Swan Song (Closing our LA studio + building a new chapter in Mendocino)
This is a page to keep you posted on the various states of progress in our closing of our LA studio and now with the very recent exciting news of moving our work to Mendocino.
The best way to support our current fundraising efforts is to donate through Sixty Inches from Center, our fiscal sponsor.
We will be rolling out several more fundraising efforts and incentives over the next 7 months.
Thank you for supporting our work!
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September 22, 2025
When we were closing our last chapter in Chicago (Candor Arts), we had an exhibition in early 2022 of all the books we’d completed in that business, and we learned at the beginning of the show that more seating was needed for people to sit to spend time with the books. I found some old, tattered folding chairs in my landlord’s basement and asked if I could refurbish them and use them for the show. He said yes and asked me to send him a picture when they’re done. When I did, his response was “Transformation! The Essence of Life.” His words have become a mantra through transitions like our current one that are challenging and uncertain, but a necessary part of growth.
A sentiment we’ve received often as of late is sorrow and condolences for our closing. We appreciate this sincerity and thoughtfulness very much, but also wish to assure that our closing of this LA chapter is just one part of a long, ongoing transformation that has been occurring since the beginning of our work in a Chicago apartment living room in 2012—perhaps even earlier than that.
We are thrilled and relieved to share that we have found a future home within the grounds of the Mendocino Art Center. Located on Coastal Pomo land, the Mendocino Art Center is a place for artists to retreat, gather, develop their crafts, and practice using art to serve our communities. Through this mutually beneficial and ethically aligned collaboration, we will be able to work slower and with more intention, while enriching the already robust residency and workshop programs offered at the MAC.
We have signed a contract with MAC to begin this transition on May 1, 2026. For the Birds will inhabit the Barth Studio on MAC’s campus, a 700 sq ft space less than one mile from the ocean. We seek to restructure our business from its current state (a high volume production bindery) into a residency-structured publishing initiative and book arts education studio. In other words, if receiving financial support from us, artists will be present and also learning the labor of the bookmaking process for their edition. The MAC’s resources of 15 apartments on the coast will provide the opportunity for artists to stay with us while developing an edition, and work slowly—something we haven’t been able to offer in our time in Los Angeles.
In the most ideal of our visions, we will keep a very small office in downtown LA for our team here to conduct consultations and design meetings ahead of artists working with us. That said, we’re just getting started with developing our vision. Much more to come as things take shape, but for now, we are happy to announce that this is how and where we will continue our work. We are sincerely grateful to the folks at the Mendocino Art Center for providing us with this incredible opportunity.
This will be the last of these SWAN SONG updates as we transition into a different kind of series of updates—where we describe how the forms of work we’ve developed in Los Angeles will change and take on a new shape in Mendocino, California. Getting the studio up and running, the moving costs, and the time we need to restructure our business will cost money. We will be rolling out a number of fundraising efforts to help us through this transition, including a long overdue anniversary party / paper giveaway in our space, print sales, new collaborative merch, final book projects, and more!
To start, we are seeking funding to help close out this chapter in the most efficient way possible (paying our team our standard rate of $35/hr for as many hours as possible in order to quickly finish the current projects on the table). Tax-deductible donations can be made through our fiscal sponsor Sixty Inches from Center via the link in our bio.
Thank you all so much for believing in us and supporting us. We look forward to sharing this next chapter with you.
With love & gratitude,
Matt & Kiki
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September 1, 2025
Hey friends,
First things first-THANK YOU SO MUCH for the warm and supportive receipt of the announcement of our closing of this chapter.
We are so heartened by this community and feel so loved and committed to this work we do together.
The past month of support we've received has affirmed our pursuit to continue this work in some way-specifically, it seems the most important community offering of ours is book education and advocacy for finding creative paths to non-exploitative publishing options for artists and authors.
Thank you for your affirmations and insights, your offerings of support and care, and your optimism for the continuation of our work.
We have decided that keeping in touch with updates throughout the closing of this chapter might be enlightening/informative for some folks who haven't run or closed a business/studio before.
