A Radical Alteration: Women’s Studio Workshop as a Sustainable Model for Art Making
A Traveling Exhibition Curated by Maymanah Farhat
Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW) is one of few remaining arts organizations that originated at the height of second-wave feminism, the era that sparked Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (1971).
WSW is a model for radical change. Founded in 1974 by artists Ann Kalmbach (b. 1950), Tatana Kellner (b. 1950), Anita Wetzel (1949 to 2021), and Barbara Leoff Burge (b. 1933), it has grown from a grassroots organization to an institution that serves women and trans, intersex, nonbinary, and gender-fluid artists. Its longevity is due to the original vision of its founders, who developed a series of programs that support artists while also contributing to the sustainability of the organization itself. One of these programs is the Artist’s Book Grant, which has been a focus of WSW’s Artist-in-Residence program since 1981. Since 1974, WSW has brought more than 5,000 artists from around the globe to work in printmaking, hand papermaking, letterpress printing, photography, book arts, and ceramics. To date, the workshop has published more than 245 artists’ books by residents.
This exhibition looks at the organization’s rich history as a proponent of book arts for marginalized communities in the U.S., through artists’ books, zines, printed materials, ephemera, and archival materials. It highlights the evolution of the organization as it successfully created the conditions under which art-making and institutional support serve a sustainable and more equitable art ecosystem.
A Radical Alteration: Women’s Studio Workshop as a Sustainable Model for Art Making is organized by Women’s Studio Workshop. Presentation of the exhibition at NMWA is made possible by a generous bequest from Marjorie B. Rachlin.
NMWA is a participant in Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, an initiative of Craft in America.
For exhibition-related resources, including label transcripts, visit nmwa.org/radical or scan the QR code on the wall.
Non-flash photography is encouraged. Share and tag us on social media: #NMWAnow @WomenInTheArts
The large-print guide is ordered presuming you enter the fourth floor from the passenger elevators. The exhibition begins to the left of the sliding glass doors.
Women’s Studio Workshop founders Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, Anita Wetzel, and Barbara Leoff Burge, 1975
Clarissa Sligh working at Women’s Studio Workshop, 1988
Barbara Beisinghoff
b. 1945, Hof Hiester, Kreis Celle, Germany
The Angel Is My Watermark, 2009
Artist’s book with silkscreen on handmade paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
J. Catherine Bebout
b. 1949, Muncie, Indiana
The Coming Matriarchy, 1984
Artist’s book with silkscreen and color etching; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center
Kathy Aoki
b. 1968, New Haven, Connecticut
How I Lost My Vegetarianism, 1998
Artist’s book with linoleum block printing; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Terry Lee Czechowski
b. 1954
That C Word, 1999
Artist’s book with polymer clay covers, coffee filters, and Gocco printing; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Women’s Studio Workshop
Women’s Studio Collective poster, 1974
Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Barbara Leoff Burge
b. 1933
Kunst Comix: A Phoney Art History, 1983
Silkscreen and color copier printing; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
In this silkscreened and color-photocopied artist’s book, WSW cofounder Barbara Leoff Burge intervenes in the global canon of art history with collaged images that draw from a variety of sources, from comics to advertisements. Created in 1983, the book parodies an academic survey of visual culture, but also reflects the rapidly increasing flow of imagery that resulted from the expansion of cable television. Juxtaposing a Russian icon with postage stamps and a scene from a comic, the artist questions the status of images, or perhaps even the aura of art, that results from different categorizations and contexts. Today, Kunst Comix seems to anticipate the barrage of images brought by digital media.
Ann Kalmbach and Tatana Kellner
Ann Kalmbach, b. 1950, Rochester, New York; Tatana Kellner, b. 1950, Prague
Your Leader Could Be a Tyrant, How to Tell, 2019
Artists’ book with silkscreen and digital printing; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Barbara Leoff Burge, Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, and Anita Wetzel
Barbara Leoff Burge, b. 1933; Ann Kalmbach, b. 1950; Tatana Kellner, b. 1950; Anita Wetzel, b. 1933, d. 2021
4 x 4, 1981
Artists’ book with letterpress and silkscreen on handmade paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Lyman Piersma
b. 1948, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; d. 1988, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Going to Camp: A Meditation About AIDS, Quarantine, Exile and Personal Loss, 1987
Artist’s book with silkscreen, color photocopy, and photography; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Miriam Shenitzer
b. 1962, Boston
How To Talk About Art, 1994
Artist’s book with offset printing; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Funds provided by the Library Fellows of the National Museum of Women in the Arts
This sardonic pop-up book deals with “art speak.” The narrator, a rat, guides readers through changing their vocabulary so that they, too, will be able to generate phrases such as, “his work deconstructs post-feminist collage in terms of appropriated dissonance.”
Tatana Kellner
b. 1950, Prague
Suspender Saga, 1979
Artist’s book with silkscreen; Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College
IBe’ Bulinda Crawley
b. 1959, Danville, Virginia
11033, 2022
Artist’s book with silkscreen and letterpress printing on handmade paper; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center; Gift made possible through the generosity of the artist and a bequest from Marjorie B. Rachlin
Tatana Kellner
b. 1950, Prague
71125: Fifty Years of Silence, Eva Kellner’s Story, 1992
Artist’s book with silkscreen on handmade cast paper; Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College
Tona Wilson
b. 1952, New York City
Stories Behind Bars, 2010
Artist’s book with silkscreen; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Celeste Hernández
b. 1996, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
we used to move through the city like doves in the wind, 2021
Artist’s book with Risograph printing on paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Imin Yeh
b. 1983, Salt Lake City, Utah
Paper Paper Film, 2019
Artist’s book with silkscreen, laser printing, and foil on handmade paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Ana Fernández Miranda Texidor
b. 1963, Quito, Ecuador
Never Develop an Appetite and Other Poems of Love and Havoc, 2004
Artist’s book with silkscreen on paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Based on a series of hand-drawn text and imagery, Fernández’s silkscreened accordion book alternates between Spanish and English to describe various encounters with love and heartache. Complementing the artist’s playful drawings are poems that seem to have developed through an automatic writing technique, as memories and reflections intertwine to describe specific experiences. The sparse design of each page, where texts and images appear suspended, adds to the sense that the book is a deeply personal space, akin to a diary.
