Models for Creative Resistance

July 29, 2020

First, I want to thank all the curators, collectors, librarians, and teachers who have been supporting Booklyn through these difficult and complicated times. We are so grateful for your attention to our bulletins and the support these dispatches have inspired; it’s not hyperbole to say that this has been a lifeline for us.  I can’t tell you how many times I have written and rewritten this text. But then I realized that everything I wanted to say is already contained in the work below. This is the beauty of working for Booklyn, we’re a service organization and we have the privilege of working with so many powerful, talented, and loving people. We work hard here at Booklyn but we do so in recognition of the fact that the artists, activists, and social justice organizations we work with are all working harder, on the front lines, and in the streets. So, I’ll step back and let them and their work speak for themselves.  In respect and solidarity, Black Lives Matter, y la lucha continua, Marshall Weber

The Poor People’s Campaign Box Set 2018, edition of 20, $2,400 50 years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign, Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis started the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Now aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, Barber, Theoharis and the PPC have become nationally-recognized agents in the current struggle against economic racism. This box set features historical organizing ephemera gathered during the birth of the PPC including original press releases signed by Reverends Barber and Theoharis and 30 evocative and educational prints addressing issues of racialized capitalism by the members of Justseeds Artist Cooperative. https://booklyn.org/catalog/the-poor-peoples-campaign-a-national-call-for-moral-revival-portfolio/ Nicolas Lampert: A Decade of Activist Art 2018, edition of 20, $3,800 Special client price: $2,400. Nicolas Lampert is one of the leading activist-artist-educators in the United States. He has literally written the book on activist art – A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements published by The New Press in 2013. A prolific artist and relentless organizer, Lampert is one of the national leaders of the Art Build movement, a co-founder of the Justseeds printmakers cooperative, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and has worked within numerous social justice organizations. Included are 38 prints and ephemera by Lampert documenting almost every major social justice movement of the 21st Century. https://booklyn.org/catalog/nicholas-lampert-a-decade-of-activist-art-portfolio/ New Titles Voces de la Frontera: Historical Box Set Various artists, 2020, edition of 8, $3,200 Special client price: $2,800. With 46 items created from 2014 to 2019, the Voces de la Frontera (VDLF) Historical Box Set features art from a variety of activist-artists and Milwaukee community members. Community-generated picket signs on muslin and paper, screenprinted posters, organizing flyers, and other political and VDLF ephemera numbers among the contents. A flash drive of digital images and videos related to VDLF is included. VDLF is Wisconsin’s leading immigrant rights organization serving the Latinx community in Milwaukee, WI, but also operating on a national level. VCLF leadership has been a strong voice and ally for the current Black Lives Matter movement illuminating intersectional issues of economic inequity, police brutality, mass incarceration, and other human rights issues.  https://booklyn.org/catalog/voces-de-la-frontera-historical-boxset/ Theophilus Imani: little black book 2020, edition of 150, $14 little black book is a personal navigation through the complex identity of a Ghanaian born and raised in Italy. This project gathers notes taken in moments of black delight found between duty and pleasure, learning and leisure, and the loss and finding of self. The book comes to life with notes, photographs, and sketches weaved together in the most poetic of ways. This is a publication of Homie House Press, “a skeleton bones crew of femmes creating + publishing in the foto book medium. We are photographers + bookmakers + educators holding space for and with underrepresented communities.” https://booklyn.org/catalog/homie-house-press-little-black-book/ Last Chance: Going Out of Print David C. Driskell: A World Made of Memories, History, & Art 2015, edition of 30, $8,800 An exceptionally rare and exhilarating introduction to the work of acclaimed African American artist and curator David C. Driskell. Featuring 3 original linocuts created for this publication by Driscoll, framed by lush inkjet reproductions from Driskell’s paintings and with excerpts from an interview with Ananda Holton. This is the only artists’ book Driskell produced in his prolific career as a curator, painter, and printmaker. Tragically, Driskell died of Coronavirus in April of this year. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/obituaries/david-driskell-dead.html “During his seven-decade career as an art historian and curator Driskell made contributions that are considered foundational to the field of African American Art. He curated over 35 exhibitions of work by black artists, including Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Elizabeth Catlett. In 1976, Driskell mounted Two Centuries of Black American Art for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which was the highest-profile exhibition of its kind at a major U.S. museum, and which, according to ARTnews, “staked a claim for the profound and indelible contributions of black and African American art-makers since the earliest days of the country.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Driskell https://booklyn.org/catalog/a-world-made-of-memories-history-and-art/ Mike Taylor: Present, Perfect, Progressive Tense 2019, edition of 11, $2,400 Through extensive research at the ACCORD* Civil Rights Museum in St. Augustine Florida, where the artist resides, Taylor constructs a narrative of events between 1960 and 1964 chronicling the Civil Rights struggles of St. Augustine’s residents and the city’s resistance to racial integration. The artist reanimates these occurrences through a combination of forthright text and exuberant imagery. The contrasting colors and overlapping imagery of the multilayered screen prints illuminate the intensity of the struggles faced by the Civil Rights movement in St. Augustine and throughout the country. As the title implies, elements from this historical narrative continue to seep into the present day and this book is an evocative teaching tool for educators, activists, and advocates.  https://booklyn.org/catalog/present-perfect-progressive-tense/ *The Anniversary to Commemorate the Civil Rights Demonstrations