Panorama,
2008
letterpress-printed
paper, clamshell box
you’ve got this whole beautiful thing laid
out. You can see the beauty for itself, even
if you can never master it.”
Chen has managed to achieve both beau-
ty and mastery, on a path begun in Los
Angeles, where she was born in 1963 and
grew up playing classical piano. Her father,
a Methodist minister with a passion for
music, hoped she’d be a concert pianist, but
her hands were too small. From her mother,
who did macramé, découpage, and other
“things popular in the ’70s,” she acquired a
love of making objects. She earned a degree
in studio art at the University of California,
Berkeley, in 1984, and with no particular
career in mind, took time off to have her
daughter. Then she read about the noted
book arts program headed by Kathleen
Walkup at Mills College in Oakland, visited
the studio, and felt instantly at home.
“It’s still strange to me,” she marvels.
“I’d never seen an artist book. It was not
something I had any clue that anybody did.
I honestly can’t explain what caused me to
decide, without any hesitation, ‘This is
what I’m going to do.’ ”
A t Mills, Chen got a solid foundation in
traditional letterpress printing and hand-
binding skills (which today she’ll “bend” or
combine with newer technologies to suit
her needs), exposure to the school’s distin-
guished collection of fine press books, and
awareness of a larger world of contempo-
rary innovators such as Claire Van Vliet,
whose Janus Press she cites as an early and
enduring inspiration. In 1987, while still a
student, she founded Flying Fish Press.
Over the years, Chen has done occasional
collaborations (with fiber artist Nance
O ’Banion and book artists Barbara Teten-
baum and Clifton Meador, to name a few),
but mainly publishes one major book of her
own each year, usually in editions of 100
copies. The subject is whatever she hap-
pens to be interested in or wrestling with,
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