Allowing Many Forms (AMF) is a publisher of artist's books founded by artist Taylor Zanke. AMF is an ongoing effort to cultivate a way of working that permits a book to be formed on its own terms, while engaging in the traditions of publishing and the realities of production. With each book comes a new opportunity to approach with openness and to listen and discover the book's spirit.In a digital age that pulls us toward screens, we value craft and material expertise and strive to publish books that belong in the physical world. We see making a book as a practice of materialization and rely on printing, folding, trimming, and other manipulations of matter to find forms and graphical languages which express and animate the content. We work closely with artists and invite their ways of working into dialogue with production.Books are a vital antidote to the contemporary attention economy in which our capacity for awareness has been worn down. Books are spaces for heightened and deeper attention that can be held over and over again. We hope that in setting out to be deliberate and patient in how our books are formed, the results will draw the viewer in and invite the present.Rather than seek out a unified aesthetic or conceptual language, AMF strives to publish books that speak directly and clearly from their authors—embodying their sensibilities and character, becoming artworks in their own right. Allowing Many Forms is an ethos, as much as a name and it informs our intent to find a place for things to be in the world.
Taylor ZankeTaylor Zanke is an artist trained as a designer and architect. He has been making books independently and collaboratively for 10 years, and maintains his own studio practice. His first artist books were handmade with both traditional and experimental bookbinding techniques, and he brings this material knowledge to the production and coordination of publications released here.Taylor is a partner and collaborator to individuals that choose to make a book with AMF. He holds the roles of publisher and editor, coordinator, producer, bookbinder, and designer in balance, and strives to apply their ways of working at the right moment. He sees drawing out the spirit of a book and holding space for the path toward its deliberate realization as the core responsibility of a publisher of artist's books.