Tia Blassingame – Colored: A Handbook

Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College’s 112th Annual Exhibition
Back to Front: Artists’ Books by Women

Tia Blassingame, Colored: A Handbook, Primrose Press: 2020, persimmon-dyed paste paper, letterpress and digital printing, original poetry, persimmon-dyed wooden container
5.5 x 8 in., Courtesy of Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Cynthia Sears Collection

Tia Blassingame: “I utilize printmaking in the book form to address issues of race and racism in the United States. Employing a mixture of poetry, typography, printmaking and book arts techniques like relief printing, etching, screenprinting, lithography, letterpress printing, hand papermaking and bookbinding, I examine African American architectural, spatial and cultural history, racial prejudices and perception. As many of my pieces deal with historical racism, I employ period typefaces to create a look and ambiance that transports the viewer to the appropriate era. Because of its tactile nature and impression on the page, letterpress printing invites the viewer to connect immediately and then dissect the text and images slowly.”

“Disturbing images and histories rendered using wooden or metal letters or an etching plate can be atmospheric and intriguing. Instead of repelling the viewer, artists’ books can allow for a nuanced discussion on issues of race to unfold with each page turn. The reader/viewer can locate themselves within the book as they create their own path to view and connect deeply with the book, its text and prints, history itself.”

BIOGRAPHY

Proprietor of Primrose Press, Tia Blassingame is a book artist, printmaker, curator, and educator exploring the intersection of race, history, and perception. Utilizing printmaking and book arts techniques, she renders racially-charged images and histories for a nuanced discussion on issues of race and racism. Blassingame holds a B.A. in Architecture from Princeton University, M.A. in Book Arts from Corcoran College of Art + Design, and M.F.A. in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design. She has been a teaching artist at the National Building Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Glen Echo, Pyramid Atlantic, and University of Maryland at College Park. Blassingame was a curatorial intern at Smithsonian Museum of American History and served as the Image Coordinator for the Race & Ethnicity in Advertising–America: 1890-Today, an Advertising Education Foundation-Smithsonian Institution project. She has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI), the Andy Warhol Preserve, the International Print Center New York (IPCNY), and MacDowell Colony. Her artist’s books and prints can be found in library and museum collections around the world including British Library, Library of Congress, Rijksmuseum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Britain, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and State Library of Queensland. In 2019, Blassingame founded the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color collective, which has over 40 members, to bring Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) book artists, papermakers, paper engineers, letterpress printers, printmakers, children’s book illustrators into conversation and collaboration with scholars of their cultures’ Book History and Print Culture, to build community and support systems.

Blassingame co-curated the NEA and Center for Craft grants-awarded Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures, a travelling exhibit, at Minnesota Center for Book Arts
(April 14- August 12, 2023) and San Francisco Center for the Book (October 22 -December 22, 2023) with writer, book artist, publisher Stephanie Sauer. In 2022 she co-curated the Troubling:
artists’ books that enlighten and disrupt old ways of being and seeing exhibit at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art with book artist/educator Ellen Sheffield.

Blassingame is an Associate Professor of Art at Scripps College, where she teaches Book Arts and Letterpress Printing, and serves as the Director of Scripps College Press.