From publishers weekly:

“A transplanted New Yorker, Colagrande has published two previous novels (Deco in 2012, and Hedz in 2009) with the Buffalo indie press BlazeVox and is also a blogger for the Huffington Post. He described the Jitney Books list as “quirky, deep, literary, and edgy,” pointing to the Brooklyn indie house Akashic Books, as well as McSweeney’s as models: “Jitney Books draws its inspiration from these two presses, and its content falls somewhere in between, drawing on all of Miami’s weirdness and roughness.

Jitney Books, a micropublishing venture launched in late 2017 by J.J. Colagrande, a novelist and full-time professor at Miami Dade College, is a good example of how a publisher with little capital can launch a small house with a list of talented but unknown writers. The press, which is named after the Miami minibuses that snake through the city’s gritty neighborhoods, focuses on quirky literary works written by authors based in the Miami area.”

Four large silkscreens on bark paper from Bhutan will be shown in cyc wall by Donna Ruff, who was an artist-in-resident at Deering Estate from 2019-2021, where she spent her residency researching the relationship between Charles Deering and botanist John Kunkel Small.

Small, chief botanist at the New York Botanical Garden, spent years exploring and documenting the wilds of South Florida in the 1920s. The title, Terra Incognita, is Latin for “unknown land”, as Florida at that time was largely the territory of Indigenous Peoples, exotic creatures, and tropical plantlife. The silkscreens are based on Small’s own photographs of landscapes taken on and around the Deering Estate grounds. Small’s book From Eden to Sahara: Florida’s Tragedy (1929), helped stimulate conservation efforts in South Florida to protect endangered lands that eventually brought about the creation of Everglades National Park in 1947.The substrate, handmade Resho paper, is known for being sustainable and durable, and includes bits of natural substances. 

About the artist:

Donna Ruff is an American visual artist, curator and educator currently living and working in Miami, Florida. She works in mixed media on found printed matter, primarily newspaper headline pages and historical documents. Ruff questions how written and photographic narratives are constructed by removing and transforming printed text and image to recontextualize the portrayal of world events. Ruff earned an MA in Art History from Florida State University and worked as a graphic designer and book illustrator in Miami and later in New York City. She earned an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. During her graduate studies Ruff was introduced to printmaking and papermaking at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper and began incorporating these techniques into her art discipline. Ruff’s work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA); New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, NM), Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL), Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum (Mesa, AZ), Center for Book Arts (NYC), Mass MOCA, Sol Lewitt Exchange (North Adams, MA), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), A.I.R. Gallery, New York, (NYC) and ArtSPACE New Haven (New Haven, CT). Ruff has worked as an artist in residence at PS 122 (NYC), Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NM), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, (Berlin, Germany), Deering Estate (Miami, FL) and Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM)

Join us in the auditorium for a conversation with Jesse Shaw on his creative process in developing the American Epic series of linocut prints, a work in progress that he has dedicated 14 years to thus far. Jesse will discuss how he uses personal memory, American and art history, and cultural iconography to build imagery, as well as his personal experience working on a long-term project.

About the Artist:
Jesse Shaw is a printmaker from Tennessee primarily working in relief prints carved from linoleum blocks. His work is based in the narrative, satirical, political, and social commentary tradition of the graphic print. Jesse is currently working on a series of fifty prints depicting the epic story of America. He has completed 30 prints in the series over the past thirteen years. Prints from his “American Epic” series of linocut prints have been exhibited nationally in Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Ft. Lauderdale, Philadelphia, New Jersey and North Carolina.

Jesse has been an invited guest speaker at several universities, including the University of Anchorage Alaska, AK, the University of North Carolina Greensboro, NC, Pennsylvania College of Technology, and Vanderbilt Divinity School, TN. Apart from academic activities Jesse has worked as a professional printmaker in fine art print publishing at Durham Press, in Durham, PA and curated and co-founded Print Riot, an annual print fair in Easton, PA. He received his MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design in 2009 and his BFA from Austin Peay State University in 2007. He currently teaches drawing and printmaking at Texas A & M International University in Laredo, TX.