Bisa Washington
b. 1952, Newark, New Jersey
Promise Not to Tell, 2007
Artist’s book with silkscreen on handmade paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Susan Mills
b. 1966, Canada
Twentysix Plants, 2013
Artis41t’s book with letterpress and laser cutting on handmade paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Susan Mills’s Twentysix Plants was published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), a pared-down artist’s book consisting of a selection of photographs with basic captions. Ruscha’s black-and-white images, taken while driving down various highways, capture the banality of these everyday scenes using a medium that had become highly aestheticized.
Twentysix Plants contains twenty-six pages of handmade paper produced from everyday plants that were grown or forged at Women’s Studio Workshop’s ArtFarm, a project launched in 1996 that encouraged experimentation in papermaking while working toward a sustainable means of production. Each page shows the distinct nature of its material, which is identified in a letter pressed and digitally cut label. A meditation on papermaking, the book describes the hidden beauty of what might otherwise be ignored, much like the midcentury work it references.
Women’s Studio Workshop
Faith Ringgold visiting poster, 1983
Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Golnar Adili
b. 1976, Falls Church, Virginia
She Feels Your Absence Deeply, 2021
Artist’s book with inkjet, lithography, silkscreen, and foil stamp on paper; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center; Gift made possible through the generosity of the artist and a bequest from Marjorie B. Rachlin
Zarina
b. 1937; Aligarh, India; d. 2020, London
The House with Four Walls, 1991
Artist’s book with etching and letterpress on handmade paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Zarina, a printmaker, traveled extensively and spent significant periods of time in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, and Bangkok. Yet a number of her works are based on memories of her childhood in Aligarh, India, a small college town one hundred miles southeast of Delhi, where her father was a professor of history. Zarina’s childhood home, in faculty housing, was designed with traditional Muslim quarters, a practice common in the region, which included separate living spaces for the men and women of the family. This portfolio is based on memories of her childhood in this setting. Each etching contains a black image on the front and a simple caption describing the associated memory on the back. Although some of the etchings are easily identifiable, others take the shape of shadows, where memories seem to linger.
Maureen Cummins
b. 1963, New York City
The Business Is Suffering, 2003
Artist’s book with silkscreen and letterpress on paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Featured archival materials (ca. 1970s to early 2000s) from Women’s Studio Workshop include program announcements, posters, and newsletters that demonstrate the organization’s history, growth, and activities.
Tomie Arai
b. 1949, New York City
Momotaro/Peach Boy, 2023
Artist’s book with etching and letterpress; Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College
Women’s Studio Workshop
Sisterhood posters, 1976
Silkscreen; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Toby Millman
b. 1975, Chicago
Facts On The Ground, 2011
Artist’s book with silkscreen, letterpress, and digital printing on paper; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Indigo Som
b. 1966, San Francisco
He Likes You, 1996
Artist’s book with letterpress printing; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Rhiannon Skye Tafoya
b. 1989, Sylva, North Carolina
Ul’nigid’, 2020
Artist’s book with letterpress on handmade paper; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center; Gift made possible through the generosity of the artist and a bequest from Marjorie B. Rachlin
Tafoya’s moveable book honors her maternal grandmother, Martha Reed-Bark, whose image appears on its cover. The book’s title translates to “strong” in Cherokee, and it was created to serve as a reminder of Reed-Bark’s role as a caretaker and a respected elder in her family and community. When opened, the pages of the book form a box structure, with paper weaving based on a process similar to traditional Cherokee river-cane basket weaving. Inside this square basket, an accordion pamphlet contains five poems, each conveying a memory of her grandmother, written in English. At the bottom of each page are texts in Cherokee syllabary type, printed in red, that translate to words such as “home,” “language,” and “medicine,” or send messages of love to her son and grandmother.
Clarissa Sligh
b. 1939, Washington, D.C.
What’s Happening with Momma?, 1988
Artist’s book with silkscreen and letterpress printing; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Clayre Baessler Liammari
This book, shaped like a row house to evoke the artist’s childhood home, tells a story along its accordion-fold steps. It shares Sligh’s perspective and experience during the birth of her younger sister. Sligh herself was born in Washington, D.C., because her mother, a Black woman, was denied access to racially segregated health care facilities in Arlington, Virginia, where they lived.
Clarissa Sligh
b. 1939, Washington, D.C.
Wrongly Bodied Two, 2004
Artist’s book with digital and silkscreen printing on paper; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center
Carolyn Swiszcz and Amy Purdy
My First Artists’ Book, 1996
Artists’ book with silkscreen; Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College
Jahjehan Bath Ives
b. 1977, Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Unspoken: Letters to Resident, 2003
Artist’s book with Plexiglas, letterpress, and silkscreen printing; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
Anita Wetzel
b. 1949, Sauquoit, New York; d. 2021, Rosendale, New York
Sea Ribbons, 1982
Artist’s book with paint and silkscreen on paper; Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College
Sky Syzygy
gender liberators, 2024
Artist’s book with Risograph, silkscreen, letterpress, and paper marbling; Courtesy of Women’s Studio Workshop
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