Angela S. Lorenz is a Brown Alumna who studied Art and Semiotics in the mid 1980’s. While attending Brown, she also took many courses at RISD. As a student, she started making artists’ books for class assignments, developing and utilizing her skills in printmaking, letterpress printing, painting, photography, papermaking, book arts, and writing. After graduation Angela settled in Bologna, Italy where she has been living and making artist’s books ever since. Angela Lorenz Artist’s Books
The RISD library started collecting Angela’s books in 1991 and in 2002, Angela graciously began donating her vast and unusual bookmaking process archive materials to us. One of her RISD professors told her when making art to never throw anything out and she has taken that instruction to heart. Her collection of process materials include research notes, sketches, printing plates, test prints, text drafts and edits, book mock-ups, test bindings, false starts, instructions to printers, extra printed pages, and numerous scraps and leftover pieces from the production of her books. These materials show how the artist works to develop each book, from start to finish. They provide extraordinary insight into the mind of the artist.
In the October 2006, after four years of planning, the library mounted an exhibition of these materials entitled Creating with Abandon: Process in the Artist’s Books of Angela Lorenz, with venues at the newly opened Fleet Library and at the John Hay Library at Brown University. An exhibition catalog is available from Special Collections.
