In addition to the exhibition Nancy Holt: Sightlines, the Graham Foundation is pleased to present Arch, a project by artist Holly Downing and typographer Jack Stauffacher in its library from November 11 through December 17, 2011. Opening reception is Thursday, November 10, from 6 to 8PM.

Arch is a handmade artist’s book that focuses on the artistic and metaphoric aspects of the arch in Umbrian vernacular architecture. In this Graham Foundation presentation, several rare copies of the book will be shown alongside a poetic excerpt from Paul Valéry’s Dialogues, Eupalinos or the Architect, five mezzo tints, and photographs and bookmakers tools that allow insight into the project’s conceptualization and creation.

Jack Stauffacher designed the book’s layout and hand printed the type at the Greenwood Press in San Francisco. Foolscap Press, located in Santa Cruz, California, hand bound the books. Kathleen Watson assisted Holly in the printing of the mezzotints. Photographs showing the process of making the book are by Genevieve Barnhart.

Painter and mezzotint engraver, Holly Downing has been working in the archaic technique of mezzotint since the mid-1970s, when she was a student at the Royal College of Art in London. While at the Royal College, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship to pursue this form of engraving. Her work is held by many museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Scottish National Art Gallery, Edinburgh; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; and the New York Public Library, among others. She is an elected member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London, and her work has been exhibited internationally. Architecture has long been an important theme for her and has included investigations into the arch in Umbrian villages, the portal in Inca architecture, the arch in Peruvian island villages, and the Jewish ghettos of Andalusia.

Jack Stauffacher is an esteemed printer, typographer, book designer, and founder of the Greenwood Press (1936). His work in printed books, typography, and design combines an informed reverence for the classics with an insightful appreciation of innovation. He has published the definitive collection of the seventeenth-century Dutch typeface Janson. A Fulbright Scholar for three years in Italy in the 1950s, he is also a medalist of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and he has taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology and San Francisco Art Institute. He founded Cowell Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his work can be found in numerous public collections including the Department of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco.

Foolscap Press of Santa Cruz, California, makes finely crafted and creative books of literature with unusual bindings. Lawrence Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold started the press in 1990, after spending time at Schuberth Bookbindery, San Francisco, and Arion Press, in Berkeley, California. Gotthold studied under Jack Stauffacher at Cowell Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the 1970s. Their books are collected across the United States and in England.

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