A Book Arts Revolution with Four Women Artists to Watch

Attendees joined us for an evening with the National Museum of Women in the Arts and met the Massachusetts area Women to Watch 2027. Women to Watch is a bi- or triennial exhibition program designed to increase the visibility of, and critical response to, promising women artists who are deserving of national and international attention. The Massachusetts Committee’s nominees have been curated by the Boston Athenaeum’s own John Buchtel, Curator of Rare Books and Head of Special Collections.

About the Speakers

Amy Borezo’s artists’ books exhibit the same structural ingenuity and sensitive selection of appropriate materials, wedding them to her often-abstract visual explorations of philosophical and literary questions around such topics as artificial intelligence or a failed Buckminster Fuller architectural project. For each of her books, Borezo adapts book structures and materials to underscore and embody the work’s central concept. She is also a highly sought-after edition hand bookbinder; bindings have contributed to the success of some of the best collaborative artists’ book projects of the past two decades.

Abigail Rorer’s intricate prints, drawings, and watercolors center on a delight in nature and natural forms. One of the most skilled living practitioners of the art of wood engraving, Rorer started out in the great tradition of book illustration. In recent years, Rorer has gone one step further, collaborating with leading specialists in other aspects of bookmaking to create artist’s books that integrate text and image with material and structure to compellingly convey not only her love of plants and animals, but also her concern over their ecosystems’ fragility.

Sarah Hulsey’s sophisticated body of work leverages the unique characteristics inherent in each artistic medium she uses—drawing, printmaking, and book structures—to explore the complex, multi-layered worlds of the scientific fields of linguistics and physics. Her work exhibits a mastery of the expressive and communicative potentialities of the hand-printed book as an artistic form: investigating ideas sequentially, engaging an audience with interactive immediacy, slowing a reader down and encouraging reflection.

Anneli Skaar’s work as a visual artist and graphic designer converge in both her own artist’s books and her contributions to other artists’ books. In addition to luminous paintings of landscapes and nature objects, paperflowers of astonishing variety and verisimilitude, and commercial graphic design, Skaar has produced three artist’s books of her own, each an engaging multi-part book object in which Skaar imaginatively combines text, image, materials, and form to create an artistic whole greater than the sum of its parts, addressing some of today’s most pressing environmental and social issues in ways that draw readers in, captivate them, and encourage reflection.