Meri Brin was born in Chicago, Illinois and moved to the Bay Area in 1994. She received her BFA in Printmaking from Academy of Art University, and has taught for them since 2006. She has shown locally and nationally, including a solo show at Oaklandish. Group shows have included Junk Mail at The Soap Gallery, and the Print Zero Exchange in Seattle, Washington. Her prints are in private collections, as well as the Library of Congress. She has contributed artwork to Good Mail Day (Quarry Press) and Stoner Coffee Table Book (Chronicle Books). Brin is a member of Southern Graphics, and is on the publications committee with the California Society of Printmakers.

Elaine G. Chu has taught students of all ages throughout the Bay Area. Her work has been featured in “Greencraft” and “Somerset Studio Gallery” magazines and “1000 Artists’ Books.” She co-authored “Wood Paper Scissors,” a how-to crafts book. Elaine received a B.F.A. in graphic design from University of the Arts and B.A. in music from Yale University. A selection of her art can be viewed at EGChuHancrafted.etsy.com and on Instagram: @egchu1

Rea (pron. RAY-uh) Lynn de Guzman is a San Francisco-based interdisciplinary artist working in painting, print media, and sculpture. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited work in the US, and internationally in Australia, India, and the Philippines. She was Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture Visual Arts Featured Artist in 2017. In 2019, she curated "Wander Woman," a group show series featuring Bay Area-based, immigrant, women artists of color. She has been featured in the Asian Journal Magazine, Hella Pinay, KQED Arts, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications.

She teaches art at the de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, City College of San Francisco Extension, San Francisco Center for the Book, and Root Division, where she served as the organization’s first Filipina Teaching Artist Fellow in 2017.

Paula Gloistein has an MA in Humanities from Dominican College which really has very little to do with her work as a photographer, designer, and letterpress printer. After more than ten years in the wedding biz, she recently opened a small shop, big day design lounge, that showcases handmade wedding accessories, custom invitations, and workshops for crafty couples.

As a “near-native” of San Francisco, Jennie Hinchcliff has been teaching classes in bookbinding and related arts since 2001. Her bookworks can be seen in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art's Special Collection, the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and the Stadtbibliothek zu Berlin; she has shown work at the San Francisco Center for the Book, Pyramid Atlantic, the New York Art Book Fair and the Tokyo Art Book Fair.Jennie's personal work can be seen in the books "1000 Artist Journal Pages" (Quarry Books, 2008), "The Creative Entrepreneur" (Quarry Books, 2009), and “500 Handmade Books: Volume 2” (Lark Books, 2013). She is a co-author of "Good Mail Day: A Primer for Eye-Popping Post", which explores the infinite possibilities of correspondence art. Under the moniker Red Handed Rubber Stamps, she creates wacky rubber stamps for a purchasing public. 

Billy's passion for lettering began in pre-school with the assistance of Mommy Billie.  Billy and Billie spent hours shaping letter forms day in and day out. Later in life, Little Billy parlayed that lettering passion into a calligraphic profession, creating a petit line of stationery, penning custom lettering for clients, designing a line of porcelain for San Francisco's luxury speciality store, Gump’s and of course as an instructor at SFCB—taking students through those first step Little Billy took with Big Billie.  Start your new journey with Little Billy at SFCB.

Chad Johnson is an artist, printer, bookbinder, and teacher who has been living in the Bay Area for the past two decades. After earning an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, he has worked in conservation labs, letterpress shops, and libraries. He has experience conserving historic books, analyzing collections of rare books, working with artists and authors, printing professionally on many different letterpress machines, and teaching and sharing his love of books and printing. As SFCB's Studio Director | Resident Instructor, he brings knowledge and experience fueled by passion and enthusiasm for the art and craft of making books by hand. From digital typesetting to steamroller printing to fixing presses to talking about letterpress history, Chad is always happy to help students and artists learn to express themselves through the powerful medium of the handmade book.

Lars Kim is a designer and letterpress printer living in San Francisco. After several years in architecture and new media, she unexpectedly stumbled upon a Heidelberg Windmill and rediscovered the tactile beauty of letterpress. Since then, she has deepened her passion for typography as well as the technical aspects of print and bookbinding, working on a wide range of commercial and private projects. She happily continues to sling pixels and ink at Logos Graphics and her freelance practice, Solsken Design. 

Katie Leavens is a freelance illustrator & calligrapher here in San Francisco with a degree in Design. Her art explores the relationships between tradition & modernism through techniques, mediums, & subject matters. She has been studying calligraphy since 2015 and teaching since 2020. Katie is a member of  IAMPETH and on the Friends of Calligraphy council.

Grendl Löfkvist, Education Director at Letterform Archive, teaches type history and theory in the year-long postgraduate Type West program in type design. Grendl also teaches the history of graphic design, book arts, calligraphy, and letterpress printing at City College of San Francisco, as well as several classes here at the San Francisco Center for the Book. 

Grendl has ink in her veins: Löfkvist was a press operator for 13 years at Inkworks Press in Berkeley, a collectively owned, politically progressive offset printing company that recently closed its doors. She does letterpress and printmaking work under the imprints of Red Star Agitprop and Cloven Hoof Press, and she is currently on the Board of Directors of the American Printing History Association. 

