How to Bloom

Risograph art book by Claire Downes Whitehurst x BearBear.

How to Bloom in both its inception and its new iteration, is an art book that investigates growth and transformation: how to bloom through something, how plants form, how time moves, how people move, and how to navigate a life in an imperfect world. It features thirty drawings that appeared first as part of Claire's exhibition with the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in February 2025.

Now, with BearBear, these original drawings have been reimagined with colored Riso inks and papers, and have been reimagined in a brighter, fuller form.

• 6in x 8in
  
• 32 pages
  
• Spiral coil bound (Blue Oyster 8mm)
• First edition of 200
• Published by BearBear, 2025
  
• Handmade in USA

About the artist: Claire Whitehurst is a painter, printmaker and sculptor. She received her BFA from the University of Mississippi, and her MFA in Painting from the University of Iowa. She draws from the landscape and atmosphere of the deep South, exploring queer space, religious iconography and architecture through form, color, and composition. Her work plays with the relationship between image and object. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and a book of her drawings and poetry was published in 2021 through Drum Machine Editions in Asheville, North Carolina. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including New American Paintings, Oxford American, ArtMaze Magazine, and the Graphite Journal in collaboration with the Hammer Museum along with many others. Claire lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.