Paper Talk (Helen Hiebert Studio)

Paul Denhoed is a paper researcher and papermaker, originally from Toronto, Canada. After receiving a Japanese Government Scholarship to study Japanese hand papermaking, he has been living and working in Japan for more than 20 years. He has worked at Oguni Washi as a production papermaker and taught papermaking, bookmaking, and art history at Asia University. He currently works closely with Imai Hiroaki of Oguni Washi in Niigata on production papermaking projects and in-depth papermaking workshops. He also offers papermaking and bookbinding workshops at universities and schools in the Tokyo area, and works with a group to maintain a kozo field (previously maintained by Richard Flavin) in nearby Saitama prefecture.

Shanna Leino is a studio artist with a fascination for the many forms of the book. After eight years in beautiful Frankfort, Michigan, she has returned to her home state of New Hampshire. She works in her studio, manufactures a small line of hand tools for bookbinders and craftspeople, and travels throughout the U.S. and occasionally abroad, teaching book and toolmaking workshops.

HELEN FREDERICK is recognized as a distinguished artist, curator, educator, coordinator of international projects, and as founder of Pyramid Atlantic, a center for contemporary printmaking, hand papermaking, and the art of the book. As an advocate for, and an active participant in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area arts scene, she has served on the directorial boards of alternative art spaces, various local and national boards and national peer-review panels. Her work has been exhibited at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan, and is in collections of the Whitney Museum and Brooklyn Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., among many others. She has received theSouthern Graphic Council International Printmaker Emeritus Award, the College Art Association Distinguished Teacher Award, and was invited into the Feminist Art Basearchive, the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Frederick is an alumnus of the Rhode Island School of Design and a Professor Emerita in the School of Art at George Mason University. Throughout her life, Frederick’s passion for diverse cultures and histories has led her to travel to observe the material cultures of many societies, their skills and ideas and to make connections among disparate cultural traditions. She has fulfilled speaking engagements around the world, always emphasizing collaboration across disciplines.  She serves as the organizational curator for the Kala Chaupal Trust, New Delhi, India.

Joanna Gair is a multifaceted visual artist and papermaker, living and working in Devonport, Northwest Tasmania.  After graduating with a first-class degree in Visual Art from the South Australian School of Art, in 1993, she established her studio in North-west Scotland in 1999, since then, she has blended her skills as a visual artist with the ancient craft of papermaking, forging a career marked by creativity, innovation, and sustainability. In 2004, Joanna made a pivotal transition to North-west Tasmania, assuming the roles of manager and creative director at Australia's largest handmade paper mill in Burnie. Here, she embarked on a mission to encapsulate the Tasmanian essence through papermaking. Her efforts garnered significant recognition, including the "Premier's Young Achiever Award" from Tourism Tasmania in 2006 and the "Best New Retail Product" at the National Memento Awards in 2007. Since then, Joanna has been the driving force behind her eponymous paper mill, "Joanna Gair Paper," and the launch of the "Eco Greetings" range. Here, she crafts paper-based artworks and design-focused, Tasmanian plant-based paper for a portfolio of environmentally conscious corporate and wholesale clients, collectors, and artists. 

Radha Pandey is a papermaker and letterpress printer. She earned her MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book where she studied Letterpress printing, Bookbinding, and Papermaking with a focus on Western, Eastern and Indo-Islamic Papermaking techniques. Her artist’s books are held in numerous public collections, she has lectured and taught workshops on Indo-Islamic papermaking around the world, and she is currently working on an artists book inspired by Mughal miniature paintings of botanicals from the 17th century. Radha splits her time between India, where she grew up and Norway, where she and her partner Johan Solberg run Halden Bookworks.

Jerushia Graham is the Museum Coordinator for the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking and a working artist. Graham is interested in creating spaces for socially-minded introspection and empathy through her artwork, workshops, and curatorial projects. The Atlanta-based printmaker, papermaker, book artist, and fiber artist who exhibits both nationally and internationally, and is a member of the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color, the Movable Book Society, and the North American Hand Papermakers. Graham served as the first VP of Exhibitions/Curatorial for the North American Hand Papermakers (2020-2021)  She has also been a guest curator for the Zora Neale Hurston Museum in Eatonville, FL and The Hudgens Center for Art and Learning in Duluth, GA.

Cathryn Miller has had an interest in making things out of paper since early childhood, and still believes that anything —except, perhaps, internal combustion engines— can be made out of paper. After being sidetracked in adult life by a short career as a theatrical designer, then a twenty year career as a textile artist, Miller returned to playing with paper in 1994. Since then, as Byopia Press, Miller has published limited editions of conventional books and produced multiple artist’s books, altered books, and paper toys. Through the Byopia Press weekly blog, she offers frequent DIY projects for readers as well as sharing her own works in progress.

