Artists and Bibliophiles: Brighton Press and Art Around Books

Brighton Press has created and published fifty-four fine press, limited-edition artists’ books and numerous broadsides since it was founded by painter, printmaker, and sculptor Bill Kelly in 1985, according to Michele Burgess, director of the press. Their books are represented in over 100 public and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and university libraries & museums.

Each work is designed and produced through the collaboration of contemporary poets and visual artists, together with artisans in the fields of letterpress, bookbinding, papermaking, printmaking, and sculpture. The artists make their own plates and cut their own blocks. Each work is printed by hand in the Brighton Press studio in small editions and is signed and numbered.

Pictured Above: Paper Bridge. Poems by Kadya Molodowsky; hand painted etchings, drypoints, and collages by Ellen Schechner-Johnson. Letterpress printed text on handmade paper by Twinrocker and the Morgan Conservatory. Hand bound in linen and paste paper and housed in a clamshell box mounted with two drypoint prints. 9” x 13”. Edition of 30. Brighton Press. 2023.

"In this new artist’s book artist Schechner-Johnson explores the legend of the “Paper Bridge,” seeking to express the historic liminality of Jewish existence, the image of the wandering Jew, the subjects of displacement, homelessness, and disconnection—of belonging and not belonging," according to Brighton Press. The poems by Molodowsky, printed in Yiddish and English, express this, specifically, and are placed as touchstones or buried treasure within the collaged fragments of text and expressive etchings by the artist, the press says.

Establishing a new letterpress is not quick or easy. It is not for the fainthearted. "I spent years and years learning the fine press book business; doing apprenticeships, working with other writers, artists, printers, & book binders; curating lots and lots of exhibitions" Kelly says of his decades in San Diego, California prior to purchasing a letterpress and all the requisite equipment to start Brighton Press. But how does a working letterpress studio, based for years in California, wind up in Vermont? For 15 years, he taught art each summer in Putney, Vermont. Fast forward to early 2020, just before COVID, Kelly & Burgess bought a house in Vermont. They later found a "magical space" on Canal Street in Bellows Falls for the Brighton Press studio & office, Kelly said. That storefront also houses Art Around Books, an unconventional gallery, eclectic rare book shop, and idea space, their website says.

"Having an art gallery and selling rare books in a small town in Vermont is not the most brilliant thing I've done," Kelly muses. "But it is very gratifying to see people get off the train from New York, in Bellows Falls, and wander into Art Around Books." Long time residents of the region have been drawn to the shop for book browsing, conversations, art workshops, music, and readings.

Their display at the Northampton Book Fair in November will include a selection of Brighton Press' limited edition books and broadsides along with sampling of the used and rare poetry, art, literary fiction, philosophy, children's books, and first editions from Art Around Books, Kelly said.

Burgess noted the most recent Bright Press portfolio of broadsides, The Nocturne Suite, includes a poem "Night Ambush" by Doug Anderson, well known to Western Massachusetts readers and writers; paired with an etching by Greenfield, MA artist David Schirm.

Pictured above and below: The Nocturne Suite. Essay by Susan Narucki. Words and Images by: Douglas Anderson & David Schirm, Matthew Burgess & Michele Burgess, Chard deNiord & Liz Hawkes deNiord, Peter Everwine & Bill Kelly, Carolyn Forché & Harry Mattison. All printed by hand and letterpress on various papers and housed in a hand-made portfolio case. Edition of 20 for sale + 10 copies hors de commerce for the collaborators. 2024

The Brighton Press and Art Around Books displays at the Northampton Book Fair in November will include a selection of Brighton Press' limited edition books and broadsides along with sampling of the used and rare poetry, art, literary fiction, philosophy, children's books, and first editions from Art Around Books, Kelly said.