Harry & Sandra Liddell Reese

Harry and Sandra Liddell Reese are book makers based in Isla Vista, CA. Harry received his BA in religious studies from the University of California Santa Barbara, and his MFA in creative writing from Brown University. After completing his MFA in 1975, he discovered book printing as a creative medium which incorporated his interest in design, literature, and image-making. He met Sandra the same year, who was working as a middle school teacher. Sandra learned the craft of printing alongside Harry. The couple developed the printing house Turkey Press, which specializes in hand-crafted paper and typography, experimental formats, and unique binding methods. They additionally founded Edition Reese in 1990 to produce limited edition artists’ publications. Turkey Press has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. The Turkey Press archive catalog was purchased by the Getty Research Institute in 1992.

https://turkey-press.myportfolio.com/the-art-of-work

Harry Reese and Sandra Liddell Reese, Isla Vista, 2014. Courtesy of the artists. This print project, generated in response to the May 2014 tragic attacks that took place in the community near Santa Barbara where the Reeses have operated Turkey Press since 1977, uses the structure and language found in the I Ching, or Book of Changes , translations by Richard Wilhelm, Cary Baynes, and Thomas Meyer. The typographic layout, using Gill Sans and Walbaum types, was influenced by the “mesostics” of John Cage, and the design of Iliazd. Cut paper images represent firm and broken lines of I Ching hexagrams. Polymer plates made from scans of cut paper were letterpress printed on Kitakata. The “changing” red lines in #2 were cut by a Roland plotter from hand-painted paper and collaged.