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At an early age I began drawing. At the age of thirteen I began painting in oil after winning a Scholastic Art Award for Commercial Design in 1965. In high school I painted and here realized that design was an aspect of all art forms, and majored in painting while at the Rhode Island School of Design. Engraving in copper and wood was of interest to me, and I began printmaking during this time. I earned a BFA from RISD in 1974.

After graduating I taught art and continued to paint, and in 1979 began to learn book binding in order to make sketch books for myself, and this interest blossomed into an appreciation and discovery of all aspects of book art. For two summers I did demonstrations for many of the art festivals in Maine, where I met Marnie Cobbs, and she invited me to the Northeast Document Conservation Center. I also met Robert Hauser and visited the Merrimac Valley Textile Museum where he was doing conservation.

During a visit to the Third & Elm Press in 1981, Alex Nesbitt told me about the Book Arts Institute in the Graduate School of Library Service at the University of Alabama forming under the direction of Gabriel Rummonds of the Plain Wrapper Press. I attended an intensive five week summer seminar on book art, and became so interested, that I attended the Graduate School as one of the first students enrolled in the program granting an MFA in the Book Arts. With Gabriel Rummonds we studied book design, type design, and printing on the Handpress, composing, printing, and binding books for the collegiate press Parallel Editions. When Gabriel Rummonds moved Plain Wrapper to Alabama, I worked setting up Exophidia Press, taught binding, and assisted in implementing the Book Arts Program.

  

	Glenn House, Gabriel Rummonds, Jeffrey Haste, and Susan Hendrie. Fine Print, April 1984. Around a form in the Cincinnati Washington handpress, University of Alabama Graduate School of Library Service.

As core courses for the MFA I studied library science, which included descriptive bibliography, and the history of printing and publishing. We all worked constantly, designing, printing and binding small books and keepsakes to give to friends as tokens of creative energy. At the institute I studied and worked with many great printers and book artists, which I found so inspirational that I founded the Muse Press. I earned the MFA in 1984.

Upon returning to Maine, I quickly found a job working at the Anthoensen Press, an old press that was still printing books from monotype and linotype on beautiful Nebiolo cylinder presses. There I operated a Hiedelberg and Nebiolo press, and designed, composed and printed many small books, stationery, and announcements for institutions of the Northeast. The Press closed in 1987, but I had already started a studio business doing printing and book binding.

Eventually this studio became the celebrated Muse Press of Portland, Maine. Here I published, repaired and restored hundreds of books, did designer bindings, presentations, and printing for collectors, publishers, libraries, museums, ad agencies, artists, and photographers. I also taught book arts classes through the then Portland School of Art / now Maine College of Art. After ten years I closed the studio in order to devote my full attention to book design.

Handmade papers by Gwen Cooper, printed on the Cincinnati Washington. A Blessing by James Wright. With a copper plate intaglio. The Janus Press The Greenwood Press/ Center for Typographic Language

 

In 1990 I began applying my background in typography to the computer and designing with Quark Xpress on the Macintosh. I designed publications and announcements for galleries and other businesses, and won design and publishing awards for The Maine Chapbook Series with the Maine Arts Commission, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Several books of prose and poetry by Maine writers were produced at the Muse Press, some of which were fine handmade limited editions illustrated by Maine artists. These works are part of public and private collections and have been exhibited in New York, and in Maine. In 1997 my work was exhibited in The Art of the Book, a group show at the Portland Museum of Art.