Black Rock Press Publications | Art | School of the Arts

RUMINATE EMERGENT

by Daniel Talamantes (2023)
$10

Purchase "RUMINATE EMERGENT"

RUMINATE EMERGENT is the 2023 Desert Pavilion Chapbook Contest Winner. Desert Pavilion is a collaborative publication between Black Rock Press and the Creative Writing MFA at University of Nevada, Reno. Of Talamantes' collection, the 2023 contest judge Raquel Gutiérrez writes, "Throughout the extended references to the tyrannies and demands of a supply chain and its weakening links, this collection is filled in with power grids charged with emotion and biting critique of the ways capitalism determines relational possibilities. RUMINATE EMERGENT offers the reader lines that stretch idioms of productivity and desire across the page like the dream of escape, and transforms into a complex meditation on attrition and the unbearable lightness of wonder. The collection soars syntactically offering relentless rhythms, across lines as long and devastating as any bread line."

Daniel Talamantes is a writer from the Central Valley of California, working currently as an environmental historian and environmental justice activist. Essays, short stories, and poems of his have been published with Entropy, Elderly, SF Chronicle, Soft Punk, to name a few.

Snap to Grid

by Kelsey Reiman
$325

Purchase "Snap to Grid"

Snap to Grid is an artist book and animation by 2021-2023 Black Rock Press Fellow Kelsey Reiman. This publication, designed by Reiman and printed at Black Rock Press at the University of Nevada, Reno, is the fourth artist book of the biennial Parley Project. Snap to Grid is an edition of 48 accordion books with Turkish map folds nested into the valleys of the structure. The animation follows the colors as they change throughout the spectrum. Every Turkish map fold is a unique print in the edition and corresponds to a single frame in the 1200-frame 100-second animation. The first book in the edition contains the first frame in each color within the animation and the edition continues on in that fashion. The animation was made by incrementally changing the pressure printing plates after every print, so that when all the prints were photographed and digitally sequenced, they created the illusion of continuous motion. This book employs systems, both real and arbitrary, to explore the relationship between digital and an analog processes, analytical and playful approaches and decorative and functional aesthetics.

Reminders Within

by Skye Tafoya and Kaitlin Rees (2022)
Edition size: 150
8”x9”x.25”
$50

Purchase "Reminders Within"

"Reminders Within" is a hybrid publication collaboration between artist Skye Tafoya, writer Kaitlin Rees, and Black Rock Press. With Tafoya’s digital weavings and Rees’ precise, insistent voice, "Reminders Within" creates a protected space within which we can explore, in minute detail, the crumbs stuck to a child’s finger, our own desire to separate ourselves from them, however slowly, carefully. This book reminds us, we are no less artists or writers or makers because we are mothers. In fact, this duality of existence offers us a grand opportunity to hold a microscope up to humanity, to witness the continuously extending links between self and other. "Reminders Within" protects this space for multitaskers, for all of us.

Large book stands next to wooden box and smaller book

Opossum.png

by Jeff Thompson (2022)
Edition size: 50
5.1875 x 6.5 x 2.375
$315

Purchase "Opossum.png"

"Opossum.png" is a book and website created by artist Jeff Thompson that makes physical a single, low-resolution image. In early 1995, a group of strangers assembled online to develop what would become the PNG file format. One of the first images to be encoded in this new format was a pixelated photograph of an opossum, taken by programmer and PNG contributor Glenn Randers-Pehrson. The entire contents of this photograph are presented in a 968-page book, listed in the various formats required to be read by a computer. It also includes a wooden storage case and a printed copy of Randers-Pehrson's photograph. A website accompanies the project, containing a full set of annotations for the file, delving into the technical workings of the PNG format and the people who made it.

"Opossum.png" is housed in a handmade birch-ply box with accompanying digital print of opossum photo and “How to use this book” pamphlet. Please visit Jeff Thompson's page for the full set of annotations for the PNG file.

LATE HISS

by Paul Ebenkamp (2021)
$10

Purchase "LATE HISS"

LATE HISS by Paul Ebenkamp is the 2021 winner of the Desert Pavilion Chapbook Series judged by Nicholas Gulig. Of Ebenkamp’s collection, Gulig writes, “Like so much of the art that moves me, Late Hiss exists as a kind of wilderness, by which I mean it both is and isn’t there, apparitional in its disclosures, a song whose incompleteness echoes in the dark and fertile opening between the world of things and the ideas we struggle to tether to them. It isn’t possible to know with certainty who speaks in a book like this or where the voice originates, what half-imagined landscape it unfurls itself across. In “Aidos,” for example, the speaker moves among the re-collected fragments of a collage, “ensconced in its quantum funhouse,” passing paintings and citations, the “bright place” and “mercy basics” of an imagined sunset the only point of light, a fleeting mooring. The experience, both for the speaker and for the reader, is one of a dissociation made hospitable by a fragmentary sonic grace that one could listen to and lose themselves among, the music’s glitchy brilliance performing in the hiss and undertow. These are poems that leave me sober in my lostness, in my awe.”

Paul Ebenkamp is the author of The Louder the Room the Darker the Screen (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015) and Parallel Realism (Despite Editions, 2017). With Andrew Kenower he hosts the Woolsey Heights reading series from their home in Berkeley CA. He occasionally releases music under the name Position (paulebenkamp.bandcamp.com). The Bottom-Right Corner of All Things, a PDF of visual art, is forthcoming from Compline Editions.

