Claire Van Vliet

Book Artist and Printmaker Class of 1989
location icon Location
Newark, Vermont
age iconAge
56 at time of award

About Claire's Work

Claire Van Vliet is a graphic artist, a printmaker, a bookmaker, a papermaker, and the founder of the Janus Press in 1955. 

While her roots are in traditional typographic forms, Van Vliet has moved beyond the boundaries of standard book design through her free composition of text pages, her incorporation of pictorial material with text, and her innovations in book structures and paperworks.  Her books and prints are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which presented an exhibition of her works in the fall of 1994.

Biography

Van Vliet’s work Satellite (1972) was published by the Museum of Modern Art.  The Janus Press, located in Newark, Vermont, has published over one hundred titles, including The Tower of Babel (1975), Aura (1977), The Dream of the Dirty Woman (1980), The Circus of Dr. Lao (1984), Aunt Sallie’s Lament (1988), Bone Songs (1992), Batterers (1996) and Rise (2003).  Van Vliet is also the co-author of Woven and Interlocking Book Structures (2002).

Van Vliet received an A.B. (1952) from San Diego State University and an M.F.A. (1954) from the Claremont Graduate School.

Last updated January 1, 2005.

Published on August 1, 1989

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