PUBLISHING
SHINE Portrait Studio Press, LLC makes artists’ books, photobooks and other printed material, using Risograph, digital offset, and other processes. Our books are created by artists we work with in residencies and by those who fit our work on beauty, community, portraiture, place, and ritual. SHINE Press is a collaborative project of Anthony Alvarez and Nick Kline.
Plume House of Prayer
The Plume House of Prayer Series comprises artists' books that reference a historic site in Newark, NJ. Once a "cozy farmhouse on the outskirts of a little town on the riverside" and the rectory to The House of Prayer church, the Plume House, built around 1725, is now the city's second oldest home.
In 1887, Reverend Hannibal Goodwin invented celluloid photographic film in the attic of this site, motivated by the frequent breakage of his glass lantern slides used to teach children Bible stories. The book covers in this series are designed to evoke a House of Prayer sermon pamphlet from 1852.
This series showcases artists who delve into the sermon or eulogy structure, contemplating themes of remembrance, ritual, solidarity, and spirituality.
In Search of the Spirit House
In Search of the Spirit House
Adama Delphine Fawundu
Co-published by SHINE Portrait Studio Press and Project for Empty Space.
Editors: Nick Kline & Anthony Alvarez
Design Direction: Rebecca Pauline Jampol
Graphic Design: Bianca Pereira
Cover Photo Credit: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Printing: ODDI Sales, New York, NY
The volume features interviews and conversations with Amina Baraka, Anthony Alvarez, Dr. Antoinette Ellis-Williams, fayemi shakur, Henone Girma, Marco Hall, and Rebecca Pauline Jampol.
136 pages, 10" x 10" (25.4cm x 25.4cm)
Softcover, Digitally Printed with Open Spine
ISBN: 978-1-7333061-8-8
2025
In Search of the Spirit House reveals the spiritual unfolding of Fawundu’s artistic practice in Newark, shaped by decades of dialogue, collaboration, and cultural stewardship. Deeply inspired by the enduring energy and legacy of Amiri and Amina Baraka’s Spirit House, the book reflects on how artistic work emerges through place and community. Founded in 1966 at 33 Stirling Street, the Spirit House was a revolutionary convening space and sanctuary for Black theatre, music, poetry, and political discourse. Active through 1980, it became a vital site for cultural transformation and remains a touchstone in Newark’s artistic history.
Drawing from this lineage, Fawundu’s publication explores her evolving relationship with Newark: artist to artist, artist to community, and artist to institution. The book weaves together personal reflection with collective memory, examining how sustained engagement with a city generates creative momentum and responsibility across generations.
The book presents images from artist projects and exhibitions developed during her time at non-profit arts organization Project for Empty Space, as well as documentation of public art commissions, group exhibitions, bookmaking initiatives, talks, workshops, and performances. It reflects on work she began in Newark in the 1980s and traces the evolution of her relationships with Project for Empty Space, Audible’s Newark Artist Collaboration, SHINE Portrait Studio at Express Newark, and The Newark Museum of Art—institutions that have served as platforms for experimentation, partnership, and community engagement.
Both archive and offering, In Search of the Spirit House honors the generative power of Newark as a site of artistic inquiry and collective imagination. The limited-edition publication stands as a testament to the ways creative practice is nurtured through shared space, shared struggle, and shared vision.
“Working on this book affirmed the sustaining power of ‘the village.’ The community I encountered here renewed my connection to Newark and opened the door to a deeper, ongoing engagement to the city and its people.”
Adama Delphine Fawundu,
Artist
In Pursuit of Beauty
Deborah Willis: In Pursuit of Beauty: Imaging Closets in Newark and Beyond
Edited by Kalia Brooks Nelson and Nick Kline
With additional written contributions by Maurice Berger, Jacqueline Bishop, Kalia Brooks Nelson, Cheryl Finley, Elyssa Goodman, Nick Kline, Carla Williams, Trudy Wilner Stack.
Book Design: Chantal Fischzang
200 pages, 100 color images, 9.5" x 9.5" (23.5cm x 23.5cm)
Softcover, Perfect-Bound
ISBN: 978-0-9864181-6-7
December 2018
Deborah Willis, In Pursuit of Beauty: Imaging Closets in Newark and Beyond is a stunningly layered photobook featuring the work of one of the boldest photographers and historians of photography of our time. In Pursuit of Beauty is a lovingly sequenced visual journey that takes us from the home of Harlem fashion icon Lana Turner, to that of Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr., in Cambridge, to the artist’s year-long engaged project with Shine Portrait Studio in and around Newark, NJ, where she explores the ways in which the concept of beauty is represented through the intimate space of the closet. In Pursuit of Beauty re-contextualizes the artist’s earlier photographs of barber shops and beauty salons, people posing beauty, street scenes, landscapes, interior spaces, and blackamoors -- all punctuated by critical writing about the artist’s expansive practice. Deborah Willis’s work as an artist, scholar and educator is grounded in making and studying photographs that reflect personal and collective memories on beauty. As an extension, Willis’s new body of work investigates the closet as a site where beauty is enacted through the representation of our private and public selves.
“A pair of sumptuous velvet heels. A perfectly molded hat. Worn leather shoes. Gold Lamé. There is strong presence felt in the absence captured in all of Deborah Willis’ images. It’s as if we can see the very individuals who have walked in this footwear, the heads adorned by these hats and those who have danced, laughed and felt joy in these clothes. Willis’ work is bold, poignant and affirming....”
ISOLDE BRIELMAIER,
New York University