all about the work of
Emily Larned
Emily Larned has been publishing as a socially engaged artistic practice since 1993, when as a teenager she made her first zine. Together with Bridget Elmer she is co-founder of Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts (ILSSA, est. 2008), a union for reflective creative practice. To date ILSSA has counted nearly 500 members in 37 states and 6 countries. ILSSA explores the immaterial working conditions of impractical laborers through participatory projects, publications, and exhibitions. Emily is also founder of Alder & Frankia (est. 2016), through which she publishes new collaborations and anthologies and reissues from feminist archives.
Emily's award-winning handmade artist books, zines, & publications (including Muffin Bones zine, Memorytown USA zine, Parfait zine, artist books under her former imprint Red Charming, as well as more recent publications) are collected by over 80 institutions internationally, including the Tate, the Brooklyn Museum, the V&A, & the Smithsonian, & are exhibited around the world. Her work has received accolades from the AIGA (50 Books | 50 Covers), the Type Directors Club (TDC) (The World's Best Typography), and the Connecticut Art Directors Club (CADC) (Gold & Silver awards in Book Design, Spirit of Creativity Award). She graduated from Yale School of Art with an MFA in Graphic Design and is currently Associate Professor of Art in Graphic Design at University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Emily learned letterpress printing as an apprentice to Robin Price while an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, & she served on the Board of Booklyn Artists Alliance for eight years. She has taught at every education level from after-school program through MFA, & has presented about her work at dozens of institutions. From 2009-2019 she was Chair of Graphic Design at the Shintaro Akatsu School of Design (SASD) at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she established SASD Design Service, a sliding-scale, community-oriented, student-run, award-winning design studio. She has also taught at Colorado College, Wesleyan University, SUNY Purchase College, Visual Studies Workshop, Anhui Polytechnic University (Anhui, Wuhu, China), and Ludong University (Yantai, Ludong, China).
Emily's studio RCHQ is located in the American Fabrics Building in Bridgeport, CT. Follow on Instagram to hear about new publications and projects. You can read her occasional writing about bookmaking on the CBAA's Book Art Theory Blog.
Say hello at [email protected].
CV