The Special and Area Studies Collections at University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries are thrilled to announce the Coffey Residency Artist for 2022: Sauda Mitchell. Sauda Mitchell is an American printmaker, archivist, and educator from Winston-Salem, NC. She holds an Associate of Arts in Elementary Education from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Art with a minor in Art History from the Savannah College of Art and Design, a Master’s in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archival Studies from Drexel University, and is certified by the Academy of Certified Archivists. You can see more about Mitchell’s work here.
Ms. Mitchell will spend one week doing research at the Special and Area Studies Collections at University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries during Fall 2022. Upon completion of the artist’s book project, the artist will provide a public presentation and a workshop to be held at the University of Florida in the Spring 2023 semester.
Initiated in 2015, The Coffey Residency provides an opportunity for a selected artist to access materials from the Special and Area Studies Collections (SASC) at University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries as the impetus for the creation of an artists’ book edition. During the residency, the artist has the chance to interact with the collections, librarians, curators, faculty, and students across the university. Production of the project involves periodic consultation with the facilitator of the program, Ellen Knudson, Associate in Book Arts.
Over the years, the residency has transitioned from a six-week summer residency (2015 and 2016), to a semester-long Fall residency (2017, 2018, 2019) to the present updated form — an eight-month (academic) year-long program that is “low-residency”; the participating artists live and work in their own town for the majority of the residency period.
The Coffey Residency has become nationally recognized in the book arts community and the artists’ books produced from the residency have been well and widely acclaimed. Some of the collection placements of books created as part of the Coffey Residency are as follows: University of Iowa, U.S. Library of Congress, Bodelian Library (UK), Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), University of Washington, Ringling College of Art and Design, University of South Carolina, Miami University, Smithsonian Institute Library.
