Printmaking graduate student receives Caxton Club Grant
calendar icon15 Dec 2014
The Caxton Club of Chicago was founded in 1895 by 15 Chicago bibliophiles, who desired to support the publication of fine books in the spirit of the prevailing arts and crafts movement. Today they sponsor bibliophile events, often in collaboration with the Newberry Library.
Caxton Club Grants are awarded for book-related projects to be completed in the academic year by students enrolled in a Midwestern graduate program in print culture studies, bibliography or library studies, history of the book or book arts areas. Graham was one of five book arts students from the Midwest who received funding for their book projects for 2014-2015.
Graham received $1,000 for his book arts project, which has a working title of “Vuelve, No Te Vayas (Come Back, Don’t Go).” His book will be a hand-printed, illustrated memoir of his 2006 trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, during an election and a teacher’s strike. He plans to revisit the area over the winter break.
“I have relatives in Mexico—about half my family through marriage and adoption are Mexican or Chicago—so I have some connection to that part of the world,” Graham said. “I really wanted to go back. The last half decade has been really crazy in Mexico. It’s not something that affects tourists so much, but for the people there, it’s been a hard time.”
He felt Oaxaca, which is in southern Mexico, was an interesting place to examine.
“It’s the most indigenous state in Mexico, so there’s a good connection with the past there,” he said. “There are a lot of people whose first language is not Spanish, and it has really interesting ecology. I found a lot of things fascinating about that region.”
His Caxton Grant will cover his travel to return there in early January.
“I will take a lot of pictures, talk to people and fill up some sketch books drawing as much as possible and absorbing as much as I can,” he said. “Then, I’ll be holed up on the third floor of Woods Art Building in the winter and seeing what comes out of that.”
Graham learned to make books in college at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in studio art.
“I’ve always made sketch books and travel journals,” he said. “But I was focused on printmaking as an undergraduate, as well. I hadn’t really combined them until recently, so making printed edition books is a fairly new thing for me in the last couple of years. They are really intensive undertakings with lots of moving parts to put together.”
Storytelling is what draws him to the medium.
“I think I’m drawn to storytelling and narratives that can happen when words and pictures are combined,” Graham said. “I have a younger brother who is a comic book writer and artist, and maybe what I’m doing is not the same thing, but we’re pointed in a similar direction.”
Some of his previous projects included a portfolio of 10 etchings titled “Miner’s Song,” accompanied by a poem he wrote about his Scots ancestry; and “Folly,” an unbound book with images and text on the era of communes, cults and back to the land living. He just completed a new book titled “The Sea-Bed” featuring woodcut and silkscreens that uses lyrics from a cowboy song, “O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.”
“I was very happy with how this book turned out, in terms of its look,” he said. “I like things that look very handmade and sort of rough or raw sometimes but still convey that they’re finished. That’s always a balance.”
Graham said receiving the grant was validating to his work.
“Book arts are a strange little world within a world, maybe, of fine printing,” Graham said. “A lot of really small press or unique artist books end up in private collections or special collections of libraries, so it’s not always the most obvious audience. It feels like a way to connect with an audience, and it’s a way to be supported in this labor-intensive project.”