Announcing the Boundless Residency Recipients
Congratulations to the 2025 Boundless Residency recipients, C. K. Itamura, IBe Crawley, Islam Aly, and Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder!
The recipients will each have a 2–4 week residency with access to our fully-equipped studios to support letterpress printing, bookbinding, papermaking, screenprinting, paper marbling, and related arts. They will be provided a $1,000 stipend per week.
The recipients' applications were reviewed by a three-person jury panel, including MCBA’s Executive Director, Elysa Voshell, MCBA’s Director of Exhibitions & Artist Programs, Anika Schneider, and Associate Dean for Research and Engagement at Baylor University, Sha Towers.
C. K. Itamura
C.K. Itamura is a Yonsei, Nikkei interdisciplinary artist based in California. Her conceptual, interactive, and performance art serves to engage intergenerational audiences in the exploration of observation, contemplation, and expressive imagination.
C.K. is an Artist-in-Residence of San Francisco Unified School District Library Department, an Artist Mentor of San Francisco Arts Education Project, a Teaching Artist-Lead of Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, and works with schools, libraries, organizations and museums to to create and provide: professional development art-making workshops for educators; hands-on art-making workshops for students; and to make art-making accessible to the general public.
IBe crawley
IBe’ Crawley, born in 1959 in Danville, Virginia, renovated an 1830’s school building originally built by enslaved black men for the purpose of education white males on the Epps plantation in Hopewell, Virginia.
The IBe’ Arts Institute emerged as a repository for her work, which includes carved marble, wooden assemblages, paper and print, as well as quilted narratives. IBe’ Arts Institute invites fellows, interns and partners to participate in discovering and documenting voices that can educate into future generations. IBé Crawley’s studio is open by appointment to writers, thinkers, learners, and creators.
Islam Aly
Islam Aly is a book artist and lecturer of bookbinding at the German University in Cairo.
He earned
both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Art Education from Helwan University, and later
pursued an MFA in Book Arts at the University of Iowa, where he refined his artistic focus. He
went on to complete a Ph.D. in Teaching and Learning with a concentration in Art Education at
the University of Iowa.
His practice lies at the intersection of culture, technology, and aesthetics. Drawing on historical
bookbinding traditions and integrating digital technologies, Islam reimagines the role of the
book in contemporary art. His work pushes the boundaries of book art, offering innovative
approaches to how history and technology can coexist on the page.
Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder 
Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder is a book artist and proprietor of Coyote Bones Press. Her limited-edition artist’s books incorporate sculptural structures and found objects, combining traditional and contemporary bookbinding and printing techniques.
Schroeder’s work is held in prominent collections including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Library of Congress, Harvard, Stanford, RISD, and The British Library. Schroeder was selected as the Artist in Residence at Jaffe Center for Book Arts in 2019-2021, and winner of the 2022 MCBA Prize recognizing excellence in the field of book arts. In 2023, Schroeder was selected as the distinguished speaker for the Charles W. Mann Lecture in the Book Arts at Penn State University, and recipient of the inaugural 2023 Center for Craft Teaching Artist Cohort Grant. She is currently based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she is the curator of the Palace Press.
Jurors
Anika Hsiung Schneider is a narrative artist who draws on lived experiences, memory, and family history. With an Asian Mixed female identity, she resides in a highly racialized body that also exists in a liminal state. This connection to a liminal state of being closely connects her work to themes of loss, transitional spaces, and visualizing the intangible.
Anika received her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She currently serves as the Director of Exhibitions and Artist Programs at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and adjunct faculty at MCAD.
Elysa Voshell is an artist, curator, writer, and nonprofit arts leader whose work encompasses book arts, printmaking, photography, and installation. She holds an MA in Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and an MLA in Visual & Curatorial Studies and a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania. She exhibits internationally and has work included in museum and library collections worldwide.
Sha Towers is the Associate Dean for Research and Engagement at Baylor University. Sha provides administrative leadership across the University Libraries in the areas of public services, research, space planning and user engagement. Sha is a visual artist working in calligraphic and book arts. His artist's books appear in private and university special collections across the United States and have been featured in international juried and invitational exhibitions.
About The Boundless Residency
The Boundless Residency program provides artists living outside of Minnesota the opportunity to create innovative new work at MCBA. This residency provides artists living outside of Minnesota* with the time and space to work deeply on projects that require MCBA’s specialized equipment.
Providing studio access is central to MCBA’s mission, and we are excited to share our unique resources—and expand ties with the national and international book arts communities—through this new residency program.
This new program is supported generously by Cathy Ryan and Doris Engibous.
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