Book unfolded and stands as a sculpture piece

Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful

by Kellee Morgado (2020)
Edition of 50
4.6875in x 8in x 0.5in
$225

Purchase "Don't Cut Your Hair It's Beautiful"

"Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful" is a set of interactive books that asks the reader to fold and unfold pages to construct or reveal images and text. Through the use of fragmented images, readers are encouraged to explore multiple possibilities of sequencing and arrangement where covers pair with center spreads to construct complete images. "Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful" is an effort to disrupt and explore the relationship between hair that is considered valuable and hair that must be hidden, removed, and made invisible. The book includes contributions from twelve creatives in particular, but not limited to, those working with hair as a subject or material. These individuals were invited to respond to one of several prompts or to generate their own response about hair on the body. They could also choose to include an image, either found or made. These 12 writings provide thoughts and experiences surrounding hair, multiple points of access, and themes connected to hair on the body including: shame, resistance, and identity.

Contributors: AB Gorham, Alisa Banks, Frances Melhop, Althea Murphy-Price, Rebecca Drolen, Jayoung Yoon, Kellee Morgado, Kate Kretz, Suzanne Gold, HAIR CLUB, Kat Howard, Sarah Scarr, Judith Rodby.

SHALL

by Jared Stanley (2019)
Edition of 50
6.5x9x.75
$275

Purchase "SHALL"

"SHALL" is an accordion-bound artist book and poem made from rubbings of the Newlands Monument in Newlands Circle in Reno, Nevada. The book’s author, Jared Stanley, is an assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Collaboratively designed by Jared Stanley and AB Gorham, in consultation with Inge Bruggeman, "SHALL" was letterpress printed from photopolymer plates on Zerkell book vellum paper, bound and published by Black Rock Press, 2019.

Selected Durations

by David Abel (2017)
Edition of 70
7.25 x 13.5 x 1
$375

Purchase "Selected Durations"

"Selected Durations" by David Abel is simultaneously a poem and a score for performance that captures, analyzes, quantifies and archives time. The kinesthetic and material qualities of this artist’s book embed Abel’s text in multiple layers of meaning, requiring the reader to perform the experience of the passage of time, which ticks away with each turn of the page.

The publication of "Selected Durations" was prompted by the author’s performance of the piece in a BFA seminar in the Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Reno, taught by Inge Bruggeman. Experiencing the pace and the compression of time in the reading led Bruggeman to propose that the text be editioned. Beginning with a prototype originally created by artist Katherine Kuehn, the Black Rock Press reimagined the work, bringing it to life in the hands of readers. Designed, printed and bound at the Black Rock Press, the book was published in the fall of 2017. Letterpress printed from photopolymer plates on Yupo Synthetic Paper and Neenah Touché.

Notes from Byzantium

by Shelly Taylor and Eben Goff (2019)
7”x9”x.25”
Edition 250
$55

Purchase "Notes from Byzantium"

A unique edition that combines Shelly Taylor’s intense, language-driven investigations into place and identity with the erosional utterances of Eben Goff’s entropic and elegant oil engravings in wax panels.

Things You See in the Dark

by Lauren Cardenas and Daniel Enrique Perez (2018)
Edition of 50
June 2018
11.5” x 14.5” x .25”
$175.00

Purchase "Things You See In The Dark"

"Things You See in the Dark", the newest Parley Project created by the 2016-2018 Black Rock Press Redfield Fellow, Lauren Cardenas, is a collaboration with Daniel Enrique Perez, an associate professor of Chicanx and Latinx studies in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at the University of Nevada, Reno and David Kirkland, a DJ based out of St. Louis, MO. The Parley Project is a biennial interdisciplinary book art project that fosters research and conversation across the University campus and involves Black Rock Press students, staff and faculty in its production.

"Things You See in the Dark" is a visual, tactile and auditory experience that pays homage to the uncertainties one might experience in the dark. Composed of a suite of prints and poems, along with a vinyl soundtrack, this artist book invites the viewer to slow down while meditating on the elusive nature of the dark.

Specimens of Wood Type

by Barbara Anne Kelly Historic Wood Type
Dimensions: 13 1/8" x 20"
$425

Purchase "Specimens of Wood Type"

This book documents wood type from the Barbara Anne Kelly Historic Wood Type and Printer’s Cuts Collection at Black Rock Press, which includes over 200 typefaces and 100 unique fonts ranging in size from 3 line to 100 line, and includes type from the United States and England.

Miscellaneous

by Autum Loewen
Dimensions: 14" x 20"
$40

Purchase "Miscellaneous"

Miscellaneous is a broadside designed and printed by Black Rock Press (BRP) student worker Autumn Loewen. The broadside documents the metal type ornaments in BRP’s collection and playfully organizes them into overlapping categories.

Old Geiger Grade

by Jaime Lynn Shafer (2016)
Edition of 50
6.75 x 4.375”

SOLD OUT

Letterpress printed from handset metal type and photopolymer plates on Rives BFK. The typefaces that appear in the book are Craw Clarendon and Clarendon. The book is handbound in a drum leaf structure and presented in a paper wrapper and slipcase. Laser cut on an Epilog Helix 24 Laser Cutter and handcut by the artist. Signed and numbered by the artist on the colophon.

Jamie Shafer: “Created as part of my experience as the Black Rock Press Redfield Fellow in Book Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno, "Old Geiger Grade" is the first book produced by the Black Rock Press for the Parley Project. It was influenced by the W.M. Keck Museum at the University of Nevada, Reno, the second-oldest museum in the state. Special thanks to the staff and students at the University of Nevada, Reno who assisted with production: Inge Bruggeman, Amy Thompson, Amaris Martin, Judith Rodby and Su Tran.

“'Old Geiger Grade' was inspired by Geiger Grade Road and the history of the Comstock. It places readers in the steep, dangerous terrain of the 1860s as they travel to Virginia City where they hope their fortunes might be found.”