The project ‘The Chico Poems’ is the culmination of a book arts fellowship I received in 2020. I spent time learning letterpress printing at Minnesota Center for Book Arts so that I could produce a project that has long been on my mind. My late mother, Chico, was an aspiring poet in the 1940’s and I’ve wanted to collaborate with her and her poetry.
In ‘The Chico Poems’ I’ve combined cyanotype printing with letterpress printing. The eight poems are paired with 8 of her favorite vegetation and flowers, most of which I grew. I first printed all eight of her poems in an edition of 20 each. I then spent five warm weather months exposing my letterpressed cyanotypes (in the sun) based on what was growing and ‘in season’. I exposed 20 unique prints of each 8 poems. All in all I created 160 unique prints, resulting in 15 folios. The folio case features an inset photograph of my mother from the same era as her poetry and silver foil stamping. Printed on a Vandercook 4 press on Rives BFK paper.

Letterpress + cyanotype poems in hand-crafted folio case

Lisa Nebenzahl