Best Practices in the Book Arts: Writing Artists’ Statements and More

The Book Arts Guild, the Northwest Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers, and the Puget Sound Book Artists Exhibition Committee are pleased to co-sponsor a special program relevant to preparing for placing your book in an exhibition or collection.

January 20, 2026

12:00 - 1:30 pm PST

Online, registration is required. Register HERE

(Please note: Many of our members belong to more than one organization. If you receive duplicate invitations, we kindly ask that you register through only one group).

We are delighted to welcome three leading voices in the book arts:

Alicia Bailey (Owner, Abecedarian Gallery), Johanna Drucker (Author, The Century of Artists Books), and Erin Zona (Curator, Cynthia Sears Artists’ Book Collection at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art), for a conversation on professional best practices. Together, they will discuss:

• Crafting clear and compelling artists’ statements

• Developing strong and cohesive exhibition themes

• Documenting artists’ books effectively

Join us for an engaging and insightful session with these distinguished experts as they share practical guidance to support your work in the book arts.

(More) About the Speakers

Alicia Bailey is owner/director of Abecedarian Artists Books in Denver, Colorado. Alicia acts as an independent curator/juror, instructor/mentor and regional events coordinator in the book arts. In her studio work, she has focused on book and box arts since the mid-nineties, producing box and artists’ book works. Her work has been featured in dozens of solo and group exhibits internationally and is held in numerous public, private and special collections worldwide. An archive of her work is under development at University of Denver Penrose Library Special Collections.

Johanna Drucker is Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor Emerita, Department of Information Studies, UCLA. She is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, fine art, and digital humanities. Her publication, Inventing the Alphabet (University of Chicago Press, 2022), documents the intellectual history of knowledge about the invention and spread of the alphabet. Her most recent publication, Affluvia: The toxic off-gassing of affluent culture, was published by The Bridge in May 2025. Her artist’s books are represented in museum and library special collections throughout North America and elsewhere and were the subject of a travelling retrospective, Druckworks: 40 years of books and projects, in 2012-2014. The Century of Artists’ Books, published by Granary Books in 1994, remains a definitive and classic text in the field.

Erin Zona is an artist, curator, and arts administrator with two decades of experience in artist’s book publishing, education, archival work, and nonprofit leadership. She is currently the Curator of the Cynthia Sears Artists’ Book Collection at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. From 2017–2024, Zona served as Co-Executive Director of Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW) in Rosendale, NY. During her tenure at WSW, she advanced cultural and fundraising campaigns that expanded the organization’s philosophy of gender and developed its onsite archive into a dynamic research space. As director of WSW’s publishing imprint, she oversaw the production of more than 27 new artist’s book titles and represented over 200 artists from the organization’s publishing history, placing artists' books in hundreds of collections across the United States.