Susan Joy Share is an Alaska based visual artist, bookbinder and performer. Her passion for the book form, its structural variations, materials and potential for movement blends with her interest in sculpture, painting, sewing and collage. Susan creates an array of wearable books, figures and architectural forms. Her innovative, early performances with foldout sculpture connected the book with the human body.

Joyce Gold is a Denver, Colorado artist who pushes the boundaries of traditional papermaking to create works in paper that are new and innovative. Her work is said to “punctuate the depth and breadth of papermaking.” Joyce uses various plant fibers with assorted papermaking techniques and markings to accentuate her work, and her love of the papermaking process piques her curiosity and leads to new discoveries. Gold’s work has been widely exhibited; she is the recipient of awards from D’Art Gallery, Arnold Grummers, and the Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory; and her work has been featured in Fiber Art Now magazine. 

Susan Warner Keene is a Toronto-based artist working in handmade paper who has been exhibiting in Canada and internationally since 1980. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art, where she specialized in weaving and feltmaking, subsequently shifting her practice to focus on papermaking by 1990. The acquisition of a Reina beater enabled her to set up her studio to develop artworks that are created during the papermaking process itself, exploring ways to make objects with an internal architecture created by the material conditions.Her ongoing interest in the intersection of ideas and materiality is reflected in her exploration of aspects of language, the book form, and the nature of the page.

Melanie Mowinski likes paper, but she loves what goes ON paper. Paper becomes a vessel on which she prints, collages, draws, constructs, and more. Mowinski draws inspiration from the landscape of her Berkshire Hills home and residencies and travels to places like Iceland, Morocco, Tasmania, Venice, and most recently, from along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. She began her daily creative practice over 20 years ago as a Peace Corps Volunteer – what began as a way to document the “toughest job she would ever love,” evolved into one of the most important parts of her artistic practice. This practice formed the foundation of her book “Collage Your Life”, published by Storey Publishing in 2022. Her letterpress prints and artist books are in numerous collections, including the Tate Modern, Oberlin College, and the Clark Art Institute. She's taught workshops at Wells Book Arts Center, Williams College, and other art centers around the world. She holds master degrees from Yale University and The University of the Arts. Mowinski is a Professor of Art at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams, MA and is the founder and director of PRESS: Letterpress as a Public Art Project.

Megumi Inouye is a gift wrapping and packaging artist. Known for her sustainable wrapping designs and creative innovations, she encourages repurposing, utilizing everyday things around us and using organic and recyclable items. She attributes her passion for gift wrapping to her Japanese heritage and the cultural values that underlie the meaning behind the art of giving. Her new book, The Soul of Giftwrapping, features creative techniques for expressing gratitude, both literally and figuratively.

Kit Davey is a Redwood City, California-based artist specializing in book art. Davey’s work pushes the boundaries of “bookness” by using unusual materials such as mica, acetate, flattened coins and teabags as pages, and making book covers from shells, coins, driftwood, rulers, buttons and acetate. Davey has taught over 70 different book structures, holding her classes on Zoom so that students the world over can join her.  Her work is available on her website, www.foundobject-art.com and at San Francisco Bay Area art events.  She makes a book a day and shares them on Instagram.

Therese Zemlin has worked in a range of media, including paper, welded steel, light, digital media, and natural materials. Her work ranges from small sculpture to installation and is inspired by elements and phenomena of the ever-changing natural world. She has exhibited her work nationally, and has received numerous grants, including a Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. After earning a BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, Zemlin taught Fibers and Sculpture at the University of South Carolina, Columbia; Appalachian State University in North Carolina; and Phillips Academy Andover. She currently divides her time between Saint Paul and the north woods of Minnesota. 

Susan Ruptash is a Toronto washi artist who works in a variety of paper arts including explorations of handmade heritage washi, printmaking and bookmaking, building on a lifelong fascination with the properties and possibilities of paper. Ruptash’s career as an architect has informed her explorations of structure, form, materiality and process. She is a member of Propeller Art Gallery, Open Studio, and the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild. Ruptash’s work often includes embedded efforts that may not be readily apparent on viewing, but contribute to the finished piece through a curiosity and respect for the materials. For this reason, many of her works appear minimalist at first glance.

