Taking Space & Making Space for BIPOC Book Arts, Cultures, Histories, and Futures - Tia Blassingame
Proprietor of Primrose Press, Tia Blassingame is a book artist, printmaker, curator, 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 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, 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 (2023), San Francisco Center for the Book (2023), and at Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking this spring with writer/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.
"Decolonizing and Indigenizing Mentorship: Activating Community to Support Northern Indigenous Futures" Dr. Heather Igloliorte, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices Department of Visual Arts, University of Victoria
Dr. Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk-Newfoundlander and Nunatsiavut Beneficiary, is the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices at the University of Victoria, BC, where she is a Professor in the Visual Arts Department (2023-). Heather has been a curator since 2005, and was awarded The Hnatyshyn Foundation's Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art in 2021. In addition to her curatorial practice, Igloliorte teaches curatorial studies, critical museology, global Indigenous art history and research-creation at the University of Victoria. Since 2018 Heather has directed the nation-wide Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq / Pijariuqsarniq Project, a SSHRC-funded partnership grant which supports Inuit postsecondary students to explore professional career paths in all aspects of the arts, including curatorial practice, film and television, editing, collections management, arts administration and other areas of the visual and performing arts, in order to address the longstanding absence of Inuit in agential positions within the Canadian arts milieu. Heather publishes frequently on Indigenous art and curatorial practice; currently serves as the President of the Board of the Inuit Art Foundation and on the Faculty Council of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York; has served on the Board of Directors for North America's largest Indigenous art historical association, the Native North American Art Studies Association, and in 2021 she was awarded a Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal for her service to Indigenous art and artists.
