IAPMA Conference in Fabriano, Italy (2014)

I meant to blog about this shortly after the conference, but just couldn't find the time. I attended the IAPMA conference in Italy last summer. It was simple amazing. The spaces were beautiful. The conference was held in the papermaking and watermark museum in Fabriano which was right next to a church, where the presentations were hosted. I delivered a presentation on watermark stop-motion animation and talked about a 4-second animation I was working on for my thesis. I also gave a demonstration on Islamic-style papermaking and talked about Mohammed Hussain Kagzi and all the beautiful paper they are making India. Read more about them here.

 

Apart from an extensive collection of watermarks (that were hard to photograph)

the museum also had a wooden stamper

 

They also had a functional papermaking set up that was used to make paper (just as in the Capellades mill) as well as for demonstrations

 

The entrance to the courtyard was decorated with this cut paper stencil that made the

light coming through beautifully dappled

 

All the windows in the museum overlooked the large courtyard.

This where the demonstrations took place 

 

I set up an angled vat that was deep enough to simulate the dug-out vats used by the Kagzi family. It was hard to the back! Samples of their paper as well as paper from my hemp fermentation experiments were available for people to peruse

 

 

The crowd was extremely interested in the process and in the family

 

Amy and Roberto helped me with couching and parting!

 

 The church where the presentation were delivered- from the pulpit no less!

Women's Studio Workshop: Art-in-Education Residency

I am currently in upstate New York doing an Art-in-Education Artist Book Residency at the Women's Studio Workshop. Its just the start of my second week of the ten-week residency. I teach papermaking to eight-graders for two days every other week. So far I have taught one class and it was great fun! While I am here I will be working on a new book project. The book questions the taxonomical system of classification, Systema Naturae, created by Carl Linnaeus, currently in place and widely used by us today. During the research phase of this project I learned that the system does not take into account the fact that everything is constantly evolving. This was a problem- one that remains largely unsolved. The system is therefore somewhat arbitrary. To highlight this arbitrariness I devised my own classification system- one that categorizes things in the natural and man-made world according to their basic geometric shape. Very broad and arbitrary.

* Lizz just posted an update on the progress of my book on WSW website. Read it here.*

  This is the main building of WSW, where all the studios are

The printmaking studio

The paper making studio, where I am teaching the class

 A student from Bailey Middle School creating a self-portrait using embedments in
between a sheet of Corn and Abaca

 Couching!

 

 More wonderful self-portraits

Clean up was super-efficient and well done by the class

 

 This is an early mock-up of the book I am working on here. The cut-out shapes highlight the
illustrations/objects that fall into the category of the taxonomy of the circle

 

A pumpkin, a bulb, an octopus and a button are in the category of the circle

 

The taxonomy of the triangle   

Things like a pear, a slice of pie, a mountain, stamens, kites are all in the same category because they are all the same general shape of the triangle

  The latest mock-up of the pages looks something like this. Its easier to handle, and larger because it lacks two folds

  Creating new images. The earlier iteration of the book had the taxonomies of the circle, square, rectangle and triangle.
I decided not to include the rectangle since its more of a secondary geometric shape in my mind

 

An option instead of cutting out shapes was to make the paper for the overlays with the shapes as very fine watermarks. For this, we decided to expose a silkscreen and make a sheet of paper off it. I was excited about trying this out, because this could be adapted to so many other ideas!

 

Ellen, an intern here exposed the screen and got it ready for the experiment

  

The triangles appear!

Making the sheet using a small deckle

 

 It was almost immediately evident that this wasn't going to be a total success without a lot of fidgeting and tweaking

The finished sheet looked good enough for what it was, but it didn't come close to what I wanted. Only one shape on this sheet came out close to clear. Oh well. I am excited about trying more of this for another project though

Anatomia Botanica

I finally have time to post some of the images from the finished book. To read about the making-of, click here, here and here. After being in the group show, Finite Landscapes held at the UICB, the book was also shown at the Pyramid Atlantic Book Fair in Maryland, where it won the Maryland Institute College of Art Book Prize.

The deluxe and the standard edition. The deluxe edition has been bound using a modified paper case binding with case paper. The paper for the edition of ten was handmade using hemp and cotton fibers. The standard edition has been printed on Hahnemühle Biblio and bound in a drum leaf binding with a hard case

The deluxe binding comes in clam shell box with a set of three movable prints

 The title page. The flourish under the title has been printed using linoleum reduction

The taxonomy of the Nelumbo nucifera

A detail

 

Nelumbo nucifera text spread, set in Bembo italics and roman

 

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis title page

 

Detail. The scallop pattern has been printed using photo polymer plates

 

 

The taxonomy of the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

 

A detail

 

The taxonomy of the Magnolia grandiflora

 

 

A detail

Afterword

Blood Drive

I recently worked on a collaboration with Justin Cox, a poet at the Writer's workshop at the University of Iowa. It didn't take us very long to come up with an idea we both liked and wanted for the poem. I loved working on this broadside after printing the mammoth that was my thesis. This is a reduction linoleum cut with pochoir.

Hand Papermaking Portfolio: Negative Space

Our proposal for a submission for the Hand Papermaking portfolio themed Negative Space was accepted last year. We were excited first, and then overwhelmed by the amount of work that was involved in creating 152 pieces needed for the portfolio. The great thing about participating in the Portfolio is that we each get one at the end! Anne Covell, Steph Rue and I worked together on this laborious project. The idea was to embed silk threads in between two sheets of abaca. The threads varied in colour, and went from dark brown all the way to the colour of the paper. They seemed to melt into the sheet and become invisible. The plan was to lay them out in a grid 1/4" apart from one another. In the middle, they would create a negative space as they melted into the sheet.

 

The test sheets were threaded using a gradation of blue silk threads.
We decided only to thread a portion of the frame and make a smaller sheet for the test

The frame was laid face down and centered onto the sheet of paper. The threads that weren't completely taut, absorbed the water from the sheet first, and remained in the position they were in when the frame was first laid down. They couldn't be re-positioned afterward.

 

The second sheet was then couched on top of the first carefully, and then pressed in a hydraulic press

The sheet after pressing

The test worked, and was accepted as part of the proposal. Now it was time to begin

The frame being threaded. We decided to make the sheets large enough to get eight out of a sheet. This way we needed to only make 30 or so sheets, accounting for wastage and mishaps

Threading completed - for one sheet

The frame was laid face down and centered onto the sheet of paper. The threads that weren't completely taut, absorbed the water from the sheet first, and remained in the position they were in when the frame was first laid down. They couldn't be re-positioned afterward.

The frame was carefully lifted and transported to the wet area to be couched. Vyvek strips were laid down prior to placement. These would act as cutting surfaces for the threads

The threads were carefully repositioned. Some that had already sunk to the surface of the sheet couldn't be recovered, 
but the others often could

It took all three of us to lift and reposition so as not to disturb any other threads

Post-pressing. Placing the second sheet on top of it was a stressful challenge.

 

After pressing!

Ta Da! The finished sheet. It was hard to get the threads to stay in the grid despite our best efforts, but we did manage to finish the edition, and each individual piece looked pretty good! Being included in the portfolio along with all the other artists was quite an honour. I will be posting photos of the finished piece in the portfolio as soon as I have it in my possession.