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.

Mother's Day Blog Hop!

I'm typing today for the Mother's Day Blog Hop. Click on the title to read all of the great recent posts by artist mothers! I have a book by Anne Mavor called "Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds", which tells the stories of 15 artist moms and how they structured/juggled their lives. It is a good read.

I woke up to breakfast in bed on Mother's Day... of course I forgot to take a picture, but I got scrambled eggs with homemade salsa (okay, I made the salsa) and strawberries with whipped cream. We packed the car, the kids, the dog, the sled, the gear, etc. and headed up to Clear Lake Fire Lookout near Mt. Hood. We skied and snowshoed uphill the 3-1/2 miles to the lookout with windows on all sides.

I was a Mother's Day baby, and this year my birthday fell on Monday, so this was a nice little Mother's Day/Birthday retreat.



And I spent the morning on Saturday with some friends crocheting roots for my Mother Tree Project, which is now visiting Newberg, Oregon.



Then to round out our mini-vacation, we picked up our new puppy as soon as we got home. Toby is a sweet little labradoodle.

Newberg & Sofia

The reception for the show in Newberg on Friday evening was lovely. About six of us crocheted strands and got to know each other. Conversation ranged from being new in Newberg to the local art scene. I enjoyed it and was happy that Jillian, a current intern and Monet, who will start interning this week, both came down.

I'll be going back on May 7th from 10am-1pm for more crocheting and a Mother's Day/Birthday party!



On another note, there is a paper biennial in Sofia, Bulgaria, which I am participating in, or rather, my film The Secret Life of Paper is (http://www.filmbaby.com/films/3550). It opens soon, and other international artists have traveled to the site to set up installations. I look forward to seeing pictures.



Paper Faszination opened in Germany last week, and I hear that was well attended. My book, Alpha, Beta, ... (pictured here) is in the show.

Poetry Reading by Carl Adamhick

I went to Spints tonight to hear Carl Adamshick read from his new book, Curses and Wishes. Carl received the prestigious Walt Whitman Prize which included the publication of this book. Carl also wrote the poem, Similar Lives, which accompanies my suite of knot drawings, String Theory. It was a packed event with Oregon's poet laureate Paulann Peterson introducing Carl with a clever poem of her own.

Mother Tree in Newberg, OR

I installed the Mother Tree at the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg yesterday. It is good to have her back in Oregon! I got to see the lovely crate that was built with funds donated by my lovely supporters. The armature went together easily.





The inscription in the roots is in honor of Earth Day and Mother's Day, which will both occur while she is on view.



Opening reception is April 22, from 5:30-7pm, and I'm planning a special Mother's Day/Birthday party for May 7th.

String Theory Opening on Friday!

I'm excited about my opening at 23 Sandy Gallery this Friday evening. We hung the show yesterday, and the on-line catalog is up on the 23 Sandy Gallery website. If you are in Portlland, there are more items to see in person in the gallery! Please stop in, the show is on view through December 18th.

Shadow Lantern Workshop at 23 Sandy

I'm teaching a workshop at 23 Sandy Gallery, where my work will be on view November 5-December 18. Join me on Sunday, November 21 from 1-4pm and make a Shadow Lantern.



In this workshop, participants will create a shadow lantern, composed of lightweight wooden panels featuring cut-outs that cast shadows onto a second layer of paper. The unique flexible Japanese hinge flexes in both directions, creating a versatile structure that can be assembled as a book, lantern or screen.

Portland Fashion Week!

Mother Tree and a handful of my other dresses are on view at Portland Fashion Week now through Sunday. Lam from HiiH Gallery and I went down to see the show last night. Anna King from ANKA did a fabulous job curating the art for this event (well, perhaps I am biased, but there was other great work there too).

Alpha, Beta, ...

I'm working on an editioned alphabet book featuring an arts & crafts font by Dard Hunter, but more on that later. Today, I've been making a deeply pigmented burgundy paper, with a watermark of a "made up" alphabet.



The pigment will (hopefully) run to the edges of the letters, so that when dry, you'll see a subtle alphabet pattern on the sheet.

Radio Show Taping

My art group pals Diane Jacobs and Shu-Ju Wang (Anne Greenwood couldn't make it) taped a radio segment today with Kristie Lesser on her show Everyday Cooking on AM 1360 KUIK. It was 30-minute taping, so we all got to say quite a bit. Kristie was a great hostess, and she had good questions. We talked about the genesis of the project, our individual pieces, what we think about food and our reasons behind our installation. I think we all enjoyed it! The program will air on Saturday at 11am. After it airs, I'll post a link to the segment.



Back in the studio, I prepared my traveling papermaking kit for The Paper Club, a once-a-week after-school class which begins tomorrow! There is a whole art to figuring out how to manage seven children making paper at once!

