The Culture Keeper / for the Kresge Foundation. Book development, art direction, design, print management, photography.
From 2019–2022, I art-directed the Kresge Eminent Artist Monographs, an annual series of books published by the Kresge Foundation. Each book was conceived, designed, and produced to best serve the work of the individual artist.
The Culture Keeper is the 2022 Eminent Artist Monograph honoring the work of Detroit artist, curator, and storyteller Olayami Dabls, founder of the African Bead Museum.
6 x 9 in, 128 pages, perfect bound.
Check out the other Kresge Eminent Artist Monographs I art-directed:
2019—Gloria House
2020—Marie Woo
2021—Shirley Woodson
Copies of the Eminent Artist Monographs are available free to US residents, by completing this form.
A spread from the book. The title is in modified Alfarn. The photo is of a work called Iron Sticking Out Of Wood, part of the African Scripted Language Wall.
Because much of the artist’s work is in the form of murals and outdoor installations, my work for this book sent me all over Detroit with my camera. This photo is of the piece The Middle Passage, located on the grounds of the African Bead Museum.
The text is set in Fern Text, a translational-contrast typeface that provided a friendly, easygoing voice to anchor the wild mix of art and design in the book.
The cover image is a detail of the immersive mural Trade Beads and Snakes.
The cover of the book features silver foil stamped where some of the broken mirrors had fallen off of the actual mural.
A photograph of Olayami Dabls (and editor Nichole Christian, if you look really closely) that I made for the book.
Dabls reflected in the mirrors of one of his murals, in a photograph I made for the book.