Mythological Books, Medicinal Rituals, and the Revival of the African Codex: Reginald Walker’s Artists’ Books

Research Fellow Megan N. Liberty pieces together the life and work of book artist Reginald Walker (1946–1988), who revived African bookmaking traditions in the 1970s, synthesizing avant-garde artists’ books with a non-Western methodology. Rather than an archival absence, Liberty's research uncovered a pattern of archival neglect that has plagued Walker's legacy—"materials exist, but are just waiting for the time and resources needed to process and use them." To deepen her research on Walker, Liberty conducted interviews with Vince Aletti, Gary Frost, Gérard Charrière, and Richard Minsky. The transcripts of these interviews are now available to reference in Walker's artist file in the Visual AIDS Archive.

Over the course of a decade, Reginald Walker made mystical, rubber-stamped artists’ books reviving ancient African—particularly Ethiopian and Egyptian—bookmaking traditions. Reggie—as he was known—was born on June 13, 1946, and died suddenly from an AIDS-related illness in January of 1988. As a consequence of his work’s ties to craft, as well as its lack of explicit references to the identity politics and activist movements that popularized the work of many other artists of color of his generation, Walker has been overlooked by art history.

Walker’s notes indicate that he began producing artists’ books as early as 1978, and in the ten years before he died, he produced at least twenty book works, as well as countless blank, Coptic-bound books as gifts for friends, sketchbooks for other artists, and to sell at the prominent art supply store New York Central. Walker assembled each artist’s book from handmade paper with tooling and painted edges, hand-binding the pages together using the Coptic method. The artist embellished his painstakingly crafted and researched publications with collaged elements and handmade rubber stamps featuring images of bones, religious iconography, Cyrillic, Greek, and Ethiopic alphabets, astrological symbols, and anatomical illustrations, often referencing Ethiopian and Egyptian visual motifs.

The books often begin with text commanding the reader to commence (for example, “le ritual comm”) suggesting a performative aspect to reading and enacting the instructions in the book. Phrases such as bone of a dog, blood of a bat, tongue of a vulture, dragons blood, doves blood, and skull of a corpse, which appear throughout his books, evoke mythical rituals and the history of the book as a religious and spiritual object. Some are filled with what seem to be witchy shopping lists: flesh, bones, marrow, vertebrae. Pages of handwritten and typed notes he drafted during his research further suggest that these books are in fact medicinal, homeopathic, or ritual performances, offering instructions for the various elements to be combined for the desired effects.¹ This is especially interesting in light of the time during which Walker worked, at the height of the AIDS crisis.

I first learned about Walker’s work through Center for Book Arts (CBA) in New York, where he was an apprentice in the late 1970s. But preliminary research didn’t reveal much about him; when I first began this project, there were no color digital images of his work online or in print publications, nor was there any biographical information beyond the portraits of him and of his dog Bouche by Peter Hujar included in the 2018 exhibition Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, organized by the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid.² Looking through a scrapbook of CBA’s early years, during which time Walker was an apprentice, I found mention of him in a photo caption from a 1977 open house, “Apprentice Reggie Walker demonstrates sewing a book on raised cords,”—however, the photograph itself is mysteriously missing. Similarly, when I searched for his books or archival materials on WorldCat, I came across a link for his papers in the collection of the New York Public Library that failed to connect to anything in their catalogue. Shortly after I inquired about these papers, the finding aid for the collection—which had been processed in 2018—was published online.

Thus, it wasn’t just an interest in the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of his work that led me to continue to research Walker, but also an interest in the archival neglect, not absence, that has plagued his legacy—materials exist, but are just waiting for the time and resources needed to process and use them.

During his time at the Newberry, Walker learned traditional European binding techniques. As he wrote in a 1970 letter to the library’s director, Lawrence Towner, “My skill as a binder has also improved steadily thanks to the help of Paul Banks, Gerard Charriere, and the helpful advice of Jim Wells.”⁶ But his time there was not without difficulty, as he faced significant racism. He sought to continue his education with a BFA, writing to Towner: “I think that because of the society in which we live is so race-conscious I, as a black representative of my profession, will have to have knowledge of many things […] these include history, art, design, typography, the physical sciences, foreign languages, and mathematics.”⁷ He recognized that he would “have to be, or strive to be, better than most.”

