About the Artist

“Claire Van Vliet (born 1933 in Ottawa, Ontario) is an artist, illustrator, printmaker, and typographer who founded Janus Press in San Diego, California in 1955. She received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1989.

Born in Canada, Van Vliet emigrated to the United States after the death of her parents. She arrived in California where she was raised by her aunt. Van Vliet graduated in 1952 from San Diego State College with a Bachelor of Arts, and in 1954 from Claremont Gradual School with a Master of Fine Arts. 

In 1955 she moved to Europe returning to the United States in 1957. She taught drawing and printmaking classes at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art from 1965 to 1966. In 1967 she established a typographic workshop in Madison, Wisconsin. The Janus Press has been based in Newark, Vermont since Van Vliet settled there in 1966. Van Vliet "pioneered a technique of using the colored-paper pulp to create illustrations."

Van Vliet's work is in the collection of the Fleming Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of the Women in the Arts, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center.”  Excerpted from Wikipedia