The Wells College Book Arts Center is pleased to announce that Katie Baldwin will be the seventh Victor Hammer Fellow in the Book Arts. Ms. Baldwin, who will join the Book Arts faculty in late August, is currently teaching printmaking and book arts classes in Philadelphia. As the Victor Hammer Fellow, she will teach courses in introductory hand bookbinding as well as a variety of upper-level courses that may include binding, letterpress printing, box making, art on the press and printmaking. With the MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Ms. Baldwin brings both teaching experience and innovation to the program at Wells.
Ms. Baldwin has taught at Moore College of Art and Design, Tyler School of Art, The University of the Arts, Drexel University and The Evergreen State College. She has given workshops at the Fleischer Art Memorial in Philadelphia; the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY; The Center for Book Arts in New York City and The Experimental Print Institute in Mexico City.
A recipient of many grants and fellowships, Ms. Baldwin has shown her work in solo, two person and group exhibitions in the US, Canada, China, France, Japan, Korea and Poland. Among her residencies, she spent three months in Japan studying traditional moku hanga woodblock printing. Ms. Baldwin’s work is included in public and private collections across the country. Says Nancy Gil, director of the Book Arts Center, “We are thrilled to have Katie join us. Her skills in binding and printing make her a perfect fit for the Book Arts Center, and her talents in print making will make her an asset in the Visual Arts major as well.”
The fellowship is named for Victor Hammer, an Austrian printer, book designer, typographer and portrait artist, who fled Nazi Europe to come to Wells College in 1939. The Hammer Fellowship is a two-year book artist-in-residence program that was founded in 1998. By bringing young, emerging book artists to campus, the Wells Book Arts Center has made a name for itself in the book arts world; applicants in recent years have been not only from across the nation, but also from Mexico, Russia and Korea.
The Book Arts Center teaches introductory courses in letterpress printing, hand bookbinding, calligraphy and various upper-level courses in binding and printing. In addition to courses taught in the academic year, the Book Arts Center offers two week-long series of workshops in the book arts at the Wells Book Arts Summer Institute in July.
