As part of its 75th anniversary celebration of Women of Voice and Vision, Scripps College presents renowned book artist Susan E. King who will speak on “Redressing the Sixties: What Artists Wore, Lessons à la Mode” on Tuesday, March 26, at noon in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons on the Scripps campus. Immediately following will be a reception. This event is free and open to the public.
The 2001 recipient of the National Museum of Women in the Arts Book Fellowship and a former instructor at the Scripps College Press, King is an artist and writer whose work has been called by critics “a feat of craftsmanship and perception”. She has made artist’s books since 1975, drawing on her own life for content, and her subject matter ranges from the influence of clothing and fashion, explored in her award-winning Redressing the Sixties, (art) lessons à la mode; to the history of photography and the use of photo albums, seen in her recent works I Dream Atget and Family Album; to her personal experience of surviving cancer, Treading the Maze, an artist’s journey through breast cancer.
King was born into a family of Southern storytellers whose indelible influence of oral tradition and history is often evident in her work. After earning a master’s degree in art at New Mexico State University, she moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s to join the experimental Feminist Studio Workshop, where she spent two years studying writing, language, criticism, photography, and design before turning to printing arts. In addition to being represented in the Denison Library Rare Book Collection at Scripps, King’s books reside in several permanent collections, including the J. Paul Getty Research Library in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum Library in London.