CCS was honored to showcase 50 individuals and activities during our 50th Anniversary in 2017-2018 to share our rich history. Take a look at the amazing people responsible for making our unconventional College possible!   

Book Arts at UC Santa Barbara College of Creative Studies and Professor Harry Reese are synonymous. Reese officially founded the Book Art major in 1988, yet the program can be traced to the first CCS class he taught in the Fall of 1978. Reese came to UCSB as an undergraduate to study Political Science in 1965, and if you asked him about his future, he would have said anything but a Professor of Book Arts. "My position now as a Professor of Book Arts did not exist when I was a student at UCSB," said Reese. "[At the time] there were no Book Art programs, there were no Book Art classes, it was not even thought about." With little formal art training, Reese designed the Book Arts program and became a pioneer artist in the field.

Reese graduated from UCSB in 1968 while CCS was finishing its first academic year. He remembers being aware of the College and attending Buckminster Fuller lectures in the original CCS building. After a semester in law school and then traveling around Europe, Reese returned to UCSB in 1969 to attend graduate school. He received a Master's degree in Religious Studies in 1971, focusing on religion in America. Then, he moved to Berkeley, worked in restaurants, and started studying and writing poetry. Said Reese: "I began to publish poetry in magazines here and there, and became very interested in studying that area in greater depth." To that end, he attended the graduate program in Creative Writing at Brown University. During his two years at Brown, he established Turkey Press, his own independent publishing business that followed in the footsteps of other small press publishers with an interest in poetry.

Immediately after arriving at Brown, Reese started working for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, in its Poets-In-The-Schools Program. "One month I was a waiter in Berkeley, the next I was a poet in schools of Rhode Island," remembered Reese. While serving as a design assistant for Copper Beech Press, he took a typography class at Rhode Island School of Design, and later bought his first printing press—a 10x15 Chandler & Price platen press. By the end of 1975, he had studied and taught poetry at Brown University and throughout New England for two years, received an MFA in Creative Writing, established his own publishing imprint, printed his first books, and moved back to Berkeley to continue to writing, printing, and publishing. Two years after working in his own print studio in Berkeley, Reese inadvertently returned to Isla Vista. "My wife Sandra and I moved to Isla Vista in 1977," said Reese. "We found the perfect situation—a small house with space for a garden and print shop. We bought that house and have been here ever since."

Soon after moving to Isla Vista, Reese met with Marvin Mudrick (CCS founder and first Provost) to see if he could get a position teaching creative writing. Reese described his background and showed Mudrick the books he had made. A week later Mudrick sent him a typical rejection letter. Six months later, however, a few days before the Fall quarter was to begin, Mudrick called Reese on the phone to see if he “wanted to teach that book class.” Puzzled but interested, Reese asked, “What book class?” “Oh, I don’t care what you call it,” Mudrick responded. “Call it anything you want, but not ‘bookmaking.’ That sounds too much like Las Vegas.” And so Reese jumped at the opportunity to teach at CCS, even though he found himself teaching Art instead of Literature. "At the time, I had taken two art classes in my life,” Reese recounted, “but I assured Mudrick that I would be happy to teach that class, whatever it was, which I called, ‘The Art of the Book.’”

Beginning in Fall 1978, Reese taught in the College for 30 straight quarters before taking a quarter off to serve as an artist-in-residence in the Graduate Book Art Program at Mills College. This uninterrupted teaching stint allowed him to build the CCS program slowly. In 1983 Reese, received a half-time appointment in the CCS Art Program, which not only secured him health benefits but allowed him to develop a curricular plan. Recalled Reese: "Each year I began to expand what I was doing and reached more students, in CCS and across campus. I was offered more classes to teach, and through word of mouth and exhibitions of student work in the CCS Gallery, faculty and students started finding out about this program." By 1985, he had a group of dedicated and ambitious students, including Carolee Campbell (who founded her celebrated Ninja Press during her first year at CCS) and his classes were offered as part of an informal Book Arts Program. "A growing awareness of CCS and Book Arts continued year after year, with each student, class, exhibit, and campus visitor," said Reese. "I set up Book Arts to complement, and serve as an alternative to, other art and poetry classes taught at CCS and on campus." In 1988, the CCS Faculty Executive Committee approved Book Arts as the third emphasis in the Art Program (along with Painting and Sculpture) allowing Reese to begin to admit students formally as Book Arts majors.

A growing awareness of CCS and Book Arts continued year after year, with each student, class, exhibit, and campus visitor.

While developing Book Arts at CCS, Reese was also growing as an artist himself. He received four separate grants from the National Endowment of the Arts in the late 1970s and early 1980s for publishing his Turkey Press books. Additionally, he was becoming nationally known as a papermaker and printmaker. In 1991, when the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities acquired the Archives of the first 15 years of Turkey Press, his colleagues on campus began to pay attention to more than his teaching. "It was significant for me personally," stated Reese, "because it made people here at UCSB more interested." That same year he was offered a half-time appointment in the UCSB Art Department in addition to teaching at the College. Reese held joint status as a Lecturer in CCS and the Art Department for three years until a tenure-track professorship opened up in the Art Department. He applied and received the appointment. This was very unconventional. Reese explained: "I was told that I was the first person in the history of the University of California to move from this designated lecturer position to a tenure-track professor." He resigned from his position in CCS in 1993, but he continued to be very active in the College. Said Reese, "I maintained the close connection with Book Arts and continued to supervise or co-direct the major at CCS."

While Reese quickly moved up the ranks in the Art Department, receiving tenure in 1995 and becoming Department Chair in 1996, he remained the primary faculty member and lab supervisor for CCS Book Arts. "For close to 20 years, I was the lone ranger in the program—it was difficult—especially after I became the Chair of the Art Department," he explained. "There's a lot of personal satisfaction, pride you might call it, in starting a program that has meant so much to so many people, but it is a lot of work.” In 1997, Reese hired Inge Bruggeman, a UCSB alumna who had taken Reese's classes as an undergraduate and had gone on to receive an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama and receive national awards, to manage the program. Three years later Bruggeman left UCSB and moved to Portland to establish her own business, which became one of the top fine printing studios in the country. After a national search in 2000, CCS hired Linda Ekstrom to teach and co-direct the Book Arts program, which she continues today. With her dedicated leadership and passionate commitment to students and their working environment, Book Arts has grown both in its number of majors and in its recognition on campus and across the country.

The Book Arts as a discipline continues to thrive among students. The rise of smartphones and the internet leaves so many of us with the desire to create without a digital device. "Today many students want to learn with their hands," explained Reese. "They want to do something and make something. They're not satisfied with just their screens." According to Reese, new innovations in technology turn older technologies into art forms. What is left behind, what he has called “the trailing edge of technology,” becomes a candidate for art. This is what happened in Book Arts. "When I began teaching,” he said, “there was no commercial need for people to use letterpresses since the dominant press work at that time was based on offset printing. Hand set type and letterpress printing fell into the waiting hands of poets and artists, who used it the best they could. And some of us even learned how to bring art within our capabilities. As technology advances, students continue to be drawn to this form of art.”

Reese's career at UCSB blossomed with the Book Arts program; one may not have existed without the other. The program has thrived for over 30 years, and although Reese has held various administrative positions on campus (including serving as Associate Dean of CCS from 2006-2013), the sustained drive, motivation, and gratitude of the students are what continue to keep him engaged in the program he founded. For Reese, "The students have been the most important part of all the years I've been involved with CCS."