Interview with Professor Harry Reese

Harry Reese is a longtime faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1978 and helped establish the College of Creative Studies’ Book Arts Program in 1985. His work centers on printmaking, papermaking, and book art, as well as the history and practice of printing and the material study of texts. Reese’s creative and scholarly projects explore the relationship between visual form, language, and the physical processes of making books, and his work has been exhibited widely and collected by major institutions. He is recognized for his contributions to preserving and advancing traditional book and print arts through both teaching and artistic production.

In our interview, we discussed the evolution of art and the printing press, especially paper-making, the evolution of knowledge and literature, as well as getting into some more modern-day topics, in the form of McLuhan and media theory.