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Ariel Hansen Strong
Portfolio

As my arts and education career has evolved, my portfolio has grown to span across many mediums. I have a master's degree in Book Art & Creative Writing from Mills College, a program with a large emphasis on printmaking and bookbinding structures, both traditional and contemporary. Throughout my many years creating and instructing Book Art, I grew a tandem interest in ceramics, digital illustration, and more. My current practice exists mainly in ceramics, illustration, and printmaking, and I enjoy exploring ways to blend these mediums in collaboration with one another.

Book Art

Included are just a few samples of my artist books. They are inherently cross-disciplinary - writing, sculpture, printmaking, photography, etc - woven together to create unified pieces. The reasons I love book art are also why I love teaching the medium: book art expands minds because it has no distinct parameters, and asks the creator to consider many important elements such as multiplicity, storytelling, texture, intimacy, repetition, depth, and the relationship between form and content.

WASH

A component of my graduate thesis, this work explores water as a material, a climate issue, and as a relational metaphor. The flag book structure can open to a fully extended width of 10 feet. The unique book cover is magnetized, separates at the spine, and folds out to reveal a colophon and a bibliography.

PEACE

This 2017 work centers around a poem formed as a letter to “peace.”

PEACE is an accordion book with monotype and silkscreen printed imagery. The text is digitally printed on vellum paper windows, which let in light when the work is backlit. The book is housed in a clamshell box, and has an edition of 10.

Still

This work was created in 2018 as an Imprint Publication collaboration with the San Francisco Center for the Book.

Still addresses many aspects of iciness. To see ice melt is to witness an unearthing, to uncover what lies beneath, but also to wonder about what lies ahead. This artist’s book is letterpress printed with hand-cut windows of translucent waxed mulberry images. Still has a drumleaf binding and includes an altered acrylic box enclosure. It has an edition of 100.

Social Navigation

This pyramidal work addresses how we navigate social situations through a collection of found text. The two magnetic pyramids unfold to create a compass rose. The work’s imagery was created using digital printing and pochoir stencil processes. Social Navigation was created at Mills College in 2015.

This piece was inspired and informed by Julie Chen and Barb Tetenbaum’s Ideation Cards, a deck of cards that generates a list of qualities meant to govern a project. The only specific cards I recall pulling are "found text" and "least favorite colors."

Ariel Hansen Strong Portfolio

Book Art

Ariel Hansen Strong
Portfolio