During this period, Walker was working primarily on perfecting his craft and not yet making creatively driven artists’ books. “We basically had benches side by side for all of our work,” Frost told me. “I remember sometimes we’d go to lunch, that kind of thing. We were good friends.” He suggests that it was during his time at the Newberry that Walker first became interested in African bindings. “My guess is that Paul [Banks] instigated or responded to perhaps some of Reggie’s already dawning interest in African bookwork.”⁸In October of 1971, budget cuts at the library forced Walker out of his job, launching him into the next phase of his life—in New York.

But it wasn’t until the late ’70s, when he became involved with Center for Book Arts, that Walker’s artwork blossomed beyond technical conservation and binding. “He walked in the door and said, ‘I’ve been hearing about your apprenticeship program. I want to be your apprentice,’” Richard Minsky, founder of CBA, told me.¹⁰ The year Walker started, 1977, CBA was located in a storefront on Bleecker Street, right in the midst of the downtown art scene. Minsky ran the apprenticeship program with Master Craftsman grants from the National Endowment from the Arts, and awarded one to Walker to pursue his growing interest in African bookbinding. Minsky also took Walker to view the Ethiopian Coptic bindings collections at Princeton and Columbia universities, where “Reggie really got to see how they were made and got to feel them. He got to lay hands on them and absorb the vibes.”¹¹Following these experiences, Walker became fully dedicated to learning about African binding techniques, Ethiopic alphabets, and book-making rituals.

The missing photograph of Walker from the December 1977 CBA open house, which finally surfaced, un-labeled, in a box of uncatalogued photographs in the institution’s archives, shows him demonstrating sewing a book binding to a large crowd. His head is turned down, making his face nearly illegible. The contact sheet from which this photo was selected reveals the full sequence, including one image where Walker looks up animatedly at the crowd. Besides the Hujar photograph, this was the first image I saw of Walker’s face, and the first to fully confirm I had not imagined his career as a book artist.

In addition to making his own Coptic-bound blank books for other artists, such as Brice Marden and Snyder, and blank sketchbooks to sell at New York Central, Walker also wrote articles and gave lectures on the history of the binding method. In 1978 he began a series of articles on Coptic book arts for The Copts journal, writing: “The origins of the Egypto-Ethiopian Coptic codex are shrouded in the mysteries of early Christian Egypt.”¹² In 1979 he presented a lecture on “The Art of Coptic Book Binding” as part of the American Museum of Natural History’s Black History week celebration.

As both Minksy and Frost noted, Walker made more people aware of the Coptic form and its non-Western origins. This had a crucial impact on the history of book art. “If we accept this—that Reggie got his boost of interest from Paul in Chicago—that would have positioned Reggie as an influencer [in the field] twenty years prior to a larger recognition of African bookwork,” Frost argued. “Remember, African sculpture was notoriously influential in European art. Yes, from the beginning of the twentieth century, but not bookwork. Not book legacy.”¹³

Walker’s extensive notes show him to be deeply engaged with the mythology of books and their use as mystical and ritual objects, particularly their ties to the history of the ancient Ethiopic book. “The first phase of my research dealt with documenting the African codex as a machine… [its] unique structure and design,” Walker wrote in a 1986 funding proposal.