Nicole Donnelly is a hand papermaker and visual artist specializing in sculptural paper artworks and invasive plant papers. She is the President of the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA), 2015-2021; and the founder of the creative papermaking studio paperTHINKtank. She is master papermaker for The Brodsky Center at PAFA (2019- present) and for The Brandywine Workshop & Archives (2018-present). She teaches paper and book arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and other institutions.

June Tyler has been a visual artist for over 40 years and been involved in papermaking for 32 years. Her studio, Pondside Pulp and Paper was established in 1995 in Norwich, NY, where she has offered workshops during the summer and fall months. Tyler has spent most of her professional career teaching at various colleges, as well as offering workshops at her studio and other venues. Tyler likes to work in a variety of media: Painting, drawing, printmaking, artist books, papermaking, sculpture and mixed media, depending on the idea or imagery she is pondering at the time. Her work has been shown in solo, group and juried exhibitions.

Nicholas Cladis is an interdisciplinary artist and papermaker who lives and works in Iowa City, IA. He is the papermaking specialist at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, where he lectures and manages the Oakdale paper research facility. Cladis is an active researcher and practitioner of traditional and non-traditional papermaking processes. For six years he lived and worked in Echizen, Japan — an area with over 1,500 years of papermaking history — and continues to maintain an active relationship with the papermaking community there. He regularly contributes to the Future of Craft Villages research group at Fukui Prefectural University, and serves on the executive committee of Imadate Art Field, a non-profit arts organization based in Echizen.

Michelle Samour a multi-media artist whose work explores the intersections between science, technology, and the natural world, as well as the socio-political repercussions of redefining borders and boundaries. Samour has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France; and an Artist-in-Residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine; The Banff Centre in Canada; and at other institutions. Samour’s has exhibited her work at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachussetts; the Museum of Modern Art in Strasbourg, France; and the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI; and at many other venues. Her work has been featured in Surface Design Journal, FiberArts, and Hand Papermaking, and is included in public and private collections. Samour is Professor Emerita of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University where she taught historical and contemporary approaches to working with handmade paper and pulp.

Goran Konjevod grew up in Croatia, where he studied mathematics and computer science. After completing his graduate studies as Carnegie Mellon, he worked as professor of computer science at Arizona State University from 2000 until 2010, when he moved to California and is now based in Livermore. Konjevod started designing origami sculptures in 2005 after having folded from books for a long time. He has been trying to develop new approaches to folding paper and other sheet materials, using mostly very simple folds (but lots of them). His pieces rely not only on geometry but also on the mechanical properties of paper, with the pleats generating tension and curving the paper into three-dimensional forms.

Amy Richard is a native of Miami, Florida. After working for many years as an artist/illustrator, science writer and educator, a fascination with hand papermaking processes led her to complete an MFA in Book Arts at the University of Iowa. Her focus was on Japanese-style papermaking, along with the history, traditions, and the spiritual/ healing aspects of the practice. Heavily influenced by the cycles of life, much of Richard’s work is a response to the metaphysical energy exhibited in nature, particularly within the detritus or "relics" that remain after life is gone. Using the inner bark [bast fibers] from specific plants, Richard strives to capture nature’s vibrancy in her sculptures, prints, paintings and artist books.

Find the show notes here.

Rosston Meyer is a designer, paper engineer and publisher who creates pop up books under the name Poposition Press. Working mostly with contemporary visual artists, Rosston has self published over 20 pop up books, cards and pop up art prints since he started Poposition in 2013. Published titles include The Pop Up Art Book, The Necronomicon Pop Up Book and Dimensional Cannabis: The Pop Up Book of Marijauna which is a collaboration with six different paper engineers. He is one of just a handful of people in the world that self publishes pop up books, entirely managing each project from design to production to marketing to distribution.

Susan Kristoferson specializes in surface design processes on paper such as itajime (Japanese fold, clamp, and dye) and hand painted paste papers, She lives and works in Turner Valley, Alberta, in Canada, on hilltop with a view of the foothills and Rockies along with her husband and a small farm of chickens and sheep. Kristoferson is inspired by the long-distance view from her home and studio where she creates unique landscape “paintings” and abstract images using the papers she has made, painted, dyed, and collected during the past 40+ years.

Peter Thomas is a book artist, and a hand papermaker with a special interest in production papermaking. He has been making fine press and artist books in collaboration with his wife Donna Thomas since 1977. All of the books they make us their own handmade paper, and some of their books relating to papermaking include Beater Time Tests (1987), A Collection of Paper Samples from Hand Paper Mills in the United States of America (1993), Paper from Plants (1997), The History of Papermaking in the Philippines (2005), Tuckenhay Mill: People and Paper (2016), and Paper Samples (2022). Peter Thomas has written books and articles about papermaking and the book arts, produced a documentary/educational video titled “The Ergonomics of Hand Papermaking, and been active in the leadership of IAPMA (International Association of Papermakers and Paper Artists), and the Friends of Dard Hunter (now North American Hand Papermakers).

