Jody Williams is a book artist, printmaker, teacher and writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She publishes artist books under the name Flying Paper Press, and exhibits her work nationwide. She teaches at Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, as well as at schools and art centers throughout the United States and in Europe.
Williams has been publishing limited edition artist’s books in Minnesota since 1989. “Books communicate information and ideas; boxes keep things safe and hidden,” she says. “Most of my work deals with artist’s books and boxes, and with the relationship between communication and containers.” She has a passion for little books and little boxes, and early on discovered that her most successful work is small.
Her books feature her own writings, integrated with intaglio, relief, and screenprinting on fine papers, traditional and innovative bindings and structures, and unexpected elements like metals and natural specimens. Her work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Minnesota Historical Society, and numerous other museums, universities, and libraries.
After growing up near Chicago, she enrolled at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, earning her BA, cum laude, in 1978. She holds an MFA in printmaking from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.