About the Artist 

Lawrence, Kansas

Yoonmi Nam is an artist born in Seoul, South Korea, and has studied in Korea, Canada, the United States, and Japan. Yoonmi is interested in the observation and depiction of everyday objects and occurrences, especially when they subtly suggest contradictions—a perception of time that feels both temporary and lasting and a sense of place that feels both familiar and foreign. Growing up as an only child with working parents, she often engaged in quiet observations of things around her. Experiences of living in disparate cultures with different people and their histories allowed her to notice what often is unobserved in one’s own familiar spaces. She works in traditional printmaking processes such as mokuhanga (Japanese-style water-based woodblock printing) and lithography to make imagery as well as explore other materials such as clay, glass, and paper to make three-dimensional still lifes.

Website: YoonmiNam.com
Social Media: @Yoonmi_Nam

Artist Statement 

Both bandboxes were designed specifically to hold hats that we use for special occasions. A party hat and a stack of origami folded paper hats. So, I’ve also included these two kinds of hats that the bandboxes hold as part of my works. These hats are temporary and disposable. In my work, I am always drawn to objects that suggest a sense of time that seems both fleeting and eternal, so I wanted to make hatboxes for the hats that also speak to that nature. I also designed the pattern on the lithograph that I printed to cover the bandboxes. The flower images and the texts that make the patterns are taken from various plastic bags with flower images on them.

About the Artist 

Annapolis, Maryland

Ben Bartgis is a conservation technician and independent artist specializing in reproduction stationery products and bandboxes, based in Annapolis, Maryland. They became interested in historic box making materials and techniques while building custom housings for museum artifacts. Outside of their full-time federal career in conservation, Ben has pursued their study of early American book and paper history through courses at Rare Book School and was a scholar at the 2022 “Revolution in Books” Summer Institute at Florida Atlantic University. Ben’s bandboxes have appeared at historic sites such as the Coggeshall Farm Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island.  

Social Media: @BenjaminBadgers

Artist Statement 

Boxes have been a presence in my conservation career from my first years as a book conservation intern making slipcases and portfolios to my time as a conservation specialist operating a CNC machine to mass produce archival boxes. I find both bookbindings and boxes curious halfway things: sometimes primarily regarded for their ability to store or protect something else, discarded when they wear out; sometimes valued artifacts in and of themselves. I was drawn to researching and reproducing bandboxes because they are made of the same materials as rare books—thread, paper, board, and glue—but as containers, they are collected, curated, and studied completely differently. As the boxmaker for this project whose board forms will be covered up with exquisite papers, my craft as an artisan mirrors my work in conservation: foundational, collaborative, and sometimes hidden in plain sight. 

About the Artist

Bronx, New York

Judith Solodkin received a master of fine arts degree from Columbia University in 1967, has taught art on the college and graduate level, and is teaching lithography, digital embroidery, and soft sculpture at the School of Visual Arts and lithography at Pratt Institute. She also studied millinery at Fashion Institute of Technology and is a member of the Milliners Guild. She was the first woman to graduate from the Tamarind Institute as a Master Lithographer in 1975. Today she is based in Riverdale, Bronx, New York, and operates as a print publisher and contract printer—SOLO Impression, Inc.  Innovative collaborative techniques have been a mainstay of SOLO Impression. Judith continues to collaborate with artists on fine art lithography, embroidery, and fabrication. 

A trailblazing supporter of women in the arts since the mid-1970s, Judith developed an “old girls’ network” with the same rigor and opportunity afforded male artists. In 1996 and 2010, the retrospective The Collaborative Print: Works from SOLO Impression was presented at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. In 2013, she received a Printer Emeritus award from the Southern Graphics Council International. Taschen Publishing commissioned three lithographs by Françoise Gilot in 2017, and “Ode à l’oubli,” a collaboration with Louise Bourgeois, was exhibited in An Unfolding Portrait at the Museum of Modern Art in 2018. In November 2020, she was honored by the International Print Center of New York for her printmaking achievements. SOLO Impression exhibits at the International Fine Print Dealers Association Print Fair. Editions by SOLO Impression are in the Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; New York Public Library; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; and Tate Modern in London.  

