What Doing 🍂 Fall 2026

Dear Friends, 

The newest issue of Paper Choir is coming out on the autumn equinox (Sept. 22nd). Community Chaos, features recipes designed for casual weeknight gatherings sourced from the Paper Choir reader community. In it is an essay by Margaret Demment — on considering how to expand the table when you’re already stretched thin — and another by Sarah McColl, about succumbing to the mayhem of having people over as a way to deepen friendships. 

If shared soup nights with friends and neighbors is on your fall wish list, or you want to break bread with folks more often in an unfussy way, Community Chaos offers ten humble, cozy ideas for extra seats at the table. Subscribe by September 30 to receive this collection as your first issue. Purchase back issues of Paper Choir here.

Sarah and I print each issue of Paper Choir on the Risograph here in my studio (more about Riso printing).

This publication project reflects our intention and ambition to promote real-world, off-line connection by offering subscribers tangible, tactile, unexpected reading experiences. 

In October, I will be showing some new monotypes, drawings, and ceramic work along side Gabe Babcock and Roberta Monte James at Salmon Bend Art Studios during our annual show.

Salmon Bend, if you haven’t been, is an artist-run gallery at the end of persimmon-tree-lined country road—a true labor of love for the three of us (and our families) since 2021.

You are cordially invited to the opening reception on October 9th (Friday) at 4:00pm. We’d love to see you there, catch up, and share our new work with you. The gallery will be open to the public for two weekends through October 18th.  Learn more at salmonbendartstudios.com.

Speaking of family, I have the great fortune to be wedded to Mark Leidner, a treasure among our generation’s many poets. His latest collection, Elegy for Pangaea, will be published this month by Fonograf Editions. 

Reading poetry can be an effective antidote to existential dread, which is easy to find creeping around many unexpected corners these days, and this book of poems is particularly potent.

It was a joy to design.

Finally, I was recently awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the California Arts Council, in partnership with Nevada County Arts & Culture, for the Upstate Region — which is a very exciting honor.  This fellowship will allow me to push the above branches of my artist practice forward and outward in growth. My goal is to use this opportunity to deepen my knowledge and skills, and expand the ways I offer them to my direct community.

In other news:  

• If you’re within driving distance of Sacramento and want to learn about this Risograph printing process I’m always talking about, I’ll be teaching Intro to Risograph Basics at Verge Center for the Arts on October 1st.

• And, as always, you can find my latest prints, cards, zines, and unique home goods for purchase on in my shop.

Very best,

Invitation for Submissions

We’re making a cookbook!

And in the spirit of beloved vintage 1970s spiralbound volumes, we want to include recipes from you, our readers.

Imagine this: It’s Tuesday night and a multi-age group of hungry people are coming over to eat. It’s not a dinner party; it’s sharing the labor and pleasure of the end-of-day meal with friends, family, neighbors. What are your most trusted, reliable, go-to recipes for a group of 6 to 8 (or 10!)? Main dishes, sides, and desserts are all welcome on the table. We like simple, seasonal, and a little bit special.

If your recipe is selected, you will receive credit for your contribution, of course, as well as five copies of the cookbook.

Write to: PO Box 66, Colusa, CA 95932 or sarahemccoll@gmail.com

By July 31st, 2026

What Doing 🌻 Summer 2026

Dear Friends,

Sarah and I spent the last few days of May printing and binding the latest issue of Paper Choir and we are getting ready to mail it out to subscribers in time for the summer solstice. HEAVY CREAM, an essay by Nina Renata Aron on the consolations of women’s food writing, is this season’s strawberry-rhubarb shortcake——tart edge, tender crumb, and ultimately comforting: the deep, ineffable pleasures of the kitchen can still be the simplest ones.

“I discover over and over again that the food writing of yore offers a pleasing corrective to this bizarre moment we’re living in, this capitalist overabundance, this punishing gig economy. I crave a return to an easeful, funny, everyday, human-scale relationship to food. And over and over, I find it in 20th-century women’s food writing.”

Subscribe by June 30 and you’ll receive this excellent piece of writing as your first issue (and make special note of the invitation for submissions in the back—we’re making a cookbook!). If you missed the last issue (LOST ART, written by Sarah McColl), you can purchase a single copy here.

Also in May: I started working on a new body of work during a week-long residency in Petaluma, CA. Inspired by this upcoming summer issue of Paper Choir, the subject matter for these prints is pulled off the grocery store shelf. I made these monoprints by inking up, wiping off, and masking a sheet of plexiglass, then cranking it through an etching press with a sheet of mulberry paper on top. I’ll let you know where they’re going when I know, but until then here’s a peak:

Copies of the IN THE COUNTY zine are available at the Colusa County Arts Council!

