Papermaking Soup to Nuts

I spent the past five days teaching a small group at Oregon College of Art and Craft almost everything I know about papermaking. We began by constructing our own moulds & deckles to use at home. I showed them how to make paper using linters and abaca sheets in a blender and in the Hollander and how to prepare Japanese fibers (we cooked, stripped and beat Phillipine Gampi by hand). We played with inclusions, collaging, embedding, watermarking and pulp painting. We colored pulps, did a wee bit of casting and stretched a few sheets of paper over armatures.

All of this took place Wednesday through Sunday, which doesn't give me a weekend to catch up! Tomorrow morning, my intern from the Savannah College of Art & Design arrives for 3 weeks full-time in the studio.