Book Talk at the Boston Athenæum: Ken Botnick

Diderot Project: Making the Book to Discover My Subject

The Athenæum holds one of only 70 copies printed of Diderot Project, a 150-page meditation on concepts encountered in printer and publisher Ken Botnick’s study of the plates and writings of the Encyclopédie of Diderot. Botnick will present his recent artist book and discuss its conceptual underpinnings, his research methods, and production details as components of his central thesis: when we make a book we discover the subject. Botnick will discuss his recently completed limited-edition artist book and the concepts he encountered in the Encyclopédie of Diderot: the hand and craft, tools and machines, labor and leisure, memory, sensation, and perception.

Ken Botnick has been printing and publishing works in limited edition for over 35 years, first as co-proprietor of Red Ozier Press in New York. Under the imprint emdash Botnick continues production of artists books in St Louis. His book, Kamini, selections from the Gitagovinda, published in Sanskrit and English by emdash, was selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts for its “50 Books/50 Covers, 2007” annual juried show. Botnick was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in 2006 to support his residency at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, and has taught workshops at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore. He is Professor of Art at Washington University in St Louis where he directs the Kranzberg Book Studio and teaches courses in publication design.