Madonna Yoder started folding origami tessellations after taking Erik Demaine's Geometric Folding Algorithms class at MIT and she has designed over 300 new tessellations since 2018. Yoder helps aspiring tessellation folders to deeply understand tessellations so that they can fold from crease patterns, reverse engineer from photos, and even start designing their own tessellations through online videos and courses with her business, Gathering Folds. And unlike most origami instructors, she doesn't focus on individual designs in tutorials, but instead teaches broader structures, theory, and skills so that you can start folding new designs with confidence and get the most out of any tessellation workshop you attend.

Helen Hiebert is the author of six instructional books on papermaking and papercrafts and is widely respected as a generous teacher and mentor. Working from her studio in Colorado, Helen hosts classes and retreats, and extends her outreach by teaching online. Her weekly Sunday Paper Blog keeps the field up-to-date regarding a wide range of paper artists and paper-related news. Her monthly Paper Talk podcast series features recorded interviews with papermakers, paper artists, paper engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs. Helen’s contributions as an artist, author, and teacher have had a significant and important impact on the papermaking community.

Mindell Dubansky is head of the Sherman Fairchild Center for Book Conservation, Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she is Preservation Librarian and book conservator. She writes on the book arts, particularly in the areas of 19th century publisher’s bindings, hand papermaking, bookbinding, the history of book-shaped objects and American decorative paper arts.

Bruce Foster has paper engineered over 65 pop-up books, over 100 pop-up cards, and at least a dozen other unpublished works. Originally from southern Louisiana, Bruce attended art school at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, earning his BFA with honors and returning later for graduate studies in studio art. Eventually settling in Houston, TX, he worked as a graphic designer and art director before discovering and launching a career in movable books in 1989, although it was not until 2005 that he had enough work to take it full time.

Sierra Nevada-based visual artist Andie Thrams uses watercolors in wildland forests to create paintings and artist’s books that explore mystery, reverence, and delight, while grappling with vanishing habitats. Merging the lineages of illuminated manuscripts and natural history field journals with a contemporary art and science awareness, her imagery weaves intricate botanical detail into rich layers of shape, color, and hand-lettered text to evoke the complex interconnections within ecosystems of the Greater West.

Find the show notes for this episode here.

Emily Martin has produced more than fifty artist’s books, often using movable and/or sculptural paper engineering techniques. Martin’s books are included in public and private collections throughout the world, and she has received grants and residencies from the College Book Arts Association, the Center for Book Arts in New York City, and the Bodleian Bibliographical Press in Oxford, England among others.  Martin has two adult daughters and lives in Iowa City, IA with her Vandercook SP15 printing press. She rides her bicycle as often as she can, sometimes all the way across the state of Iowa.

Owen Gildersleeve is an artist specializing in handcrafted illustration, set design & art direction. His unique style honed over the past 12 years brings graphic designs to life through layers of hand-cut paper and a playful use of depth & shadow. His practice ranges from intricate illustrations, to large-scale sets and installations, teaming up with the likes of Apple, LUSH, Penguin Books & NASA.

Carol Barton is a painter, paper engineer, book artist and teacher who has published several editions and has organized both local and national shows, including the traveling Books and Bookends show and the Smithsonian Institution’s Science and the Artist's Book exhibition. Her work is exhibited internationally and is in numerous collections, including the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She has taught at elementary, high school, and university levels, and has conducted adult workshops at art centers internationally. She was on the faculty at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia for 35 years and George Washington University’s Corcoran School of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. for four years. She has had residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy and the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil, GilsfjordurArts in Iceland, and the VCCA residency in France. Her Pocket Paper Engineer workbooks in three volumes are how-to guides to making pop-up cards and pages. She is now producing a series of watercolor landscape paintings for exhibition.

Megan Singleton is a practicing artist, educator, and mother located in St. Louis, Missouri. The investigation of ecological relationships within society and the landscape is the basis of her work. As an interdisciplinary artist, she creates works that resonate with the materiality and rhythms of the natural world. Her creative practice intertwines sculpture, handmade paper, found objects, photography, and books arts. Singleton received her MFA in sculpture from Louisiana Sate University and her BFA in Photography form Webster University in St.Louis. She actively exhibits and was the recipient of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellowship Grant, the Smelser-Vallion Visiting Artist Fellowship in Taos, NM and has participated in Artist Residencies across the US.

