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Tia Blassingame

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Tia Blassingame
Born1971
New Haven, CT
Education
Known forArtists' books, printmaking
Notable workMourning / Warning (2015); I AM (2018)
Parents
Websiteprimrosepress.com

Tia Blassingame (born 1971, New Haven, CT), assistant professor of art at Scripps College, is an American book artist and publisher.[1]

Career

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Blassingame holds a B.A. in Architecture from Princeton University, a M.A. in Book Arts and printmaking from the Corcoran College of Art & Design, and an M.F.A. in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design.[2][3][4] She was Artist-in-Residence at the International Print Center (2019), Yaddo (2011), MacDowell (2010) and the Santa Fe Art Institute (2010).

Blassingame is an Associate Professor of Art and Director of Scripps College Press at Scripps College, Claremont, CA.[5] Her work has been collected by private and public collections, including the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, The Tate in Britain, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Yale University. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail.[6]

Since 2009, Blassingame has been the owner and proprietor at Primrose Press.[7] In 2019, Blassingame was a contributing writer in Freedom of the Presses: Artist Books in the Twenty-first Century. She also founded the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color collective in the same year.[8] She serves on the Board of Directors for the College Book Art Association and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the American Printing History Association.[9]

In 2023, Blassingame was an artist-in-residence at Halden Bookworks in Oslo, Norway.[10]

Art and exhibitions

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Artistic style

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Blassingame's work in mixed-media, bookmaking, printmaking, and flag-making employs elements of Concrete poetry and uses books and physical artifacts to provide the viewer with a tactile interaction with the conversation around racism in the United States.[11] Blassingame has also been active in scholarly understanding and symposia exploring the history and production of Black books and bibliographia.[12]

In an interview in 2020, Blassingame reflected on her upbringing and how coming from "a fairly bookish family" surrounded her with book arts in many forms, especially books of, by, or about Black creators.[13] In this same interview, the artist speaks about trying to use the distinct possibilities of book arts and printmaking to reach readers for a discussion of historical and contemporary race and racism.[14]

Selected exhibitions

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Blassingame has exhibited throughout the U.S., including:

  • 2014 "The Exact Measure of Cruelty: Slavery and Racism in Artists’ Books", Milner Library, Illinois State University
  • 2018 Mourning/Warning, Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College. In this exhibition, Blassingame provides a look into her experience as an African-American woman.
  • 2018 Text & Textile, Art and Architecture Library at Yale University
  • 2019 Playing with Words at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA)
  • 2019 I Am Mourning/Warning, Morey Family Gallery at Art Reach of Mid-Michigan [15]
  • 2019 Umbra: New Prints for a Dark Age at International Print Center
  • 2020 I AM/YOU ARE, Berea College.[16] In her art book, Blassingame comments on her experience as an African-American woman through the medium of printmaking. She also offers insight into experiences of police brutality, violence and humiliation through the lens of being African-American.
  • 2020 Intersections: Book Arts as Conversion at Tulane University
  • 2022 Troubling: Artists’ Books that enlighten and disrupt old ways of being and seeing at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art[17]
  • 2023 Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and San Francisco Center for the Book[18][19]

Further reading

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References

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  1. ^ "Academic Experience | Faculty Profile". www.scrippscollege.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-08-18. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  2. ^ "Tia Blassingame". Essential Knowledge: The Book. 2018-06-23. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  3. ^ "Tia Blassingame is using her craft to investigate racism in America". Design Indaba. Archived from the original on 2019-10-15. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  4. ^ "Cooley Gallery". Wilson College. 2019-04-25. Archived from the original on 2020-06-27. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  5. ^ "Scripps College in Claremont, California". Directory. Archived from the original on 24 January 2025. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  6. ^ Blassingame, Tia (2002-03-01). "The Race of Architecture". The Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on 2020-07-31. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  7. ^ "Profile – Tia Blassingame". Ladies of Letterpress. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  8. ^ "Collective". Primrose Press. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
  9. ^ "College Book Art Association - Board of Directors 2013-2018". www.collegebookart.org. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  10. ^ "Events". Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective. Archived from the original on 2023-10-29. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  11. ^ Saubestre, Elizabeth. ""Mourning/Warning" art exhibit explores being black in America". The Channels. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
  12. ^ "The history of black books | UDaily". www.udel.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
  13. ^ "Interview with Tia Blassingame — Part 1 of 2". Artists’ Book Reviews. 26 December 2020. Archived from the original on 25 March 2025. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  14. ^ "Interview with Tia Blassingame — Part 2 of 2". Artists’ Book Reviews. 27 December 2020. Archived from the original on 25 March 2025. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  15. ^ "Mourning/Warning: Tia Blassingame". Atkinson Gallery at SBCC. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  16. ^ "Tia Blassingame's I AM | J. Willard Marriott Library Blog". 14 November 2019. Archived from the original on 2019-12-02. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  17. ^ "Troubling: Artists' Books that enlighten and disrupt old ways of being and seeing - Bainbridge Island Museum of Art". www.biartmuseum.org. 7 February 2022. Archived from the original on 9 December 2024. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  18. ^ "Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures". Minnesota Center for Book Arts. 11 December 2024. Archived from the original on 25 March 2025. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  19. ^ "Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures". San Francisco Center for the Book. 14 November 2024. Archived from the original on 25 March 2025. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
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