Caren Florance
Paper
Accredited Professional Member
Caren Florance is an artist, designer, writer and creative researcher. Her practice is informed by material bibliography and book history. She works predominantly with text, often collaborating with artist and publishers. By using traditional letterpress and bookbinding processes along with more contemporary technologies, she produces diverse works across the book arts spectrum, from zines, artist books and installation work to formal publishing outputs. She is collected by national and international institutions (mostly libraries) and private collectors. Her most recent commercial volume is Lost in Case (Cordite Books, 2019).
Caren studied English Lit and Classics at ANU before going to the Canberra School of Art in the mid-1990s. She started at CSA in the Graphic Investigation Workshop, then took time off, eventually finishing her degree in the new Printmedia & Drawing Workshop (PMD) at the renamed ANU School of Art. Upon graduation in 2002 she worked in the ANU Edition + Artist Book Studio (E+ABS) with Dianne Fogwell and then taught sessionally for PMD until the end of 2020. She has also taught at University of Canberra (UC) in Visual Communications, Cultural Heritage, and Creative Writing. She completed a PhD in Creative Practice in the UC Faculty of Arts & Design in 2018 and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the UC Centre for Creative & Cultural Research. In recent years she has become a mentor for Trauma-Arts projects such as the UC ADF ARRTS program (Arts for Recovery, Resilience, Teamwork and Skills), the UC Regeneration project (Snowy Valleys) and the South Coast Arts project Art After Fire.
