Typographic Transfiguration

I've finished printing the content for Catholics, an artist's book I'm working on at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. It is a limited-edition memoir that relates my Catholic upbringing as it interweaves several themes: Church history, pre-Christian mythology, and the places where such spiritualities resonate with twentieth-century pop culture.

One of the book's features is a series of seven communion wafers/solar crosses. These images are surrounded by Bruce Rogers–inspired frames letterpress printed from metal typographic ornaments that alchemically shift throughout the course of the book. The wafers/solar crosses animate their own narrative, a transmuting framework that comments on the book’s other threads. I also adapted the sequence into a suite of prints.

To see a post about some of the book's hand-drawn illustrations, click here. I'm excited to start binding the edition of 25 this week. Meanwhile, check out the wafer/solar cross series below.