"These early prototypes metamorphosized into my current works which I call Mythological or Spirit books. These represent the African book functioning as an Iconic objet d’art; created as metamorphosis ethnic fantasies, these mythic codices are aesthetic fusions of Egyptian, Ethiopian, Nubian, Byzantine, Islamic, and Celtic art."¹⁴

His papers, now in the manuscripts collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, include numerous pages of proposal letters and project descriptions such as this. In one, he proposes an installation of his books and drawings, The Mythic Image: Alchemical and Metaphysical Illustrations, in another he maps out “Book of Wonder,” a “16-piece installation” of collages and drawings.¹⁵

In addition to his proposal notes, there are also alphabet cards illustrating his interest in ancient Ethiopic writing—which appears frequently in his books as stamped lettering—as well as Ancient Greek lettering and different numerological systems. These alphabet cards are often paired with anatomical symbols—bones and organs—as well as astrological symbols, which Walker would decode on small index cards. These are necessary keys to reading. The books are more than just visually enticing, they are also linguistically meaningful, a fact that would likely have evaded researchers, myself included, without the archival decision to keep his papers with his books.

It was while living with Aletti that Walker produced much of the work now available to researchers, including a number of large botanical drawings, blank Coptic books, and his artists’ books. He made drawings and blank books for Aletti as gifts, in an attempt to apologize for overstaying his welcome. “They were very thoughtful, and I was really appreciative. But they didn’t make up for not having money or not moving out.”

While financially Walker may have still been struggling, professionally, his career was at a turning point. In 1980, Horace Brockington curated Dialects: Diverse Bookworks by Black and Hispanic Artists at Franklin Furnace, an avant-garde performance and artists’ book space in New York. The show included fourteen of Walker’s Modern Relics books alongside the work of other prominent artists such as Liliana Porter, Stanley Whitney, Frank Bowling, David Hammons, and Ana Mendieta. Walker describes this on his resume as the “first exhibition of unique Coptic books/book objects (Mythological books and Modern Relics).” These included primarily blank books with varying cover designs such as Bishop’s Book (Copto-Arabic), Monk’s Book, and Lost Book of Prophecy (all 1979). The exhibition garnered positive press, including a review in the Village Voice that specifically cited Walker’s work as “wonderful ‘Modern Relics’—books that borrowed on sociological and historical values by imitating Egyptian books of the dead, Abyssinian prayer books, and other religiously functional book-objects.”¹⁸

Over the next few years Walker would continue to show in important book exhibitions, including the 1984 First Decade at CBA, in which he showed The Magical Properties of Sunflowers (1984), dedicated to the solar deity Ra, and Kathryn Markel Gallery’s 4th Annual Book Show, in which he exhibited book objects and drawings. In 1983 Walker would make perhaps the most important connection of his career—with Ruth Sackner. Ruth and Marvin Sackner established their Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, now located at the University of Iowa, in 1979. Over the years it would become one of the most important private collections of artists’ books in the United States, leaning heavily toward unique artists’ books like Walker’s. “It was incredible,” Charrière explained. “Apparently, he called and he spoke to Mrs. Sackner and she was also into numerology. And he said, ‘We had a fantastic conversation and she’s interested in my book.’” According to an invoice from Tony Zwicker, the prominent artists’ book dealer of this period, she sold Walker’s Licens (1984) to the Sackners in 1984. Charrière recalls introducing Walker to Zwicker, who was often selective about who she would represent and how much she would sell books for. As Charrière remembers, Walker was upset at the time because Zwicker refused to sell Walker’s work for the price he wanted, arguing he was still too unknown. Artist Tim Ely, with whom Walker collaborated on a book that never came to fruition, also remembers Zwicker introducing him to Walker, around 1986. “He came to my studio and brought samples of his work.”¹⁹ Interestingly, although Walker emphasizes his relationships with Zwicker and Markel in his resumes and notes (including sketches for framed books he was working on for both dealers), neither has records of his work—another mysterious archival absence.²⁰

In 1985, the New York Public Library purchased Mumbo Jumbo: Divination through the Casting of Bones (1984) directly from Walker, and the Sackners purchased two more of his books, Cyph 5 (1985) and The Spirit of Mercury Speaking in Tongues (1985), likely also directly from the artist. “Your book CYPH BOOK 5 arrived today in perfect condition,” Ruth Sackner wrote to Walker. “It is a very special and meaningful work and finely executed. Needless to say, Marvin particularly related to the symbolism and collage pictures of the lungs.”²¹ (Marvin was a pulmonologist.) Aletti noted that Walker “was really grateful when that happened […] to know that his work was in the New York Public Library’s collection. ”²² In addition to these four major acquisitions during his lifetime, in 1995, Charrière donated an untitled blank book from Walker’s Book of Martyrs series to the Sackner collection.