Marianne R. Petit is an artist and educator whose work explores fairy tales, anatomical obsessions, graphic and narrative medicine, as well as collective storytelling practices through mechanical books that combine animation and paper craft. Her interests are in combining technology, traditional book arts, and sequential storytelling to create new forms of narrative for the 21st century. Her movable books can be found in numerous museum and library collections. Her artwork has appeared internationally in festivals and exhibitions, been featured in publications such as Hyperallergic, Make, and Wired, and broadcast on IFC and PBS.

Margaret Rhein has been involved full time in the art & craft of making paper by hand at her studio, Terrapin Paper Mill in Cincinnati, Ohio for the past 47 years. She has exhibited her paper collages in galleries and craft shows throughout the country and has taught many workshops in papermaking and book arts to adults and children. Over the years, she has made thousands of sheets of handmade paper, experimenting with a variety of fibers, shapes, colors and textures in 2- and 3-dimensional approaches. Rhein works spontaneously using colored cotton & linen pulps and combining patterned fabrics of various textures with other collage elements. on the paper surface. She is inspired by plant forms, landscapes and figurative themes and finds that papermaking lends itself to the collage process – the base fibers in a sheet of fresh handmade paper integrate with the components she applies to its surface. By adding artifacts and autobiographical treasures, paper excels in being a platform for telling stories, capturing memories and bringing deeper meaning to the resulting works of art.

Meg Black is an artist and art historian who studies historical works of art and connects her work to the great artists who have come down to us through the ages. The subject of her work is nature and its impact on our sensory experience, and she studies how artists have recorded nature, and considers these approaches in her own designs. She doesn’t try to copy the natural world as she sees it but, rather, as she feels it. Black’s paintings and wall reliefs are made with abaca, a fiber that she is constantly discovering the potential for and is challenged by. She finds that the texture of this material provides an almost three-dimensional quality to the surface of her work, mimicking nature in all its splendor.

Jennie Frederick earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in fibers, followed by an MFA from Indiana State University. She apprenticed with Douglass Morse Howell, Bob Serpa, from Imago, and received her MFA for apprenticing at Twinrocker Handmade Paper. Frederick founded Kansas City Paperworks, Inc. in 1983 and has taught at the Kansas City Art Institute and MCC-Maple Woods, where she developed a Fiber & Papermaking Program. She is currently a full-time artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and her current work utilizes techniques/processes that she developed following documentation in the Mexican villages of San Pablito, in Puebla State, and Lacanha and Naha in Chiapas.

Russell Maret is a book artist and letter designer working in New York City. He began printing in San Francisco as a teenager before apprenticing with Peter Koch in Berkeley and Firefly Press in Somerville, Massachusetts. He set up his own press at the Center for Book Arts, New York in 1993 and has been printing and publishing ever since. In 1996 Russell began teaching himself to design letterforms, leading to a twelve year study of letterforms before he completed his first typeface in 2008. In 2011, he began working to convert some of his type designs into new metal typefaces for letterpress printing. Since then he has produced four metal typefaces and four suites of metal ornaments.

Gill Wilson's background is rooted in craft practice, and she has had a papermaking studio for over 30 years. She studied papermaking in Japan after University. Since then, she has been a university lecturer and has worked as an advisor for Arts Council England. She was the manager of the Harley Gallery and is currently a director of Gallerytop.

Molly Grosse is co-founder of Rock Paper Store and an artist who works in a variety of mediums. Prior to founding Rock Paper Store, she worked as a wedding photographer, and her initial explorations with the paper were wedding products, like party favor boxes, invitations or waterproof flowers. Now we’ll be talking about what Rock Paper is, but once Molly dove into the process of making this paper from rocks (which her mother invented), she began exploring the best way to mix colors and create interesting combinations. She had an aha moment when she realized that the unique colors would make her product an ideal art paper, and she’s been focusing on selling sheets of rock paper ever since. Molly learns something new everyday from the wonderful community she has built on social media, and she is always impressed with the beautiful and creative ways that artists are using Rock Paper.

Brian Queen has been making paper by hand for 30 years and utilizing a wide range of materials and techniques. His interests span the book arts including hand papermaking, bookbinding and letterpress printing. As a craftsman and toolmaker, he explores how new technologies such as 3-D printing, laser cutters, and CNC machines impact the book arts. Along with his brother, he owns and operates Sensa-Light Ltd., a company that manufactures customs architectural lighting for offices, hotels and restaurants.