This is the third time we've had to close a chapter of our work due to politically influenced external circumstances:
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The Chicago Perch in 2015/6 when Bruce Rauner was elected governor of Illinois and canceled all the grants that supported our project and many others.
- Candor Arts in 2020/1 because of the pandemic and later a lack of PPP rent assistance.
And now, 2025/6 Trump fascism / tariffs / economic collapse.
In each previous case, it has taken about 11 months to fully shut down a business operation, as well as clear out its space. It's not an abrupt process in our experience, especially if you are trying to lawfully close out the entity (which takes even longer filing/processing time-something we're not yet doing, in hopes of securing a new structure / location more fitting for this economic moment, and avoiding a large amount of bureaucratic work.
In all of these cases, we were closing at our most capable. Each team was incredibly talented and efficient in carrying out the mission we were pursuing-always at our most skilled and efficient at the time of closing. This has led us to reflect on and appreciate the vast likelihood that most closing small businesses are closing at their most capable right now-that the closure does not reflect their capabilities whatsoever, but rather the severity of the conditions at play.
What has made us most capable in this moment is our team. These folks have been with us through the toughest moments of the past 6 months and are the reason why orders and projects are still getting out to you all, despite the financial hardships. We wanted to take this opportunity to appreciate them and introduce you (if you didn't know already) to the wonderful people who have been by our side these past several strained months, much of the time literally elbow to elbow in this studio.
We met ADRIENNE CHANG through one of our Beginning Bookbinding workshops. She asked to work two nights / week after she got off work. She has been with us since and has taken to bookbinding easily and with impressive skill and speed. She has most likely cut the board for any book you've received.
We met LUKAS MARKOU through a Beginning Bookbinding workshop, he handles most incoming e-mails and project submissions. He is a careful collator of signatures, a.k.a. why your book is in order.
LAMA MOUAWAD was introduced to us by Adrienne and was thrown into our operation quickly with the preparation for LAABF, she's become an avid bookbinder since and has become one with the foil stamper.
JOEL FREEMAN has been friends with Matt since 2016 and they have been advocates for one another in the bookbinding field over the past decade. Joel is insanely talented.
Matt met JESSY V. CASTILLO at the Chicago Art Book Fair in 2017 and have remained friends since. Jessy has designed several major books for FTBTIA and is a capable bookbinder.
Lama Mouawad, born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. She's part bookbinder, part nature adventurer, part producer of TV commercials. Exposed to handcrafting from a young age, she found book production opened a new creative world she's eager to explore. In her free time, you'll usually find her outdoors doing something unnecessarily strenuous, for reasons even she can't explain.
Adrienne Chang, born and raised in San Gabriel Valley, LA, has always had an itch for creation. From sculpting playdoh flowers and folding endless origami roses as kid, she now finds joy in more meticulous crafts - the kind that quiet the world and carry her deep into the twilight hours.
Her favorite pieces are often sparked by silly snapshots of daily life or shaped by the pull of nostalgia. These creations emerge through a rotating cast of mediums that grow harder to store with each passing year. Still, that hasn't stopped her from signing up for the occasional workshop or wandering into any art store that she happens upon.
Joel Freeman is an artist and art worker. He has been employed in jobs across the Los Angeles art industry: as a preparator in artist-run and commercial galleries, an art handler in the homes of private collectors, in the back-of-house of commercial binderies, as a teacher, puppeteer, and artist assistant. His own practice ranges across mediums, grounded by a deep engagement with what their materials create and their methodologies might teach him. Born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, he moved to greater LA in 2012 to attend Pomona College. Shortly after graduating he moved to the MacArthur Park neighborhood, where he currently lives alongside his partner, cat, and neighbors.
Jessy V. Castillo (they/she/elle) is a designer and strategist specializing in branding, visual, and UX solutions for arts, culture, and change. Their work balances simplicity with creative experimentation while prioritizing sustainability, trauma and accessibility informed practices, and equity for all. They are the founder of Rara Matter.
Lukas Markou (he/him) is a photographer and experimental film artist from Boston, Massachusetts.