But the most significant contribution of Walker’s work to a public collection was made by Aletti, with whom the artist lived until his sudden death. “He was trying to be the best roommate he could be without actually getting his life together. But it became more and more difficult,” Aletti explained about their final years living together.²³ While Walker had mentioned seeing a doctor for health issues over the years, he never mentioned having AIDS, and it’s unclear if he knew he was HIV positive. “I realized that I hadn’t seen him in at least a day,” Aletti remembers about Walker’s death, “and he hadn’t walked the dog. I thought, well, maybe I just missed him at some point. But I realized something was not right.” Walker was in his room in a meningitis-induced paralysis. He was rushed to the hospital and died within two days. There was no ceremony following his passing; he had no known relatives and his friends could not afford a funeral or obituary. All that was left was his dog and his art: numerous artists’ books, sketches, drawings, and detailed notes. “The dog had grown up here in my apartment, so it would have been painful [to get rid of him],” Aletti explained. “As irritated as I was with Reggie, Bouche was always the sort of calming influence in Reggie’s life.”²⁴ The writer kept Bouche.

As for Walker’s art, “I had it all together. I put everything in bags, and I kept thinking, I just felt responsible for it, and I didn’t know what to do,” Aletti shared. After speaking with Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Aletti ended up making a connection with Kevin Young, then the director of the Schomburg. Aletti insisted that Walker’s papers remain with his books, a fact that has saved the artist’s work from illegibility: “All the signs and symbols meant something to him. There’s meaning, elaborate meaning. I figured whatever papers he had would hopefully have some way of opening that up, so I figured they all should remain together.”²⁵ The donation to the Schomburg was officially made in 2017. While the collection has been processed, the books remain uncatalogued, likely because of the difficulty in deciphering them and their titles. The relative neglect of Walker’s archive fits into a pattern of omission for artists whose work didn’t fit within historical trends. Another hurdle facing his legacy is that, so far, his known work is only in public collections and not available for sale.²⁶ Without the ability to garner market interest, it’s hard to find financial support to digitize, publicize, and produce further research.

Nevertheless, Walker’s work remains worthy of remembrance. Beyond its contribution to the history of book art as an example of non-Western bookmaking, Walker’s practice also illustrates a deeply personal struggle to connect with something larger than himself, whether through the community of artists and bookmakers he found at Center for Book Arts or New York Central Art Supply, or through his engagement with ancient histories and cultures. Walker’s mythological and spiritual books illustrate the potential of artists’ books to serve as connective devices. As he wrote in a grant application, “Spirit books are ritual talismanic books and book objects symbolic of astrological, numerological, Kabbalic, and prophetic divination. These works are also based on esoteric alchemical formularies, sacred and obscure high words, as well as magical [i]ncantations and amulets.”²⁷ His work demonstrates the power of books as sites for recording and reverence as well as objects of hope and healing.

About the author

Megan N. Liberty writes about artists’ books, ephemera, and archives. She is the Art Books section editor at the Brooklyn Rail and co-founder of Book Art Review. Her writing appears in Artforum, art-agenda, ArtReview, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere. She lectures about artists’ books widely at conferences and in classrooms. In 2023, she curated a historical exhibition of artists’ books, Craft & Conceptual Art: Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books, at Center for Book Arts, which traveled to San Francisco Center for the Book and Minnesota Center for Book Arts. She was a 2019-20 AICA/USA and Creative Capital/The Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writing Workshop participant. She has an M.A. in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and a B.A. in English from Dickinson College, PA.

Writing from the 2023 Research Fellowship is edited by Sophia Larigakis.