Doro Boehme—1957-2020

In the middle of all of that is frightening and destabilizing right now, last Friday on March 20th, we lost someone that has been by our side for the entire length of Temporary Services’ history. Doro Boehme was taken from us by cancer.

For most of our friendship with Doro, up until about a year ago, she oversaw the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Back in the mid to late 1990s while Marc was working in Visitor Services at the Art Institute of Chicago, in the museum, he’d visit the school’s library on lunch breaks. He found that they had a collection of artists’ books in a separate room. It was on the same floor as the rest of the library back then, and a much smaller space than it is now—just a couple of tables and a desk in the corner where Doro worked. She was a friendly and welcoming presence in that space. When Brett started his project Dispensing with Formalities, which predated Temporary Services, Marc offered some of the booklets he made, for this public project, to the collection. Doro accepted them and included them in an artists’ book exhibit at Betty Rymer gallery at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

When Temporary Services started up and we began to make publications for every project, starting with our first exhibition in 1998, the Flasch Collection felt like an obvious repository for our work. Doro became a friend and started to attend some of our events. We made sure she had every booklet. Over the years, we have done our best to make the Flasch’s holdings as complete as possible. At first we just donated everything, but later Doro had a budget to make purchases and greatly supported us. Nearly everything published by Temporary Services, Half Letter Press, Public Collectors, and Breakdown Break Down Press, is in the Joan Flasch collection. She also purchased the work of others that we distributed through Half Letter Press.

Doro hosted some of our events in the collection, including a book release with Mary Patten for her book, Revolution as an Eternal Dream: the Exemplary Failure of the Madame Binh Graphics Collective.

In 2007 Doro, along with her partner Kevin Henry and co-organizer Lindsay Bosch curated an exhibit for Columbia College Chicago called Pass It On! Connecting Contemporary Do-It-Yourself Culture. The three of them interviewed us (Salem Collo-Julin was also in the group at the time) and we enjoyed the conversation so much that we printed it as a booklet. You can read it here: Do-It-Yourself Interview.

Doro’s enthusiastic interest in the work of others has enriched peoples’ understanding of artists’ books in Chicago and beyond in ways that are impossible to measure. She did this work with absolutely no ego. She had seemingly zero interest in academic power or authority. Her advocacy and enthusiasm resulted in countless books being added to the collection and she shared our work with many thousands of people. We recently learned that as many as 500 classes visit the collection in a year, and much of the time those classes get to see at least something that one or both of us made. Anyone that met Doro would want her to be a caretaker for their books. It felt like an honor to leave things in her hands and the hands of those that worked with her. She hired fantastic people. She specifically hired a lot of women. Every time we’d visit the Flasch we’d meet some bright eyed new person working there that loved the collection and being in service to it. A collection is only as good as the people that take care of it and extend it to others. When Doro retired, we still wanted our work to be in the Flasch because the kind of people she helped hire are also great. They carry on her enthusiastic work.

Doro was fully politically-engaged. She had strong opinions that she shared openly. She was an absolutely no nonsense person who still managed to be 100% lovely and not bitter even when it would have been completely justified. Even when she probably wasn’t feeling well because of her health issues, Doro attended so many protests. There are not a lot of artists or art people you expect to see at protests. Doro was one of the people you could count on to be there when people were urgently needed.

She took a ton of photos and they are pure poetry. She loved the lake and the ice that formed on and around its surfaces. As she began to take more photos and throw herself more into writing, we tried to encourage this and printed a free offset handbill with one of her photos and texts. Hopefully more of her writing will see the light of day posthumously. She had an absolutely singular eye and voice. Many of her photos can be found on her website.

We extend our greatest condolences to Kevin Henry and to Doro and Kevin’s daughter Klara. Somewhere we have a photo of tiny Klara holding one of our booklets at the early Temporary Services event Free For All. When you visit the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, or when you see an interesting ice formation on a branch or piece of urban infrastructure, remember Doro Boehme and all of the wonderful things she added to our world. We will miss her terribly.

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