This publication is an artifact of collective effort and positive community collaboration between many people in Colusa County an beyond (friends and neighbors, photographers, artists, land-owners, nonprofit organizers, etc.). It captures Colusa County through a uniquely creative lens and features text written by the program directors Daniel LoPilato and Eliza Gregory, as well as the teaching fellows: Brandon Flores, Jess Peña, Jordan Burkart, and Sofia Gladysh. For these reasons and more——and because it was printed on my humble Risograph——I am very proud of this project.

Pick up a copy at the Arts Council before August and you’ll see the accompanying exhibition of photographs made by the community participants during the IN THE COUNTY photography project (you can also order online).

In other news:  

• I’m hosting a few more Riso Office Hours coming up at Verge (June 11th and 18th 4:30-6:30pm). I’ll be there to support you in your projects, then more Verge workshops TBA in the Fall!

• I’m teaching a Printmaking Camp at Vergein July, there may be a few spots left.

• I already said this, but it bares repeating because I’m really excited about this next issue: Issue 2 of PAPER CHOIR — a quarterly publication collaboration with my friend Sarah McColl — will be mailed out in June 2026. Subscribe and get some beautiful printed matter in the mail every solstice/equinox. Thanks to everyone who has already subscribed!!!

• And, as always, you can find prints, cards, zines, etc. for purchase on in my shop.

Very best,

What Doing 🌷 Spring 2026

Dear Friends,

I hope spring is springing politely wherever you are. The first issue of PAPER CHOIR was mailed out in March with great excitement—thank you to everyone who has subscribed! The floral illustrations in this issue are some collagraph prints I made with oil-board, the words were written by my collaborator and friend Sarah McColl.

If you are not yet a subscriber, you can get a copy of the first issue here. Our next issue will be published in June 2026 and feature an essay by Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls, and many delicious pieces of food writing. 

If you love printed matter and getting beautiful things in the mail, I would be delighted if you considered subscribing yourself, or gifting a subscription to a friend.

My little SF5130 Risograph will be taking up residence for a few weeks at the Colusa County Arts Council in April to produce a collaborative photography book with the participants of the IN THE COUNTYprogram, in collaboration with The [Placeholder] Project. 

While it’s there, I will also be hosting a special edition of Intro to Risograph Basics on April 23rd. If you are local and interested in learning more about this unique printmaking process, sign up! It’s a great way to learn a new skill, meet new people and give your brain something new and positive to chew on.

In other news:  

• I’ll also be teaching Intro to Risograph Basics at Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento on May 22nd.

• Sign-ups are open for July's Printmaking Camp at Verge

• And, as always, you can find prints, cards, zines, etc. for purchase on in my shop.

Very best,

Solstice Blessings 2025

Dear Friends,

Happy solstice! I am looking forward to the new year and want to share with you some new happenings in the studio: 

In 2026, I am beginning a collaborative publishing project with writer and dear friend Sarah McColl (author of Joy Enough). In the fall of 2024, Sarah and I made a print edition of her essay Digging Deep, about the life and work of 1970s conceptual artist Agnes Denes—we loved doing it so much, we wanted to do more: thus Paper Choir.

Each Paper Choir subscription will include four quarterly mailings. In March, June, September and December of 2026, mailbox arrivals will include various risograph printed ephemera—zines, recipes, notecards, illustrated diaries, stickers, collaborative texts, posters, postcards, broadsides, etc.—featuring writing/illustrations from the two of us, and other voices we admire.

Our first publication is a personal essay about Lost Art—Sarah’s long running substack newsletter about the creative lives and works of (mostly) dead women. Subscribers will get this retrospective of some of the most interesting artists you may have never heard of. In many ways Paper Choir is an expansion of the Lost Art project.

If you love printed matter and getting beautiful things in the mail, I would be delighted if you considered subscribing yourself, or gifting a subscription to a friend. 

In other news:  

• In January, I will be teaching an Intro to Risograph Basics workshop at Verge Center for the Contemporary Arts in Sacramento—if you’re local and want to get certified to use their Riso, sign up! 

• I’ll also be teaching a photography zine workshop at the Colusa County Arts Council in the spring, as part of a season-long photography project called In the County (sign up, learn more). 

• I am opening my books to new clients in the new year, so if you have any design or illustration needs, hit me up.

• For those interested, I remodeled my portfolio website. 

• And, as always, you can find prints, cards, zines, etc. for purchase on in my shop.

Very best and happy holiday to you and yours!