About Kat and Oxide:

As the owner and sole bookbinder behind Oxide Press & Bindery, I make every book, box, and print by hand with traditional bookbinding and printmaking tools. When I’m not bookbinding or teaching, I work as an environmental education program specialist.

As a bookbinder and artist, I maintain a foundational commitment to care for our environment. I use foraged earthen and botanical pigments to hand dye book cloth and use sustainable, chlorine, and acid free papers from renewable resources like post-consumer waste, straw, hemp, and recycled cotton. Oxide Press specializes in creating book cloth from fabric that otherwise ends up in the waste stream.

Oxide’s Name:

I founded Oxide Press & Bindery in 2019, with the first edition of Erosion, a hand type-set letterpress and aquatint print book that connects surveillance capitalism to gold mining practices in California. The first time I foraged for pigment was at a defunct gold mine - the pigments were discarded with the rubble. Created within the caldera of our planet and risen to the surface through tectonic action, iron oxide pigments have been used for tens of thousands of years for decorative and spiritual purposes, and hold a sacred place in our collective history. Oxide Press’ name honors these pigments and asserts our interdependency with the planet.