Judith is known for her handmade hats, which she proudly wears herself. Hats from SOLO Chapeau were recently shown at the Metropolitan Museum Mezzanine Art Gallery and at the Garment Center’s 38th Street Window during Textile Month, and they have been featured in online exhibitions of the Milliners Guild. 

Website: SoloImpression.com
Social Media: @JudithSolodkin

Artist Statement 

Referencing history has always been a part of my activities, whether at SOLO Impression collaborating with artists in fine art lithography, in digital embroidery, or in creating hats under the SOLO Chapeau label. Teaching at the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute is a catalyst to expose students to precedent and to past knowledge and early hand-manipulated techniques. These skills are vital in the collaborative process with artists, directing them forward to the future. For example, in my print “Whitfield Lovell,” I appropriated an early wallpaper design in his twin lithographs, “Barbados and Georgia” (2009) and combined it with stone lithography and inkjet printing. And I embroidered a restoration fabric from an 1860 motif that was used as the upholstery on a chair showing at the Brooklyn Museum as part of Modern Gothic: The Inventive Furniture of Kimbel and Cabus, 1863–82. 

I continue to be fascinated by early tools that when mastered in the present can yield new results. Old presses, rollers, stones for lithography and head blocks and forming tools for millinery can be updated with new technologies for surprising effects. My new fabric inkjet printer allows me to print images on cloth and subsequently to embroider the results, as I did with the banner of Judy Chicago, “What If Women Ruled the World?”  

About the Artist 

Providence, Rhode Island

Despite years of her insisting that their daughter was going to be an astronaut, Katie Commodore’s parents could have told you that she would grow up to be an artist—even as they sent her to Space Camp, twice. Never giving up her dreams of painting Martian landscapes and testing low gravity pastels, she attended Maryland Institute College of Art, which, not surprisingly, lacked the rigorous science background NASA required. After graduating, she spent time abroad in Paris, Prague, Greece, plus a short stint in Las Vegas. She returned to school, earning her master of fine arts degree in printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design, where, as well as at Clark University (Worcester, Mass.) she is now an adjunct faculty member. Katie now resides in Providence. 

Website: KatieCommodore.com
Social Media: @KatieCommodore

Artist Statement

I always wanted an octagon house, there is something magical about them. They are at the top of my homeowning bucket list. But currently, it’s just a dream. So, instead, I thought about creating an octagon-shaped hope box. The interior is lined with pieces of a roll of original wallpaper I found in the attic of a Victorian that I owned, The George Jepherson House. Originally, it was supposed to represent my present, now it stands for my recent past, pain, failure, and success. A dream realized but cut short. The exterior is made up of several “5D Diamond Painting” kits—sort of modern versions of paint-by-number art. I imagine a young girl today putting together a hope chest and decorating it to match her room. She would use a modern, cool crafts kit that she got from Michael’s™. She’d spend days working on it, and it would make her so proud to show off. I spent days sticking down thousands of rhinestones, meditating on my hopes for the future. Not just the hopes of an octagon house, but for financial stability, calm, time, and breath. I hoped for my life and happiness back. It may not be a chest of my future linens and household needs for my future married life—I’ve already gotten all those things. This is a box of just plain hopes.  

The second box is papered with the patterned backgrounds from several of my prints. The figure, a friend named Julia, seems to be waiting for something to start—a party, a date to arrive, something exciting. She’s all dressed up and waiting to go. . . somewhere. Again, it’s full of hope. The hope that today will be worth getting dressed up for, the hope that you don’t get stood up, the hope that it’s all going to be fun, the hope that this book is worth reading.  

Two boxes of hope. When you open them, one smells of the crumbing past and the other is the blank of the future; both are filled with only air and dreams.