Beth Kephart, a National Book Award finalist, is the award-winning author of some 40 books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher of memoir, a widely published essayist, and a women who loves paper. Her new book is My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera (Temple University Press).

Paul Jackson is a professional paper artist, paper engineer, writer and teacher since 1983, who specializes in origami and the folded arts.  Jackson has written more than 40 books, the first of which were origami books for adults and children, and his more recent books have been about the application of folding techniques into design, a subject he has taught in more than 80 Universities and Colleges in 13 countries, to design students of many disciplines, including Fashion, Architecture, Ceramics, Jewelery, Product Design and Textiles. Jackson was born in England and moved to Israel when he married the Israeli origami artist and educator, Miri Golan, founder of the Israeli Origami Center (1993). Miri and Paul founded the Folding Together project and the Origametria program, which involves using origami to teach geometry.  In 2018, Origametria was accepted by the Israeli Ministry of Education into the National Mathematics Curriculum and is studied weekly by 30,000+ children of Primary School age.

Matthew Reinhart is a world-renowned children's book author, illustrator and paper engineer, known best for cutting and folding paper into gravity-defying pops in his acclaimed pop-up books.

Maro Vandorou is a visual artist of Greek origin, who is living and working in California. Her formal training has a strong interdisciplinary character informed by studies in the visual arts, interaction design, literature, psychology, digital and computer technologies. Her work explores the process of transformation through installations of original photographic material, writings, and artists’ books. Her tools of choice are film cameras, Gampi – a rare Japanese handmade paper – and platinum–palladium printing.

Andrew Dewar was born in Toronto in 1961, and has degrees in Journalism, Japanese Studies, and Library Science. He has lived in Japan since 1988. Since completing his Ph.D. studies at Keio University in Tokyo, he has taught at several colleges, and for the past decade has been principal of Tokai Daiichi Kindergarten as well as professor and Library Director at Tokai Gakuin University in Gifu, Japan. Soon after arriving in Japan, he rediscovered his childhood love of paper airplanes, and has been flying, designing, and publishing for more than three decades. He also teaches papercraft at schools, community centers, and museums around the country. He has more than 40 publications in English and Japanese.

Roberto Benavidez is a sculptor specializing in the piñata form. Benavidez worked in metal-casting first, but then began longing for more accessible materials and switched to paper. His piñata forms play with the underlying themes of race and sin innate in the piñata, layered with his identity as a mixed-race queer artist, with a focus on impeccable craftsmanship. Benavidez’s sculptures have been featured in national, international and on-line publications, including ARTnews, Artsy, Atlas Obscura, hifructose.com, Hyperallergic, Politiken, The Guardian, The New York Times and This Is Colossal.  He has exhibited his work in numerous group and solo shows, and Benavidez’s Javelina Girl (Illuminated Piñata No. 14) was featured on the cover of The New York Times, Fine Arts & Exhibits section on October 23, 2022 . 

Skye Tafoya is an indigenous artist from the eastern band cherokee and santa clara pueblo tribes. Her tribal heritage and lineage are significant components that are continuously present within her artwork. Tafoya comes from a lineage of basket-weavers, both paternal and maternal, and also used to make red willow baskets with her dad, and she continues to use paper-weaving processes to honor her loved ones and ancestors. Her meticulously crafted designs, patterns, prints, and weavings are influenced by basketry and contain themes of cultural teachings, cherokee language preservation, motherhood and personal & family narratives. Tafoya creates with the intention of archiving, preserving and sharing stories, language, culture, and experiences. 

As Storey’s publisher and editorial director, Deborah Balmuth heads up efforts to acquire and publish outstanding, long-lasting nonfiction books that support Story Publishing’s mission of promoting personal independence in harmony with the environment. She works with a group of passionate editors who seek out promotable authors with deep, hands-on knowledge and wisdom on topics ranging from gardening and farming to crafts, cooking, building, outdoor living, natural well-being, and creativity for both adults and children. Since joining Storey in 1993, Deborah has conceived and edited many best-selling titles that reflect her personal interests in herbal medicine, crafts, and nature journaling.

Darryl Bedford, an Australian artist and innovator, is redefining the possibilities of paper. Blending traditional origami with cutting-edge digital design, he crafts intricate, kinetic sculptures that challenge our perception of this humble material. Born in Perth, Australia, and now based in London. Darryl is a teacher, Apple Distinguished Educator, trauma-informed practitioner, and paper engineer. His passion for paper extends beyond aesthetics; he believes in its therapeutic potential, using it to connect individuals with the natural world and promote well-being.

