Tia Blassingame

In 2019, Tia Blassingame @primbookart founded the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color collective @bookprintcollective to bring Book History and Print Culture scholars into conversation and collaboration with BIPOC book artists, papermakers, paper engineers, curators, letterpress printers, papercut artists, printmakers to build community and support systems.

She creates artwork in the book form under the Primrose Press imprint, which was founded in 2009 and takes its name from a metal, decorative letterpress ornament and a late nineteenth century American minstrel group. Employing printmaking and book arts techniques, Blassingame reconstructs charged images and histories for a nuanced discussion on issues of race and racism. She holds a BA in Architecture from Princeton, a MA in Book Arts from Corcoran College of Art & Design, and an MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design. Blassingame has been a teaching artist at the National Building Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Glen Echo, Pyramid Atlantic, and University of Maryland at College Park. Blassingame was a curatorial intern Smithsonian Museum of American History, and served as the Image Coordinator for the Race & Ethnicity in Advertising--America: 1890-Today, an Advertising Education Foundation-Smithsonian Institution project. She has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI), the Andy Warhol Preserve, the International Print Center New York, and Macdowell. Her artist's books and prints can be found in library and museum collections around the world including Library of Congress, Tate Britain, Brown University, University of California at Irvine, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, University of Delaware, and State Library of Queensland. Blassingame is an Assistant Professor of Book Arts at Scripps College, and is the Director of Scripps College Press @scrippscollegepress.