The International Society of Copier Artists (ISCA)

International Society of Copier Artists (ISCA) Collection at the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts Finding Aid

Prepared by Rita Feigenbaum,
Jaffe Collection Ephemerist

Complete run, issued quarterly: Volume 1, #1, April 1982 to Volume 21, #4, June 2003
Housed in 19 archival boxes

Historic Note:
The complete collection of the International Society of Copier Artist Quarterlies, now housed in the Jaffe Book Arts Collection of the Special Collections of the Wimberly Library at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, was initiated in 1989 with a gift of several volumes from the Bienes Center for the Literary Arts, Fort Lauderdale. The Jaffe Collection subsequently acquired missing numbers of the series through purchase and donation from the publisher, Louise Neaderland.

Description, Scope and Contents:
Louise Neaderland of New York City was the founder and Director of the non-profit group organized to establish electrostatic art as a legitimate art form, and to offer a means of distribution and exhibition to Xerox book Artists. Volume 1, #1 of Quarterly was issued in April 1982 and was presented in a folio of 50 eight by eleven inch unbound prints in black and white or color Xerography. Each contributing artist’s work was numbered in the Table of Contents and the corresponding number was stamped on the back of each artist’s work in that and the following Quarterlies.

In January 1983, Volume 1, #3 was published with a plastic spiral binding and was the first bound edition of the Quarterly. Later, sizes and shapes of the prints changed; many had embellishments pasted or attached, and some became multi-paged.
The format again changed with the Second Annual Bookworks Edition in the Summer Quarterly of 1987. It arrived with 45 books in a cardboard mailing box, and was the springboard for boundless creativity in copier art: Sarah Jackson’s For Those Who Care was 8 pages of finely drawn women, bound with twine and presented in a paper bag; Mitzi Humphrey’s Kaleidoscope was a small black and white flip book; and I. Roses’ Book of Dreams unfolded from a tiny plastic box. From then on each year there were usually three spiral bound volumes and one Summer box of books. The box of books had numbered tables of contents, but the actual books were not numbered. Then, in 1996 all numbering systems were abolished and only the Table of Contents identified each Quarterly’s contributors.

Ms. Neaderland managed the office at home. She also exhibited her artists’ works worldwide in book stores as well as university libraries. As Ms. Neaderland said in Volume 21, #3, "The copier has been used... in ways never imagined back in 1938 when Chester Carlson (among others) developed something called ‘electrophotography.’" Contributors were as diverse as students from State University of New York at Purchase and Pratt Institute, as well as working artists from all over the world. Many well known artists in the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Collection: Books as Aesthetic Objects were previously ISCA artists.

Eventually the availability of home computers and printers made it easier for artists to accomplish what the copy machine formerly did, and Volume 21, #4 in June 2003 was the final issue. The 21 years of ISCA Quarterlies represented a visual record of artists’ responses to timely social and political issues, as well as simply to the change of seasons or to children. Each issue was unique and exciting and served the modern art world well.