This exhibit presents the Miniform Newsletter: a 12-part newsletter series created by Akiko Neumann during her residency with the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. The series was mailed in monthly increments an open sign-up of SFPL members that grew to over 200 at its peak. Newsletters reflected the variety of materials Neumann referenced from the library within the year, and how they distilled into her daily thinking. Each newsletter explored a distinct theme—from information-sharing in the Medieval age, to the decibels of war, to ghost-waterways beneath San Francisco—all of which originated from the same starting point of just browsing the shelves.
The Miniform Newsletter Display contains the complete collection of newsletters as well as a new installation of work created with excess paper scraps from the newsletter-printing process. Accessibility to public resources and the ability to use them for creative purposes is at the heart of this project.
Akiko Neumann is a San Francisco resident and Bay Area-born artist. Her graphic-narrative work interweaves diaristic prose with mini research inquiries, contextualizing daily life within greater conversations of history, infrastructure, consciousness, and nature. Her work is housed in SFMOMA Library Collections, as well as SFPL’s San Francisco History Center Archive.