Rebecca Chamlee
Simi Valley, California

Rebecca Chamlee has produced limited edition, hand bound, letterpress printed artist and fine press books under the imprint of Pie In The Sky Press since 1985. She is professor of book arts at Otis College of Art and Design. Her work has been widely exhibited and is in numerous institutional and private collections.

Website: pieintheskypress.com

Where Stucco meets Chaparral

Where Stucco meets Chaparral explores the trails through sandstone formations, chaparral, and oak woodlands that surround Rebecca Chamlee's home in an arid inland valley in Southern California. The book is a printed herbarium of local California native plants with stories of local and natural history and personal observation gathered during many years of daily walks. Detailed images of seven indigenous plants are letterpress printed in multiple colors in tight registration through their seasonal life cycles that contrast hand-carved representation of the environmental context where they prevail. In the special edition, each signature consists of a folio of custom abaca paper by Katie MacGregor wrapped around a Somerset book wove folio with a quarto-folded sheet of handmade kozo forming the center spread. The books are longstitch sewn with waxed hand-dyed linen thread through a cover of rough heavyweight Twinrocker unbleached abaca. The spine is reinforced with a folded piece of green goat parchment. A bone button wrapped with a braid of linen thread forms the closure.
Abaca, goat vellum, kozo, linen thread, bone button.
6.25 x 9 x 1 inches; 16 x 23 x 2.5 centimeters. Created 2014.