I also had a nice conversation with the program director at Ethos. They are the new tenants of the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, and I hope to offer some workshops there next spring. I might also be able to screen the Mother Tree documentary in their theater!

In The Studio

I had the pleasure of working with Tobi Taboada in the studio today... she's in Portland all the way from Yucca, California, also doing some work with fellow papermaker Marilyn Wold. Tobi wanted to learn what she could about overbeaten abaca in a few hours, so we pulled sheets, embedded strings and wires and did some experimenting with air vs. restraint drying.

Sound Blocka

I'm designing five block letters (the vowels). I've got four done... and the "O" is my last challenge. Here's a partially cut out "A". I'm still pondering the five papers for the five letters. I'll have these laser cut at Leaf Display, and then I'll be a busy bee assembling them. I'm working on a design for a box to house them all, and then there are dreams of making them really big so that you can walk through them.... they are very architectural.

Fertility Dress

Thanks for clicking on my blog! Here's a photo of one of the dresses that will be featured in my Dress Mobile, which will be on display at the Oregon College of Art & Craft next month! The opening reception is Thursday, October 7th, from 4-7pm.

A Papermaker's Garden

I just took this show down today at the Kenton Library. It was the culmination of a year-long project I did with 3rd and 5th graders at the Portland Village School, where we planted, grew and harvested papermaking plants, took a field trip to Ariadne Garden in NE, made handmade paper ornaments and more.





Here I am with the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition (which funded the project) co-chair Dennise Kowalczyk and NoPo artist Bonnie Meltzer, who attended the opening reception.



The 5th graders made these lovely botanical illustrations and wrote poetry and prose on their own sheets of handmade paper.

Pop-up Paper Sundial

I'm working on this project for Hand Papermaking Magazine's Paper in Motion portfolio. Betsy Cluff is my collaborator and she will letterpress print on the sheet. The image you see here is a watermark. We had fun getting inspriration from Robert Adzema's The Great Sundial Cutout Book, which is full of great designs. It is a bit of a challenge for me to make 160+ sheets of paper – I have to beat 6 loads of pulp, try to match the color each time and my drying box can only dry 40 sheets at a time.

Human Powered Hollander Beater

Last week I attended the annual meeting of The Friends of Dard Hunter in Atlanta, GA. I missed this demonstration because I was doing one of my own, but it is definitely worth checking out!

Follow the link at the end of the video - these guys are working with veterans and having them turn their old army uniforms into handmade paper.

Ceiling Lamp Complete

I finished my ceiling lamp at long last, just in time for Portland Open Studios. It is hard to tell the scale here, and I was going to include another photo but I Photo is not cooperating. It measures 3' in diameter and is about 12" in height.

It was fun to tidy up the studio and house for Open Studios. One woman brought a skein of yarn for The Mother Tree Project, another stayed to crochet and many people came through the house and studio throughout the weekend.

I attended the Friends of Dard Hunter annual papermaking meeting in Atlanta last week. While there, I gave a lecture at Emory University (a student of mine from Penland teaches there). I also had a chance to meet with the rare book librarian.

The conference was a reunion as always. Lots of old friends and some new ones. Sukey Hughes was the keynote speaker. Her book was the first papermaking book that I bought - $100 back in 1990 - that was a fortune then!

"The Way It Is"

My first edition is hot off the press! Sandy Tilcock of lone goose press in Eugene printed an edition of 50 of a William Stafford poem on a handmade piece of translucent abaca with an embedded thread drawing. This project was quite involved, from making a jig to tie the knots and embedding them between the sheets; to 3 press runs with special taping to prevent the ends of the strings from getting inked. I'm delighted with the results.

From Farm to Paper

Hats off to Rogue Brewery for being creative and thinking that Hop Bines could be turned into paper (yes, that is the correct spelling, and they are just like vines). The flowers, which are used in beer making, are harvested in the summer and the rest of the plant is basically waste material. I received a delivery of bines straight from the farm in Independence, Oregon.

Now, I'll have to admit that stripping the plant material from the bines was a chore, and I'm guessing that is why I'd never heard of paper made from hops. Still, it was possible, and after cooking and beating, the patrons of Rogue Ale House in Portland had a chance to make their own paper coaster while they sipped a new brew last Wednesday night.

A New Lamp!

People who take lampmaking classes with me tell me all the time, "your house must be FULL of lamps that you make." I am embarrassed to say that this is NOT the case, but soon that will change. The lamp over our dining room table broke recently, and I'd made a makeshift replacement which looked nice, but didn't work in the space. Then the fixture broke and my husband replaced it and took the shade off. Now THAT was the incentive I needed. We couldn't have bare bulbs in the dining room! Well, we do at the moment, but not for long. I'm working on an octopus-like tentically wire and paper sculpture that will hang below the ceiling fixture and splay out onto the ceiling. Picture is coming in a few days.