Thinking across boundaries. Columbia’s three Interdisciplinary Arts graduate programs are built upon the idea that thinking across boundaries and drawing upon multiple disciplines breaks open ideas about creating and seeing. * Here we present work by several accomplished alumni of one of those three programs, the M.F.A. in Book and Paper Arts. This program is particularly interesting in that it combines a quite forward-thinking, truly interdisciplinary approach with some very, very old techniques and traditions. * The artists featured here are working all over the country, practicing their artistic disciplines in many different ways. We invite you to take a look at what they’re doing.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Marilyn Sward, founding director of the Center for Book + Paper Arts.

Click on a name to skip to: Ben Blount, Miriam Centeno, Cindy Iverson, Aimee Lee, Mardy Sears, Shawn Sheehy, Jessica Spring, Jen Thomas

Ben Blount (M.F.A. '05) "I am interested in politics as it relates to the interactions of people living together in a society—specifically in our identities as racial and cultural groups," says Cleveland-based artist Ben Blount. He came to Columbia—where, he says, "I found my voice (and my passion)"—from a career in the applied arts. "Through books, broadsides, and interactive installations, I attempt to re-present the implicit and often explicit notions of race and culture that are deeply rooted in American society." He addresses these issues head-on, without sugar-coating them, often leaving the viewer uncomfortable—but thinking.

Miriam Centeno (M.F.A. ’03) The work shown here, Al Cabo Volver (The Return), is a Parcheesi-style board game that retraces a sixteenth-century poem about Queen Isabella: her roles in the battle for her throne, her marriage, the expulsion of Muslims from Spain, and the discovery and conquest of the New World.

In addition to artmaking, however, Miriam Centeno’s love of books and their care has led her to a career in preservation. She currently repairs books in the Collections Care Division for the Library of Congress. “Since 2007,” she says, “I have taken steps to be a preservation advocate in my native Puerto Rico. I have established ties with La Casa del Libro, a small rare-book library/museum, and I helped present two workshops offered by the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate in Puerto Rico covering disaster preparedness.” Centeno is part of the internal disaster recovery team. In between it all, she’s establishing a bindery studio in Takoma Park, Maryland, with three colleagues who are also book artists.

Cindy Iverson (M.F.A. '04) The series to which this work belongs was inspired by entries in Cindy Iverson's dream journals that started out, "All I can remember is..." Collectively titled "Dream Fragments," the series explored "those little juicy morsels of fragmented parts of dreams," she says.

"I photographed all the subjects and layered their imagery onto collaged canvases. I was attracted to the idea of photographing dreams—creating an image by construction a reality of the subconscious mind. I was intrigued by the concept of capturing a moment frozen in time that reveals the interior landscapes of dreamers."

Iverson is a member of the Eye Lounge gallery in Phoenix, and is the founder of The Paper Studio, a book and paper arts teaching space in Tempe, Arizona. This spring, The Paper Studio experienced a break-in, and Iverson's digital image library, as well as business files, were stolen. She urged us to use her story to help other artists avoid experiencing similar losses. See "We've Got Your Back: Demo's guide to offsite data storage" for advice from an expert.

Aimee Lee (M.F.A. ’06) “I relate to what falls between the cracks and seek quiet sanctuaries to process the world and how humans participate in it,” says Aimee Lee, who has traveled extensively doing artist residencies since leaving Columbia, and will spend the coming year in Korea on a Fulbright grant “to research the history, techniques, and contemporary applications of traditional Korean handmade paper.” Her work often incorporates fibers and techniques native to the places she visits, and combines handmade paper, found objects, “unplugged” performances, and sustainable practices into her personal storytelling.

When home in New York, she works in the studio of a papermaker and book artist she met during a Columbia internship. “Through creative dreaming and hard work,” she muses, “I’ve made a real life for myself as an artist.”

Mardy Sears (M.F.A. ’06) “My goal is to create an aged quality in the structure of my books, rather than historical accuracy in their contents,” says Mardy Sears, who complements her studio practice with a job as a conservation technician in the Art Institute of Chicago’s department of prints and drawings and running Evanston Print and Paper Shop, which she co-founded with artists Eileen Madden and Vanessa Shaff.

Recently, her work has addressed “a combination of current events, including contemporary moral views, with more personal and intimate imagery.” She draws upon historical techniques and binding structures, even mimicking the aesthetics of age or water damage. “I particularly like combining modern concepts with nostalgic forms,” she says.

Shawn Sheehy (M.F.A. ’02) “I like to invest myself in as much of the book production as possible: making the paper, writing the text, illustrating the images, engineering the structures, binding the folios, and designing the integrated whole,” says Shawn Sheehy, whose pop-up books are widely admired for their feats of engineering as well as their aesthetic and narrative qualities.

While compelling as objects, Sheehy’s works also function as books in the truest sense. “I make artists’ books because they are ideal for communicating complex visual and narrative concepts,” he says. Among the latter are “the dynamic principles that hold wild populations in balance. I explore these principles in light of the human search for sustained co-existence with the wild world and the growing global interest in uninhibited growth.”

Jessica Spring (M.F.A. ’02) “I am here, amazed at the open heart of this place. The ghosts in my house have revealed themselves, here, now, despite more than 100 years of chances before. Did they know I am a bookmaker obsessed with photographs of strangers?” So reads some of the text in Parts Unknown, an artist book Jessica Spring made using images from 1890s-era glass-plate negatives she found while clearing out the attic of her Tacoma, Washington house. She used 40 of the images in this book. “The text at the center focuses on the history at the time,” says Spring. “Ousting all the Chinese residents as part of ‘The Tacoma Solution,’ women working to get the vote in Washington, and the development of new photographic [methods] that were really the first snapshots.” Spring runs Springtide Press in Tacoma and teaches at the Elliott Press and the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle.

Jen Thomas (M.F.A. ’05) “I’m most interested in creating narratives that reach beyond personal events in my life and achieve a universality that draws viewers in and conjures related memories of their own,” says Jen Thomas, who also publishes etchings of trailer parks under the imprint Veronica Press, teaches at Columbia and the International Academy of Design & Technology, and has written for publications such as Afterimage and Punk Planet. She entices viewers to interact with her work by creating not only installations and objects, but board games as well, addressing such subjects as “urban life, the wedding industry, the rural South, Harry Potter, and women’s reproductive issues.”