Blue Bluer Books is the press name for artists’ books and other work by Josh Hockensmith.
I’ve been obsessed with books and other printed stuff for as long as I can remember. Whether it was the stack of preschool library books teetering beside me on the couch (always the maximum number you were allowed to check out…), the baseball cards I collected and traded in grade school, or the surf magazines I devoured as a teen, printed matter has always held an aura of the sacred.
When I graduated with a BA in English (University of Richmond, 1995), I thought I would either go on for a PhD to become a professor of literature, or an MFA to become a poet. Two discoveries derailed me from either track. First, I was given a handmade Japanese journal as a gift by a professor and mentor. The exposed stab binding on the outside of the journal sparked the realization that these magical objects that had obsessed me for so long are made, and that I, too, could learn how to make them. Second, I encountered the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry around the same time, which featured many transgressive, revolutionary poems from the 1960s and 70s that had been formative for me when I first read them in yellowing, old, small-press publications. In the new anthology, though, they seemed neutered — their wildness reined in by approval and canonization. Seeing how the impact of the exact same poems could be altered so radically based on things like the font, the paper quality, and the cultural status of the publisher, inspired my first awareness that the physical body of a poem can be as meaningful as its words. I’ve been obsessed with the materiality of books and texts ever since.
Instead of pursuing a PhD or MFA then, I chose to develop my skills and knowledge of hand bookbinding by working in the library at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as a full-time book repair technician. After seven years at the workbench, I transitioned to a position in UNC’s Sloane Art Library, where part of my responsibility was to curate and teach with a growing collection of artists’ books and zines. Working at the Art Library for eighteen years allowed me to stay abreast of the most current developments in artists’ publications, and to stay connected with students during a time when their relationship with books and printed matter has changed in an increasingly born-digital age.
While working at the library I took courses in printmaking, letterpress, and other fields, before finding my focus and completing an MA in Art History in May 2025. My culminating work was a thesis proposing a critical approach to artists’ books that emphasizes movement as the most distinctive, essential characteristic of the medium – movement through the pages of a book, as well as the movement of the book in society as a portable art object.
After twenty-five years as a library worker, in the summer of 2025 I left UNC-Chapel Hill to concentrate full-time on studio work, research, and writing. I remain obsessed with printed matter and the full spectrum of work being created in book form; in the convergence of digital technology and the physical book; and in the history of the book as the complicit participant in some of humanity’s strangest, most wonderful, most powerful creations through the ages.
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