit. Come enjoy the current exhibition and learn more about the Real Lead Saloon and the handmade publications they produce in the studios of The CODEX Foundation.

This event will be free and open to the public. No RSVP required, though seating may be limited.

Exhibition Celebration

Our current exhibition in the CODEX Foundation gallery space features all of the Real Lead Saloon publications that have been produced since 2021. Beautiful photographs, banners, and quotes are hanging to complement the publications, which are available to look through and to purchase. The exhibition is on view through June 2026.

Thanks to Becky Fischbach for designing the exhibition.

A California-born poet and letterpress artist, Theresa Whitehill has been a resident of Mendocino County for over forty years. Whitehill’s interrelated focus on literary and book arts came out of her studies with poet William Everson at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1970s and at Mills College in the Book Art program in the early 1980s.

Her poetry and letterpress broadsides are in many fine press collections, including the Getty Center for the Arts, the John Hay Library of Brown University, the British Museum, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York Public Libraries. In 2024, she completed an 18-month tour of Heavy Lifting, her most ambitious project to date, a collaboration with Mendocino book artist, Felicia Rice, resulting in an artists’ book, a film, and a collection of poetry based on the personal and collective crises of recent years.

Artist Talk: Alberto Blanco

This talk will be given in conjunction with the Printing Poetry Workshop, September 27-28, 2025.

Thursday, October 2, 2025
5:30 pm: Reception
6:00 pm: Talk begins

The CODEX Foundation
Logan Book Arts Center
1331 Seventh Street, Units C&D
Berkeley, CA 94710

Alberto Blanco will offer a brief overview of his career as a poet and visual artist, focusing on his numerous artist’s books, particularly his Writing Notebooks. He will illustrate his talk with images in a specially prepared PowerPoint presentation. Broadsides created in the Printing Poetry Workshop the weekend before will be handed out to attendees of this event for free.

Alberto Blanco (Mexico City in 1951). He studied chemistry and philosophy, and earned a Master’s degree in Oriental Studies, focusing on China. He is a poet, translator, and essayist, and a well-known visual artist. Since the publication of his first book, Giros de faros, in 1979*, he has published 36 books of poetry in Mexico and eighteen more in other countries. Among the most notable is Dawn of the Senses, published by City Lights, in 1995. His work is not only extensive but also highly diverse. However, the author insists that his entire life he has been working on only three books: a book of poems, another of essays on visual arts, and a poetic. His poems have been translated into more than 20 languages. His visual work has been recognized with two major retrospectives: one dedicated to his artist’s books at The Athenaeum in La Jolla, California, in 2011; and another dedicated to his collages at the CECUT in Tijuana in 2015. In 2018, he was named Creator Emeritus in Mexico.

*Circling Beacons, translated by John Oliver Simon and Jennifer Rathbun, Guernica World Editions, Toronto, Canadá, 2022.

Lecture: Sam Regal

Monday, July 14, 2025
5:30 pm Reception
6:00 pm Talk
Light refreshments will be served

*This event will be recorded and available on this page of our website as well as our YouTube channel after the event. The recording will take a few weeks to produce but we will announce its release through our newsletter. The event will not be live streamed.*

Teaching Artists’ Books: Interdisciplinary Arts-Based Research in UCSC Special Collections and Archives

In her talk, UCSC Special Collections and Archives librarian Sam Regal will describe the many ways teaching with artists’ books enriches student learning across disciplines. When used in instruction, UCSC SC&A’s significant collection of artists’ books inspire an exploratory classroom environment where students feel empowered to experiment and interrogate research topics through new critical, conceptual, and material frameworks. Sam will describe her approaches to play- and object-based learning and her experience using accompanying bookmaking activities to further activate collections materials. She will showcase collections highlights and student artworks created in conversation with collections, and she’ll touch upon approaches to unique challenges she faces in building UCSC’s artists’ books collection.

Sam Regal is the Instruction and Exhibitions Librarian in Special Collections and Archives at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she oversees experiential learning programs, exhibitions, programming, public services, and bibliographic collection development. She holds an MLIS with a specialization in rare books and visual culture from UCLA, an MFA in poetry from Hunter College, and a BA in English and American literature from NYU. She is editor of the American Printing History Association (APHA)’s Printing History journal, and her writing has most recently appeared in Parenthesis, RBM, and East of Borneo. 

