Storytime with Mare Blocker
- Kate Leonard
- 9 hours ago
- 2 min read
An In-person, Seattle Premiere*
Movie Event
Sunday December 7, 2025
2:00pm
Allen Library, University of Washington
Seattle campus
No registration required
Image by Mare Blocker and Laura Zander Designs
Join revered book artist Mare Blocker for a matinee showing of Storytime with Mare—a film of autobiographical stories that have shaped Mare’s creative journey, produced by Trial and Error Productions. Q&A and (who knows what other magic) will follow. This program also celebrates Mare’s solo retrospective, Storytime with Mare: Artists Books from the Odditorium, which runs through February 15, 2026, at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.
The Allen Auditorium is on the ground level of the Allen Library North, UW Seattle campus. It is accessible from the ground level entrances of Allen Library North, or via the West (Red Square) entrance to Suzzallo Library. Note: The front of Suzzallo is encased in scaffolding for a building restoration, but is fully accessible. If using the Suzzallo entrance, walk through the middle of the building to the Allen Library where the crows & ravens sculpture is overhead. Take the elevator or stairs down to the ground level lobby. The Auditorium entrance is at the NE corner of the lobby.
UW Seattle is served by several Metro buses, and light rail.
Parking on campus lots is FREE on Sundays.
Seattle native Mare Blocker comes from a family of artists and makers. Her first job, at age five, was painting trees in the backgrounds of her grandfather’s landscape paintings, which they sold at the Seattle Center and Pike Place Market. She likes to say she grew up in the Seattle Center’s Fun Forest. She had a little bed under the platform of the Bubbleator where she napped in the afternoons while “working” in her grandparents’ shop.
She’s had many adventures—coaching a swim team, owning a biker bar in Arizona, and running a small rural library in a log cabin in the mountains of Idaho. Now, she’s back in Seattle, working in the studio she and her dad built. Mare has been making books since 1976 and founded The MKimberly Press in 1984. She has published 69 limited edition titles, over five hundred unique artists’ books, and numerous broadsides and prints. Her work is included in more than 100 museums, libraries, and public collections internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections, Library of Congress, and the Cynthia Sears Artists’ Book Collection at BIMA. Mare has received numerous publication awards, including commissions from the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Center for Book Arts in NYC.
* This is an unofficial proclamation, but the film debut was last month at BIMA.
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