walking bird press

Tara Bryan has always loved books. As a child, she and her mother made weekly visits to the bookmobile, a cramped but magical bus which brought new books to the neighborhood every week. Ballerinas! Polar Bears! All hers with her pass to the world: a library card.

Twenty years later, as a graduate student in painting, she discovered the magic of letterpress printing and typography. She took a bookbinding course taught by the conservator of the University of Wisconsin Library and enrolled in Typography specifically to make books. Her first books were published as Pterodactyl Press, and when she moved to New York in 1987, she changed the name to walking bird press.

Between 1987 and 1992, Bryan took courses at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Through their Work-Study program, she was able to work in the letterpress area in exchange for taking classes and had the good fortune to take classes with Carol Barton, Hedi Kyle, Barbara Mauriello, Scott McCarney, Susan Share, Carolyn Chadwick and other inspiring books artists. In one of these workshops, she met Zahra Partovi, binder for Vincent FitzGerald & Co., who was looking for an assistant. Bryan worked part-time with Partovi for about a year, then began teaching Art at Rockland Country Day School in Congers, NY.

In 1992 she moved to Newfoundland with a Vandercook and 6 cabinets of type. She continues to paint and make books and has taught workshops to all ages, from kindergarteners to adults, and has worked in the ArtsSmarts and Artists in the Schools programmes, as well as teaching classes through MUN Lifelong Learning, the Anna Templeton Centre and St. Michael’s Printshop.

Bryan loves the tactile experience of holding and reading a book– the intimacy created between the viewer and object. The creative process in making books is also quite different from the act of painting, in her experience. She continues to make books because the process uses a different part of her brain, and gives her a chance to combine verbal ideas and interesting materials in work the viewer can touch. Her first books were printed as Pterodactyl Press; when she found another press was already using that name, she changed her press name to walking bird.

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