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Chris Fritton & Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder
BIOs
Chris Fritton is a poet, printer, and artist based in Buffalo, NY. He’s the former Studio Director of the Western New York Book Arts Center, and he’s best known for his decade-long traveling project and subsequent book, The Itinerant Printer. He’s been a visiting artist and instructor at hundreds of institutions, including RISD, MICA, VCU, The Center for Book Arts, and others. His work is held at The Library of Congress, the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry at University of Iowa, the Letterform Archive, and more.
Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder is a book artist and proprietor of Coyote Bones Press based in San Antonio, Texas. She creates limited-edition artist’s books, teaches workshops at various institutions, and hosts Books in the Wild Podcast. Keri holds an MFA in Book Art & Creative Writing from Mills College, and has worked at Flying Fish Press and BookLab II as an edition bookbinder. She was awarded as Helen M. Salzberg Artist in Residence for Jaffe Center for Book Arts in 2019-2020, winner of the 2022 MCBA Prize, and recipient of the 2023 Center for Craft Teaching Artist Cohort Grant.
ARTIST STATEMENT
"Please Stay Until Doomsday," an artist's book comprising multiple devices that create an (almost) infinitely variable poem. The talk will focus on the construction of the book as an object, the collaborative writing and design process, and the inspiration behind the piece. Please Stay Until Doomsday is a planispheric map of our internal space. The folio houses a set of volvelles that revolve around themes of isolation, connection, and the inevitable phases of a relationship. The first sequence of concentric rings conjures a series of unique poems made by adjusting silver handles reminiscent of constellations in a night sky. Each poem is a singular instance of hundreds of possibilities, and each adjustment creates a new iteration. These stellar poetic arrangements are elaborated further by the adjacent volvelle, which reveals nine static poems accompanied and adorned by illustrations of human experiences envisioned as celestial bodies. Throughout history we have looked to the skies for guidance and perspective. This book is a map of the sky, as well as a map of ourselves. It represents our internal cosmos: the dynamic reality of love and loss; the effect of proximity and gravity; the danger and delight of longing; the loneliness we feel even in the midst of people – each of us a body unto ourselves, in conversation with, adjacent to, but never really connected to, others.
ARTWORK
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