"I like to watch her sway. She's luck before I'm going away..."
/Kim Austin & Austin Press has been a favorite of mine for a while now, ever since our first conversation when I said "there's a song with your name - know it?" (turns out it is about her).
Austin Press has been churning out "fine letterpress ephemera" since 1994. She uses Rising Conservation Board for a lot of her work and has lately started adding color using Colorscope
Of her non-letterpress work:
Working since 1989, Kimberly Austin has produced photographs on silk, muslin, wood, and paper. She works exclusively with vintage photographic recipes, Van Dyke, Cyanotype, and Gum Bichromate, and mixes all emulsions by hand in her studio. Her images are built up from consecutive printing, either through multiple runs of translucent emulsions, or by layering images on transparent silk and vellum.
The content of Austin's work focuses on conceptions of normal behavior and development. She has worked extensively with portraits, vintage illustrations, text excerpts, and most recently personal documents from her family history. In each series she has focused on the discrepancy between societal expectations of the individual and the reality of being human. Her work continues to explore this delicate balance, exposing our vulnerability to a seemingly unending cast of social mores and accepted modes of healthy living.