An experimental panel organized by General Things Press engaged in the experimental nature of books. How it is we come to understand the book form and what it births through the various forms, we as artists, make of it will be of highest concern. Stemming from our individual practices, we will engage as performers of a chorus. The panel will be followed by a Q+A.
Contributing panelists include:
Riesling Dong, Riesling Design, is a Chicago-based book artist and graphic designer whose bold, experimental approach to publishing challenges the conventions of the traditional book. She treats the book as a sculptural form—a medium for storytelling, information, and embodied experience. Her practice seeks to deepen the viewer’s engagement and understanding, creating objects that hold meaning through every typographic, structural, and material choice. Her work investigates how design and physical form guide a reader’s movement through narrative—inviting participation, touch, and reflection.
Amira Hegazy makes images, experiences, objects, books, and texts. Based in Chicago, she teaches design practice and theory at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research investigates diverse design legacies and Love as an organizing principle in community-driven design. Combining play and scholarly methods — Amira's work is multimodal — shifting output to express the most honest form the idea can hold. Beyond her individual expression, her practice includes collaborative projects with other artists and scholars to create unique prints, books, and exhibitions.
Conor Stechschulte is a cartoonist and screenwriter. He is the author most recently of the graphic novel Ultrasound, published by Fantagraphics, along with dozens of self-published comics, including the most recent, “Crepusucline #1.” He adapted Ultrasound into the screenplay for a feature film directed by Rob Schroeder and released by Magnolia Films in March of 2022. He has exhibited his work internationally and published with Breakdown Press in London, Colorama Press in Berlin, and Coconino Press in Rome, among others. He lives in Berwyn, IL, and teaches classes in comics, printmaking and self-publishing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Raeann Van Zee, BOVINE press, is a designer, printmaker, and Chicago-area design educator. Her work considers value, forms of labor and currency, language, and the activity of self-publishing. Raeann publishes books and other printed matter via the Risograph and her small press BOVINE. She would call the work of creating her publications a sort of poetic knowledge construction, and is interested in the altered relationship between designer and work when they are involved in all stages of production.
bex ya yolk from THUNGRY. bex ya yolk (they/them) is a visual artist, graphic designer, book maker, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk received a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a concentration in Book Arts as a full merit scholar. yolk has received grant endowment from the Atlanta Contemporary, Codex International Biennial Artists' Book Fair and Symposium, the College Book Art Association, VCUarts Adjunct Faculty Research, and the Judith Alexander Foundation. They are a BOLT artist-in-residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition, 2024-2026. yolk is the founder of an artists’ book bindery + publishing initiative—THUNGRY, which focuses on disrupting what qualifies as a Book, complicating traditional ways of book building + semantics through experimentation and queering praxis. THUNGRY explores historical research, sociology, and speculative theory into 'the Maternal Complex' made up of subgenres like care work, reproductive design, abortion access activism, reproductive justice, and health care disparity, maternal identities, and the gestational state, especially in queer folx exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + these kinds of bodies.
GALLERY 3