Colophon Club:
Rhiannon Alpers

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Rhiannon Alpers will join the Colophon Club for an evening to explore the intriguing world of lichen through her new artist book, “Lichen: Rambles in the Colorado Front Range,” which debuted at the CODEX Book Fair earlier this year. In this insightful and quirky presentation, Rhiannon will recount her extensive research journey, highlighting the contributions of early women bryologists in San Francisco, Colorado, and Britain and the herbariums they worked for.
Her exploration encompassed a range of fascinating topics, including the processes of papermaking and ink production derived from lichen, as well as macro photography and mono-printing techniques that emulate the intricate surfaces of these organisms. Rhiannon will also discuss the colorful specimen books from that era, illuminating the historical context of her work.
Participants will have the unique opportunity to handle samples, specimens, and various materials alongside an edition of her book. Join us for an engaging evening that promises to deepen your appreciation of both lichen and moss.

Rhiannon Alpers is the proprietor of Gazelle and Goat Press, which creates limited-edition and one-of-a-kind artist books. She is a papermaker, letterpress printer, and bookbinder currently living in Denver, Colorado. Over the years, she has worked as both an academic/workshop educator and a commercial printer, and she holds a BA and MFA in Book and Paper Arts. She was recently selected as an MCBA Book Prize Semi-Finalist in Sept. of 2024. 

*This event is run by Colophon Club and requires an RSVP. If you are interested in attending this event, please contact Colophon Club at co**********@***il.com indicating how many guests are coming. A $20 donation covers food and drink and can be paid at the door. Electronic funds or cash accepted. 

CalRBS: Artists’ Books in Education

Strategies for Institutional Libraries Course Information

July 15-18, 2024 — co-taught by Ruth Rogers and Inge Bruggeman

In collaboration with the California Rare Book School and UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Library and The Bancroft Library.

Creation and distribution of the contemporary artist book is flourishing on a global scale. From a vast range of media and subject matter, how does one develop the critical insights needed to maintain or build a collection of contemporary artists’ books? This course will explore creative approaches to harness the visual and communicative power of artists’ books, by integrating them into broader curricular objectives.

Class sessions will be held in local research collections where we will meet with librarians and faculty who acquire and teach with artists’ books. Additional programming will include guided hands-on analysis of selected books, with an emphasis on refining curatorial skills. We will share strategies for identifying artists’ books that fit into a cross-disciplinary educational mission, and how they relate to existing historical collections. 

Colophon Club:

Sophie Schneideman

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Sophie Schneideman will be speaking to us about the Kelmscott Press and perhaps Dove Press and how an exploration of these presses leads to interesting questions and about how they reflect onto book art and fine press books today. 

Sophie has been an international rare book and print dealer for over thirty years with a specialization in several areas of book collecting including the art of the book (book illustration, private presses, fine bindings, lettering, typography, fine press and artists’ books) especially those produced in the last 150 years. 

Heavy Lifting: Felicia Rice and Theresa Whitehill

Sunday, September 10, 2023
4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
$10
​Please contact us to reserve your spot!

HEAVY LIFTING continues its tour through Northern California, one community room, gallery, and theater space at a time—wherever people gather—to reflect on issues of crisis and renewal in these difficult times. Each event in the series presents the artists’ book, Heavy Lifting, together with film, poetry, and conversation. 

The CODEX Foundation is pleased to announce our first-ever visiting artist talk at The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center.

The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™

Sunday, January 15, 2023, 4:30 pm

Standard Tickets: $25
Student Tickets: $20
*Sliding scale tickets will be offered to those in need of assistance. Please email us with a request.

Tickets are extremely limited and will sell quickly! Limit one ticket per person.
EMAIL US if you would like to sign up to attend this in-person talk.

