Walter Tisdale and Barbara Tetenbaum

Walter Tisdale, American, b. 1956; BS 1992
Lives and works in Bangor, Maine

Barbara Tetenbaum, American, b. 1957; BS 1979
Lives and works in Portland, Oregon
Audio clip and biography can be found here

Fine-press printer, publisher and typographer Walter Tisdale is the founder of Tatlin Books and Landlocked Press. His mother, a history teacher, raised Walter and his four brothers by herself in Portland, Maine. As a child, he loved to read and draw, and, beginning in fifth grade, he took art classes at school and the local university as well as private lessons with art teachers. At Colgate University in New York, he majored in English and became devoted to studying the history of the book. He combed library shelves for material about typefaces and book design. He realized that books had their own architecture with passages readers take through the pages. Tisdale left Colgate for Wisconsin and worked at a Madison bookstore for two years. His desire to make books lured him back to school and into Walter Hamady’s classroom at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tisdale and Kathy Kuehn bought a press together, and he spent his free time printing. He co-curated the Breaking the Bindings: American Book Art Now exhibit of artists’ books at the UW, and earned his BS in 1992. He has collaborated with Barb Tetenbaum, Jim Lee, and Pati Scobey, among others, and his early emphasis on poetry books has given way to playing with structure and experimenting with his own prints.