Entrepreneur, educator and origami artist Miri Golan hopes to use her installations as a catalyst to unite people of different religious and cultural backgrounds. Many of her works use the book as a symbol of education, wisdom, and spirituality—ideas that can be used to help bring people on opposite sides of conflicts together. Her sculptures incorporate a variety of spiritual texts in unexpected ways and suggest that despite religious differences, people are fundamentally the same.

She is the founder of the Israeli Origami Center and Folding Together, an organization that encourages Israeli and Palestinian children and adults to fold paper forms as a team, turning origami into a collaborative expression of hope for a more peaceful world. She also designed and developed a mathematics curriculum called Origametria that has been accepted into the curriculum by the Israeli Ministry of Education, in which children learn geometry principles by folding origami models. Enjoy our conversation!

Nancy Jacobi is  the Founder of The Japanese Paper Place in Toronto, a business which she began 40 + years ago after her discovery of paper’s potential while teaching English in Japan. By supplying washi worldwide, offering workshops, lectures and exhibitions, the company continues its mission to encourage creativity by highlighting the potential of this too little-understood, powerful but endangered resource.

The ultimate guide to papermaking

Making your own paper is a mesmerizing and versatile craft. Let Modern Papermaking show you how to create countless paper sheets with a few tools and practice. Among many other things, the paper you make can be a foundation for painting, illustration, stationery, and lettering. Handmade paper can upgrade the starting point of your creative work, or you can use the techniques to create stand-alone works of art to display, gift, and share. The craft is relatively easy and accessible since all the essential tools and supplies needed can be DIY'd, recycled, and thrifted.

• Includes 13 projects, ranging from bold and eye-catching to professional and fine-art quality
• Get tips and practical advice on selling your one-of-a-kind paper collections for other makers to use in their 2D work.
• With an endless variety of add-ins and decorative techniques, papermaking is an infinitely entertaining skill.

Marieke de Hoop runs PapierLab in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She has been making and experimenting with paper for the past 40 years using traditional papermaking techniques. De Hoop works with other artists and makers to create unique, beautiful and sustainable papers and products.

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Catherine Lucky Chang is an artist, art educator, and yoga teacher based in Palo Alto, CA whose work combines papermaking, printmaking, and painting. Born in Atlanta, GA, she holds a BS from Skidmore College and an MFA from the University of Georgia. Chang’s practice is an exploration of inner peace, wholeness, and joy. Her abstract works on her own handmade paper range from small and intimate to large-scale and immersive. Through intuitive, spontaneous marks, Chang melds line, shape, and color to evoke presence and vitality.

Jane Ingram Allen is a sculptor and installation artist who uses hand papermaking with natural materials and collaborative processes to create indoor and outdoor artworks that raise public awareness about environmental issues. Jane has received numerous awards for residencies and community public art projects in the USA, the Philippines, Japan, Nepal, Brazil, China, Tanzania, Taiwan, Turkey, Indonesia and other countries. She was a Fulbright Scholar artist-in-residence in Taiwan in 2004 and 2005 and a Fulbright Specialist in Turkey in 2015. Jane is a former college art instructor and currently teaches workshops and writes about art for SCULPTURE and other art magazines as well as doing independent curating. She was born and raised in Alabama and has lived in 7 different states and in Taiwan for 8 years. Since 2012 she has been based in Santa Rosa, CA, and continues showing her work in the US and internationally.

Claire Van Vliet is a printmaker and typographer who founded Janus Press in San Diego, California in 1955. She received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1989 and is known for her innovative use of pigmented pulp to create images in edition for books, prints and broadsides. Van Vliet has exhibited and lectured around the world, in universities and museums.

Roberto Mannino explores form with an abstract, process oriented, non-realistic approach. In Papermaking the very fact that there is a molecular change from liquid to solid implies the presence of natural energies that are embedded in the process itself. His hands-on practice enables him to have a dialogue with the nature of things in relation to his own personal motivations.

Beatrice Coron is a French-born artist who has been living and working in NYC for more than 30 years. I met Beatrice at the Center For Book Arts in NYC when we both took classes and participated in events there in the 1990’s. We talk about how Beatrice developed her unique paper cutting style, which has gotten her everything from illustration gigs to public art commissions in other materials, based on her paper cuts. She discusses her favorite papers and cutting knife, and how she goes back and forth between hand cutting and design on the computer. A theme that seems consistent in her work is how one thing leads to another! Here’s an example: When a show at the museum of art and design inspired her, she contacted the curator, which led to her being a consultant on their exhibition Slashed! Under the Knife, a paper cut exhibition, and she was also an artist in residence during that show. Someone from Alliance Francais saw that show and since Beatrice is French, invited her to give a talk there, where whe met someone who invited her to give a TED talk! And the story keeps unfolding.

