RISD Celebrates 12th Annual Baker & Whitehill Student Artists’ Book Contest

A historic winter blizzard was not powerful enough to prevent the RISD community from celebrating inventive artists’ books submitted for this year’s Artists’ Book Contest hosted by the Fleet Library. Prizes honoring standout student work were awarded by this year’s juror, Rhode Island native, art librarian, and photographer Gabrielle Reed, who teaches bookmaking at MassArt’s special collections library. “I want to say how amazing so much of this work was,” Reed says. “It was an honor to be a part of this event.”  

The $500 Grand Purchase Prize was awarded to Sculpture graduate student Stephanie Van Riet MFA 26 SC for her piece titled Voyager. The book tells the tale of a snail that finds itself on the other side of the world after soaring through the air on its feathered transport, a migratory bird. “I was inspired to create Voyager after having a conversation about snail migration with a scientist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia,” Van Riet explains. “The scientist informed me that snails can be swept up in ocean currents, transported by maritime vessels, or can even hitch a ride on the back of a migratory bird.” 

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Recall by Illustration junior Sadie Almand 27 IL took home the $375 Laurie Whitehill Purchase Prize. Its organza pages are meant to invoke the fleeting and tactile qualities that memories hold. “Each panel has printed photographs of a summer trip that are cropped and edited to represent sensory fragments of memory, with overlaid thin white embroidery of room contours,” the artist says. 

The Librarian’s Choice Purchase Prize, another $375 award, was given to grad student Airien Ludin MFA 26 IL for her piece Seas Away, which is about the strange experience of discovering someone anew through the items left behind and the spaces they once inhabited. “It explores the process of sorting through the belongings of my late grandmother, who lived across an ocean for most of my life,” Ludin says. “Seas Away mirrors this labor of untangling memories and grief, and the struggle to pack them all up again.”

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The American Printing History Association New England Chapter Purchase Prize of $375 was awarded to grad student Longwen Miao MFA 26 IL for their book The Violet City. Through charcoal illustrations, this book tells the story of the Steinbach family: an authoritarian father, an independent eldest daughter, and a sensitive younger daughter. The family experiences awakening and tragedy through a mysterious transformation.  

The Innovative Structure Purchase Prize, also $375, was awarded to Shawn Wang MFA 27 IL for Under the Feathers, a piece made of cold-pressed watercolor paper. The story begins with a Victorian-style portrait and unfolds, through its hand-drawn and hand-cut tunnel-book structure, to tell the story of a swan family intertwined with lush botanical forms. 

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The $100 honorable mention went to Robin Goldfarb 29 EFS for their piece Diagrams of the Queer Psyche, which represents queer, trans, and BIPOC voices through the use of collage and poetry. 

All of the prize-winning books become part of the library’s permanent artists’ book collection and can also be viewed online. 

Kaylee Pugliese / Top image: Voyager by Stephanie Van Riet
March 9, 2026