A longtime collector of photobooks, he is stoked to be a new addition to the studio labor team. His work is most interested in archiving personal histories, through photo or 16mm film. He can be found chirping opponents across the softball diamond or at miscellaneous pickup basketball games around LA.
We'd also like to acknowledge the support of EJ Hill, Jessica Li, and Kevin Novales over these months. While not a part of our operation on a weekly basis, they have been incredibly supportive to us during this time.
Thank you to all of you who continue to support our work, we are immensely grateful. We look forward to sharing more about this moment for us in further updates to come.
Lots of love,
Matt & Kiki
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August 16, 2025
Dear peers, friends, and fellow book people,
We are writing this Swan Song announcement knowing it resembles so many similar announcements made over the past weeks and months by admired folks in the print, art, and book worlds. So, for those who have read too many, we get it and we’ll make it quick: yes, we are going to have to close, too.
We began this year with a clear plan for our schedule and goals, that we were going to kick It off with our third anniversary party, and that calendar plan went to the wind with the devastating wildfires that LA experienced in January. Since then, we have not been able to recover a sense of stability or calm, and have deeply underestimated the impact that the administration continues to have on small businesses like ours, for which the conditions have recently reached a point of clear impossibility.
To match what is expected to stay afloat in LA, as well as field the increases in material costs and supply chain issues from tariffs, we cannot consciously raise our prices even more than we already have in order to make ends meet—to do so has already isolated us from who we wish to be collaborating with and has led us to taking jobs that are not compatible with our studio—this dynamic of chaotic business survival has taken most of the joy out of this work. For the few projects that we will still take on, we have created a rigid list of what kind of job is compatible with the current, struggling state of our operation, and we will otherwise be closing off commission jobs altogether.
Instead, our priority will be turning to workshops and publishing for our remaining time here, and we’ll be trying to create some consolidated versions of our long-form classes since folks have expressed those prices to be inaccessible as well (fyi: a sold out class at those prices still does not cover our overhead costs). This will indeed put us in a more financially precarious situation than doing high-pressure production jobs as we have over the past few months. However, the stress we’ve been under to make those jobs work has been physically grueling and Matt has been experiencing ongoing health issues for over three months from the building stress and pressure. So we’d like to just focus on the stuff that gives us joy for our remaining time here, for as long as we are able to.
We have decided that this will be our last year (8 months left) in LA and all orders and jobs will be completed by May 1, 2026. Our calendar is currently scheduled through October and we are accepting compatible commission jobs from November 2025 to April 2026 (as project scopes will allow) for fulfillment to be made before May 1, 2026. We are remaining optimistic that our business can continue in a new form and structure that is not so strained, but the details around that have yet to solidify. So, why are we telling you this now? Well,
- Because our production schedule is filled months in advance and it’s important for folks to know our situation if they need stuff made—especially with project pricing and production speed changing.
- Because we know this is going to get even harder—so, if you are someone with the comfortable ability to, we could really use financial support to get through rent costs over the next eight months. We accept fully tax-deductible donations through our fiscal sponsor Sixty Inches from Center. If you are someone who is struggling through this time, please please do not donate—please take care of yourself. We are here to support folks struggling in any way we can as well.
- Because this is not the end. We want to celebrate our LA community. We are dreaming up and planting seeds for what our next chapter can look like. While we’re here in LA, we’ll finally have that anniversary party, just a little later than planned. We’ll be doing some collaborations with some of the amazing friends we’ve made in this city. We might do some online talks about peer small businesses are facing. Keep an eye out! (Feel free to reach out if you have ideas for how to utilize our studio while we’re still here. We’d love to connect!)
We are so grateful to the LA community that has embraced us here and our communities beyond, your support is what keeps us going and is the only way we’ve lasted this long. We are so lucky to have met you and worked with so many of you. We have learned so much in this chapter, there has been so much growth and healing here.
Still so much more to come.
With only love and gratitude,
Matt & Kiki
FTBTIA
Have more questions about our closing and how it impacts you?
Learn here.