“...when one of us castaways spots a ray of light and – not always attainable – sun, he feels himself lucky: the almost-severed thread begins to weave something new; a new world reveals itself to him and one of these rays of light is certainly the book bindery.”  

Writing in the Yiddish-language section of the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society’s magazine Hatikvah in 1926, patient Aaron Landau expresses pride in his craftsman training at the sanatorium’s book bindery. Landau positions the bindery as a “new world” and reentry point to forge purpose and community as a person living with Tuberculosis. As a scholar of Yiddish print culture, I am curious about the commitments of patients like Landau to self-publish for a Yiddish-speaking audience within the context of the American Southwest. As a printmaker and book artist, I am interested in how technical craft traditions like Landau’s book binding shifted the relationships of patients to their own sick bodies in the context of the sanatorium.

My current body of prints and artist books responds to the material culture within two free Tuberculosis Sanatoriums for Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth century, the JCRS Sanatorium in Denver, CO and the JCRA Sanatorium in Duarte, CA. Working with archival materials from the JCRS has given me insight into the printing processes and reader experience of the magazines, bulletins, and pamphlets that patients and staff produced. The mailing addresses on the periodicals and references to their subscribers have helped me understand their circulation and how the dispersal of printed multiples connected sequestered residents to an audience far beyond the sanatorium's boundaries. Moreover, the residents activated this network of readership as part of a robust, chapter-based fundraising model. Against the backdrop of compounding displacements, print functioned as a nexus of (re)connection: to the body, to the new and surprising mountainous landscapes, to Jewish immigrant communities across the U.S., and to multiple languages.