08/27/2026
Closer Reading opens next week CCA Exhibitions! Join us for the reception on Wed, Sep. 2, 5:30–7:30pm. Over 70 titles from the past decade of Sming Sming will be on view, alongside works by Macy Chadwick Macy Chadwick and Kate Laster KATE LASTER. All the books as part of the Sming Sming library, which include out of print titles, can be handled, opened, read, listened, and paged thru. 📚📖
Many thanks to San Francisco Advocacy for NMWA Jaime Austin Manuel Noah Angeja Bryndís Lillian Anthea Black and the National Museum of Women in the Arts initiative.
Closer Reading: Three Bay Area Book Artists
September 2—October 23, 2026
CCA Campus Gallery, 1480 17th Street, San Francisco
details thru link in bio!
Closer Reading is presented as Northern California’s contribution to the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ (NMWA) Women to Watch 2027: A Book Arts Revolution. The latest edition of the museum’s hallmark exhibition series featuring national and international artists whose work is underrepresented on the global stage. The exhibition at CCA explores how three artists expand the book as a form for artistic experimentation, collaboration, and exchange. Chadwick draws on fine press and book arts traditions through tactile works combining letterpress, typography, and poetic form. Laster brings book and text forms into activist artmaking, using cut paper, zines, posters, maps, and printed matter. Sming approaches publishing as an artistic practice through Sming Sming Books, bringing together handmade and digital forms through collaborative projects.
“My decade in San Francisco has taught me that the city’s book arts ecology is truly unique. Books are everywhere here, and they multiply rapidly in the hands of established printers, indie publishers, artist punks, and an avid collector base, anchored by a network of organizations that offer gathering spaces and valuable creative support,” says Black. “Each artist in Closer Reading represents a different definition of ‘the book as art,’ and a distinct approach to working with artists’ books as their primary medium.”
