Exactly Right by Rachel Simmons

With pages printed using a range of approaches including Risograph, screen printing and letterpress, Exactly Right is a meditation on the labor-intensive process of making an artist’s book. Objects that emerge from any creative practice are a product of years of experience, training and labor—ideas that take physical form through a daily commitment to making. Practitioners of book arts have a special relationship with the search for perfection; I tend to fluctuate between seeking and destroying it. In my studio, I always have several different types of projects going simultaneously, some that need careful attention to detail, and others that feel more spontaneity and experimentation. It’s this balance between craft and innovation that captures my interest. This variable limited edition artist’s book was created one spread at a time over the course of several months. I used available resources and scraps of time in between teaching to puzzle through each page and piece them together.