Join us in the Main Gallery for an artist talk with Martin Mazorra on his current solo exhibition, bROADSIDE ATTRACTION.

About the Exhibition:
Brooklyn based Martin Mazorra is the founder of Cannonball Press and longtime advocate of straightforward printmaking and affordable art. His exhibit bROADSIDE ATTRACTION is an atlas of woodcut and woodtype printed signage on fabric banners. These are large-format hanging banners, letterpress printed in bold black ink on an antique press. They echo the stark economy and generic signage that one might find on any highway or roadside, and are chock-full of directives, both pithy and humorous. The text publicizes invented locations peppered with psychological and self-effacing satire that entices the mind to distraction, or drift, as it does when driving — while still managing to somehow keep eyes on the road.

Martin's work is not a remote, precious, technology-based product. It favors bold, informal messaging that is made by hand and detected quickly. These images, even seen in passing, can dwell in the mind, encouraging and shaping both internal and external narratives.

About the Artist:
Martin Mazorra is a Brooklyn based artist originally from West Virginia. He works in woodcut and letterpress, from small books, prints on paper, large prints on fabric, to site specific print-based installations. He is the founder of Cannonball Press, formed in New York in 1999.

His work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Taubman Museum in Virginia, the Block Museum in Illinois, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana, the Yale Beinecke Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is represented by Planthouse Gallery in New York City and Signal Return in Detroit.

Join us in the gallery at IS Projects (during SPF’ 21) for an artist talk with David Wolske on his solo exhibition, Re: Contextual.

Not local? The conversation will also be broadcast on the @isprojects Instagram live.

About the Artist
David Wolske is a typo/graphic designer, artist, and educator. His interdisciplinary practice combines the traditions of letterpress and printmaking with digital tools and design thinking. Wolske’s work is exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. He is a 2020 LHM Educator Fellow at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography at ArtCenter College of Design; the College Book Art Association 2018 Emerging Educator; 2016 Visiting Artist at Hatch Show Print; and a 2014 Utah Visual Arts Fellow.

Wolske’s work is represented by Artspace111 in Fort Worth. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas.

Live from the Book Cellar!

Join IS Projects’ founder and director, Ingrid Schindall, as she gives a talk during ‘Say What?!’ - a variety show of sorts for the after dark crowd.

Free and open to the public.

Join guest curators, Beth Sheehan and Sammi McLean, on September 26th from 6-8pm at the FAR Gallery in FATVillage for a curator's conversation and preview of upcoming exhibitions, Psych Land and In Exchange.

McLean and Sheehan will discuss their perspectives as independent artists curating contemporary printmaking before leading the audience on a brief tour of the two exhibitions. Psych Land highlights three artists whose work explores psychological landscapes through print, handmade paper, and book arts, while In Exchange investigates the tradition of collaboration within fine art printmaking, bringing twenty-one local and regional creatives from all disciplines together on the press. Both exhibitions are presented by SPF South Florida and will accompany the fourth edition of Small Press Fair Fort Lauderdale.

6:00 - 6:30 Preview
6:30 - 7:00 Curators discussion
7:15 - 7:45 Curator tour
7:45 - 8:00 Q&A

Elizabeth (Beth) Sheehan is a printmaker, papermaking, and book artist living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her work investigates ideas of memory and perception to explore her own lack of episodic memory. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Center for Book Arts, and the San Francisco Public Library. Sheehan has worked as a professional printer at Durham Press in Pennsylvania and at Harlan and Weaver in New York. She was also the Lead Binder and Bindery Manager at Small Editions in Brooklyn and teaches paper, print, and book workshops around the country.

Sammi McLean is a Florida-native and hybridized maker, working with installation and assemblage through the lens of printmaking. In addition to being a practicing visual artist, McLean has taught printmaking at various local institutions including the Norton Museum of Art, Dreyfoos School of the Arts and Armory Art Center. McLean received her MFA from Florida Atlantic University in Printmaking, teaches as an adjunct professor at FAU and serves as the Workshop and Gallery Coordinator for IS Projects in Fort Lauderdale, FL.