2015 Book & Paper MFA alumna’s Angela Davis Fegan‘s thesis project <em>Lavender Menace</em> was written up in “The Offing,” a Los Angeles Review of Books online channel. The article consists of a review of her project and an extensive interview by Aricka Foreman and Diamond Sharp.

“Chicago-based print and textile artist Angela Davis Fegan’s ‘Lavender Menace’ project is unapologetically queer. Using letterpress, textile, papermaking and other text-based mediums, she purposely turns the traditional medium of printmaking on its head. Taking what seems to some an antiquated method, the work “includes approximately 500 to 700 poster objects, the majority of which were printed using handset wood type on a Vandercook Universal 1 on both commercially produced and handmade papers.” These pieces have been made available in gallery spaces, Chicago’s Dyke March and public restrooms.

Fegan’s language surrounding the body, as both a site of erasure and visibility, is on one hand a pragmatic practice, on the other, a resistant manifesto. The artist’s use of menstrual blood as material, for example, she explains, ‘becomes a way to highlight the chemical processes involved in papermaking, printing and burning the work. It is also a way of making magic or conjuring witchcraft in the objects before they go out into the world. It is a signature, a mark, a curse, and an aspect of seduction/repulsion.’ Indeed.”

Read the full article here:
http://theoffingmag.com/enumerate/lavender-menace/