Her interests include the study of printing as a subversive “Black Art,” and she is always on the lookout for bizarre, unusual, or macabre print and type lore.

Leigh McLellan typeset, letterpress printed, and hand bound letterpress books and broadsides from 1974 to 1990 under her imprint, Meadow Press. She has been an instructor at the San Francisco Center for the Book since 2002. She has also taught letterpress printing, bookbinding, and decorated papers at Mills College and the California College of Arts and Crafts, as well as workshops at the San Francisco Public Library, Stanford University, Pyramid Atlantic in Washington, DC, the Women's Graphic Center in Los Angeles, and the University of Iowa. Her work is in many library collections across the country, including the San Francisco Public Library, the University of San Francisco, Mills College, The University of California Bancroft Library, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, among many others. Her work has been exhibited widely. In a related field, she has been an independent commercial book and graphic designer since 1976, working mostly for publishers in the Bay Area. In both pursuits, she has won many design awards. See Leigh's Meadow Press work at http://meadowpressbooks.com and her commercial design work at http://www.leighmcdesign.com.

Bettina is living in San Francisco as a book artist and working as a letterpress printer with Kim Vanderheiden at Painted Tongue Studios, Oakland, California. She teaches workshops at the San Francisco Center for the Book, the Academy of Art University and O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. She loves books and boxes both as physical objects and as containers of meaning. She is interested in a variety of folded, sewn and woven structures in which she can incorporate her printing.

Read a short interview with Bettina here.

Taun Relihan is a conceptual and book artist, poet, novelist, photographer, and playwright. She has a doctorate in Integral Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies with a dissertation on renewal by vision. She also has a Masters Degree in Arts and Consciousness from John F. Kennedy University. She is fascinated by the role of wonder, vision, mystery and renewal in the creative process and in the completed art work.

Solange Roberdeau is a visual artist and freelance art educator and she works primarily in paper, sumi ink and with contemporary gilding in her own studio practice. Solange received a BFA in Printmaking from RISD in 2005 and an MFA in Studio Art from MICA in 2012. She teaches private classes as well as has taught workshops in contemporary gilding at institutions including locally at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley; nationally at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore and internationally at Cairo American College, Egypt. More information about Solange can be found on her website:

www.solange-roberdeau.com

Thea Sizemore has been a practicing artist for over 15 years focusing primarily on printmaking, bookarts, and illustration. As an east coast native, she has studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the California College of the Arts (where she received a BFA in printmaking with emphasis on bookarts). Her personal work tends to revolve around mixed media hand-bound book forms. Thea is also the founder and printer of Kavamore Press, a custom letterpress and design studio in West Oakland. In addition to private clients, Thea works with various SF Bay Area artists to create ephemera for projects. Recent projects include a Futurefarmers book produced for the Guggenheim and a collaboration with artist Libby Black for the SFMOMA. To read more visit http://www.kavamorepress.com/.

Tim Svenonius is a mixed-media artist whose work explores the intersections of history, memory and myth. A voracious reader and an avid researcher, his work is shaped by deep investigations into arcane knowledge and lore. He has worked for two decades in the museum field, as a designer, writer, and producer of digital media. In 2015 he self-published a monograph, A Book of Lost Latitudes, which explores the role of the whale in mythology and literature, through evocative drawings and found texts.

My media of choice are linoleum blocks, wood and metal type, and hundred year old letterpresses.

Most of my life has been dedicated to narratives: first as a reader and thinker; then as a Japanese papermaker, apprentice bookbinder, letterpress printer, and now a linoleum block carver. I am an active supporter and participant in California’s thriving literary and artistic worlds, having either organized, volunteered, or participated in exhibitions, panel discussions, and workshops that promote and nurture the creation and flourishing of artistic and literary expression.

Dorothy studied to be something other than an artist. She began as a fashion designer immediately after college but soon she became a partner of a manufacturing company, In Good Company, in 1965. She designed and manufactured kitchen soft goods and linens. Based in San Francisco, it became international and William-Sonoma was one of the main clients. In 1974 she received an award for Women in Business by Wells Fargo, Asian Inc. and NOW for her leadership as a woman of a successful company, In Good Company. The company was sold in 1976 and she became a Consultant to the Fashion Industry by request of the then President, Leonard Joseph. As a production and design consultant, she worked with many identity and music production companies, as well as new startups.
While living in Tequisquiapan, she became involved with the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group and taught to help small communities to become self-sustaining. Still today she goes to Mexico twice a year to teach.
Now in her 70’s and living in San Francisco, she is engaged in many volunteer activities, Ruth’s Table, Artseed, SCRAP-SF, San Francisco Center for the Book, and FabMo. She also mentored at Bay High School in their Senior Program. She was past President of Friends of Calligraphy, and still a Council member, and presently a Master Educator for the Macy’s Fashion Incubator San Francisco.
She still has the time to do ‘art’ and has worked on projects for MMOCA, Flax Art and Design, Kalligraphia, Ruth’s Table, FabMo and SCRAP-SF. She is a recipient of Honorable Mentions for her artwork at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art Altered Book Show 2014 and 2015. She is also busy helping her two daughters, care for her four grandchildren. To find out more about Dorothy's work, visit her blog www.dotsrainbow.com