The fascinating world of book arts: 3 Bay Area makers share their stories

A book artist is someone who elevates bookmaking to an art form using little more than ink, paper and a wildly creative imagination.

The Bay Area is known internationally as a hub for these handmade, architectural artist books. In addition to the region’s long history of printmaking and its thriving academic book arts programs, we are home to CODEX, one of the world’s largest biennial exhibitions of artists’ books, fine press books and other handmade publications.

Each spring, book artists from Santa Cruz to Sebastopol and around the world gather at the  Craneway Pavilion in Richmond to display their work for the public. CODEX may appear like endless aisle upon aisle of exhibitor tables — a whopping 203 in 2022 — but once you stop, chat with a book artist and spend some time with their work, a whole world will open up.

We caught up with three Bay Area book artists who exhibited at the most recent CODEX to talk about their materials, inspiration and often fascinating processes. Here are their stories.

Bryan Kring, Oakland

Bugs. Warts. An all-seeing eye. East Bay book artist Bryan Kring starts with a simple object or idea and unleashes stories and pictures that are at once playful and profound, often with moving parts, windows and other surprises.

Kring, a printmaker and graphic designer, found his way to paper art-making via painting and drawing — he holds a BFA in both from the San Francisco Art Institute — and creative writing.

“I had a hard time parting with my paintings,” says Kring, who lives in Alameda and works in a studio in West Oakland, where he has been tinkering with laser-printed text for nearly 20 years. “With paper you don’t have that problem. You can always have multiples. And there is a certain intimacy that is created with the object when you can hold it in your hand.”

Darkly humorous stories about transformation are his specialty. “Peephole” is a Twilight Zone-like tale told from the vantage point of a door’s peephole, about how simple obsessions can have horrible consequences. In “Wart,” a 4- by 4-inch compressed booklet, Kring befriends a wart on his finger which turns into an eye, becomes his drinking buddy and then his mortal enemy. And battery-operated “Lunae Secutor” is about a fictional caterpillar, which upon realizing it can’t metamorphose into a butterfly, becomes depressed and seeks solace in the moon.

“I like giving personalities to everything,” says Kring, who hand-painted the box-like book’s fuzzy purple caterpillar. Turn a wooden handle, and the caterpillar walks toward a paper moon illuminated by a hidden LED light.

“Peephole” and “Wart” are among his best sellers — Kring’s book sell on Etsy for $10 and up. Along with “Bug,” which is as much about an internal change as it is “the natural desire to kill anything with six legs,” these books connect with people, he says.

Currently, he’s working on a series about a research scientist stranded in the Arctic Circle. By story’s end, he’ll discover his role in the universe and maybe the meaning of life. “Or he’s going to make peace with the fact that there is none,” Kring says. “By doing these books, I sort of answer these questions for myself, too.”

Paloma Lucas, San Francisco

Ever held a micro book in your hand? There is a whole society of book artists dedicated to making these teeny, 1½-inch books. Paloma Lucas of San Francisco is among them.

After a career in finance, the Spanish-born artist found her medium while taking a bookbinding class at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. She discovered micro books and miniature books — those can be a tad larger — not long after. The process for making these minute readers is tedious: Lucas wears magnifying glasses, uses a miniature book press and sews the little pages together by hand.

“I like it, because it’s something you can bring in your pocket and share with people,” she says. “It’s kind of sculptural.”

Her first microbook, “Goodnight Menopause,” is a parodic adaptation of the Margaret Wise Brown classic, “Goodnight Moon.” Instead of bidding goodnight to the moon and mittens, this narrator addresses a fan, a scale and “a little nip of wine.” The poem is by Barbara Younger; the illustrations and bookbinding are Lucas’ work.

“I try to find topics that make me happy and make me laugh,” she says.

Her larger pieces are playful, too. “Let’s Play Pool,” an experiment in triangular box making, is billiards in a box. Inside a green felt-lined triangular box that resembles a billiards rack, there are nine 2-inch mini books, each colored like billiard balls. Those accordion-style books are inscribed with facts about the game and can be read by turning the pages and rotating their sides. The project was inspired by Lucas’ memories of playing pool in Spain.

“Artist books represent a bridge back to the past when books were unique items cherished by their owners,” she says. “They also represent a connection to the future where common books are gradually phased out, and these unique creations again become cherished keepsakes.”

Nanette Wylde, Redwood City

Retired art professor and interdisciplinary artist Nanette Wylde always included artist books in her coursework — even for students in her digital media courses.

“People like to have something in their hands,” says Wylde, an educator for 26 years. “There’s so much screen, and it’s ephemeral. Digital doesn’t have the same richness as something that’s handbound.”

Wylde should know. The Redwood City book artist-writer has been combining the two into socially reflective pieces for 30 years. “Redacted Babar: ABC Free” is a meditation on the endangered populations of African and Asian elephants. The 13 landscape images in “From This Earth,” a collaboration with her husband and book artist Kent Manske, are photographs of a tree stump-like paper-pulp sculpture the duo created from local craft industry byproducts such as glass, flower petals, hair, denim, grape skins and oyster shells.

They conceived and created the project during the 2020 shelter-in-place, when wildfires were raging across California.

“It’s about a person moving through a decimated landscape to find a place that is livable again,” Wylde says. “You Are the Tree,” the 7 foot-diameter replica of an old growth, coast redwood stump, is on display at the glass-encased Redwood City Art Kiosk on Broadway.

And “Over It,” a relief-printed folder-like book, features 13 ways to help actualize one’s agency in turbulent times. Wylde created the book as a response to the political events following the 2016 election. It includes a button that says “create,” poems by Rumi and Rilke and reminders to read, eat healthy and make someone laugh.

“It’s something to help people remember how to take care of themselves,” says Wylde, whose artist books and electronic works are included in collections from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco to the University of Oxford.