About the artist, Dafi Kühne:

Dafi Kühne is a Swiss designer and letterpress printer. He studied in the Visual Communication Department of Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland and he holds a Research-Masters Degree in Typeface Design from University of Reading, UK. In his studio (babyinktwice.ch) he uses a wild mix of analog and digital tools to produce posters for for music, art, architecture, theatre and film projects, and also for products. With this one main rule in his studio «No PDF ever leaves the studio as a final product», he prints all his posters with letterpress printing presses. His mostly typographic letterpress printed posters have won many international poster design awards and been in exhibitions all around the globe. His designer monograph True Print has been published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2016. 

Dafi runs his own Typographic Summer Program (www.typographic-printing-program.com) in Switzerland and Pasadena, CA—a two week intense program for students and professionals to learn new approaches to Swiss Typography. While the summer program is a physical workshop Dafi has been looking for a way to document his craziest techniques in a faster online format. With «The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™», he entertainingly documents and explains his process and techniques. Freely available for anyone to enjoy! Besides other international awards, «The Dafi Kühne Printing Show™» won one of the prestigious Swiss Design Awards in 2021. 

For his talk at The CODEX Foundation, Dafi will give us some technical insights into the processes used to create his poster work. 

Artists featured in the exhibition:

Sue Anderson and Gwen Harrison, Karen Bleitz, Ken Botnick, Inge Bruggeman, Carolee Campbell, Julie Chen, Donald Glaister, Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence Van Velzer, Leilei Guo, Romano Hänni, Thomas Ingmire, Peter Koch, Clemens-Tobias Lange, Russell Maret, Suzanne Moore, Tim Mosely, Didier Mutel, Robin Price, Sandra Reese and Harry Reese, Felicia Rice, Gaylord Schanilec, Veronika Schäpers, Leonard Seastone, Two Ponds Press, Claire Van Vliet, Sam Winston

Luminous Books at the Boston Athenæum

Materialia Lumina | Luminous Books: Concept & Craft in Contemporary Artists’ Books

November 15, 2022 – March 11, 2023

Materialia Lumina | Luminous Books showcases a selection of outstanding contemporary artists’ books created by some of the world’s most accomplished makers over the past twenty-five years. The books embody a distinctive marriage of “high craft” with “high concept.” They demonstrate a mastery of the traditional arts of the book—printing, printmaking, typography, calligraphy, bookbinding, papermaking, and graphic design—intersecting vigorously with the conceptual daring and exploratory nature of the best contemporary art. The exhibition explores the extraordinary level of skill and persistence involved in creating these beautiful works, as well as their unique power to speak to a range of contemporary issues and concerns. 

These forty selections from the Athenæum’s holdings and the collection of a generous private lender were drawn from a curated list of 75 exemplary works, out of more than 6,000 pieces exhibited at the CODEX International Book Fair, the world’s largest venue for contemporary artists’ books, since the fair’s inception in 2007. The Athenæum is one of three venues for this international exhibition, along with Stanford University Libraries and the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach, Germany. A substantial catalog, with descriptive essays and extensive illustrations, accompanies the exhibition. 

Unfortunately, because of space constraints and local availability of works the Athenaeum was not able to show all of the works in the catalog, so we encourage you to experience the imagery and in-depth writings about all the wonderful works in the entire exhibition through the printed catalog.

At the CODEX International Book Fair we have observed that certain books inhabit a distinct and until recently, unexplored territory on the complex map of the book as a work of art. We refer to high-concept and high-craft books dwelling within the uncharted area where the wild variety of artist’s books on the one hand, and the more traditional private press books and livre d’artiste on the other, influence one another and propel the book into a new category altogether. We have begun to refer to this phenomenon as the Third Stream – one that is neither an avant-garde artist’s book nor an illustrated typographic book of the private press/livre d’artiste lineage.

The third stream book incorporates and even accelerates techniques learned from new technologies while at the same time provides a locus that encourages a refreshing and deeper exploration of traditional artisanal crafts. Classically trained artists and printers who are both accomplished masters and experimentally minded are rare, and when successful, able to propel their ideas of the possibility of a book beyond the easy and comfortable categories while exhibiting an extraordinary sense of place and making.

New currents indicate the emergence and evolution of highly gifted artists and artisans who embrace the tools and production skills of the traditional arts while dancing on the razor’s edge of intellectual and technological change.