Esther K Smith

Esther K Smith's How to Make Books is now in second printing. Magic Books & Paper Toys is on press right now. It will be released by Random House imprint Potter Craft this November.

At Purgatory Pie Press in New York City, Smith makes limited editions and artist books with letterpress printer Dikko Faust and other artists and writers. They designed much of How to Make Books and Magic Books & Paper Toys with hand set antique wood type.

Purgatory Pie Press has had solo exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard University and Smith College. Purgatory Pie Press editions are also in the rare book collections of Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, The National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran, the Tate, San Francisco MoMA, and the Walker Museum.

Esther K Smith has curated artist book exhibitions and has taught Artist Books at Cooper Union since 1992. She and Faust also present lectures and workshops as visiting artists, train interns at Purgatory Pie Press in New York City, and design, letterpress print and hand-bind commissions for clients. Purgatory Pie Press has won design awards from The American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Esther K Smith is working on a new book for Random House, The Paper Bride.

Smith is involved in a 7-year art/life performance piece, initiated by performance artist Linda Montano. Smith's conceptual art project is The EK Smith Museum, which started in a Chicago apartment with a collection of found art, including The Apron Collection (in the kitchen, of course). The EK Smith Museum's outreach program, Their House is a Museum, finds museums in other people's homes. Their Store is a Museum is a metamorphosis of the EK Smith Museum. Some restaurants are also EK Smith Museum locations. EK Smith is a member of the American Association of Museums.

Esther K Smith is a proud member of Brevitas, an E-poetry group that encourages poems longer than a haiku and shorter than a sonnet. They read at Bob Holman's Bowery Poetry Club each year on New York City's Marathon Sunday.

She makes books with children at 826 as part of their literacy program.