This is Part 2 of my interview with Nicole Donnelly. Find Part 1 here.

Nicole Donnelly is a hand papermaker and visual artist specializing in sculptural paper artworks and invasive plant papers. She is the President of the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA), 2015-2021; and the founder of the creative papermaking studio paperTHINKtank. She is master papermaker for The Brodsky Center at PAFA (2019- present) and for The Brandywine Workshop & Archives (2018-present). She teaches paper and book arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and other institutions.

Jackie Radford is a papermaker and bookbinder working in her studio near Charlotte, NC. Radford’s work is heavily influenced by the texture and sensory nature of the materials she works with — she needs to feel them as much as see them. During the COVID pandemic, she immersed herself in making paper with pure cotton rag, pulling over 5,000 sheets of handmade paper. The slow, meditative practice of papermaking provided an anchor during the turbulence of a global pandemic, and she is now busy trying to keep up with orders on Etsy.

Erica Spitzer Rasmussen is an artist who creates handmade paper garments and small editions of hand-bound books. Her current work explores family stories and issues of identity. Her work has been featured in such magazines as FiberArts, Surface Design Journal, American Craft and Hand Papermaking.  Rasmussen teaches studio arts as a full professor at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota (USA).  Her artwork is exhibited and collected internationally.

Eugenie Barron was born in 1952, growing up in St. Louis, Missouri. She studied art and anthropology at the University of Missouri, Columbia campus before becoming a piano tuner/technician as well as studying hand papermaking as a craft and an artist. In 1979 she moved to New York City to study with Douglass Morse Howell and further her interest in papermaking. There she developed her skills, lecturing, curating, and teaching, primarily in the city and around the Hudson Valley of NY, where she has maintained several homes and working studios. She is currently semi-retired in Catskill, NY, yet she tries to maintain a connection with her contemporaries in both papermaking and the world of piano technology. Since beginning retirement she has been deviating into Garage Band and singing, which is quite an endeavor, given her voice and computer skills.

Kelli Anderson is a designer and paper engineer whose work operates in the space between conceptual art, graphic design, and tech. Her whimsical books have featured a working paper planetarium, a pop-up pinhole camera, and a paper record player. Whenever she can, she uses humble, lo-fi materials to expose the invisible magic of the world and make abstract concepts real and tangible. Anderson's work puts forth the idea that lo-fi, handheld experiences can challenge the notion of tech as an inaccessible black box. Her first book, a functional pop-up camera titled, “This Book is a Camera,” was published by the Museum of Modern Art in 2016. Her paper record player invitation, her TED talk, and her work on Tinybop's "The Human Body" are widely-beloved for showcasing the possibility hiding in plain view in our world.

Paula Beardell Krieg is an artist and educator who uses paper for drawings, decoration, and building. She loves to explore the internal structure of books, including the patterns of folds, the sewing and knotting of bindings, and how everything fits together. Krieg’s work lies at the intersection of art and math, using color and line to illuminate symmetries and geometry in and on paper. She often collaborates with classroom teachers to design projects for arts-in-education classes and writes about her work in classrooms, as well as her own adventures with paper.

Julie McGlaughlin has been making paper and exploring its sculptural possibilities since the early 90’s. She has been making large sheets from Kozo fibers for the last 14 years. Her interest in wearable paper garments subconsciously began over 50 years ago when she wore her first paper dress (popular in the 1960’s) and she continues to push the boundaries between paper and textiles today. Eastern fibers work well for this, as they are extremely strong allowing her to make thin, fluid sheets which easily adapt to wearable art. These non-woven sheets are referred to as kamikogami.  McGlaughlin shows her sculptural work and wearable paper garments nationally and internationally, and her work is in numerous private and corporate collections.

John Sullivan started Logos Graphics 46 years ago when he moved to San Francisco, CA. The shop transitioned from offset lithography to letterpress in 2000, and it was letterpress printing that sparked Sullivan's interest in the subtleties of paper. As digital presses captured a larger portion of the print market. there was a narrowing of paper texture, color and thickness. Ten years ago Sullivan started saving the off-cuts from Cranes Lettra 100% cotton paper, then beating, coloring and forming that cotton pulp into new paper for short run broadsides. Five years ago, he added a CNC router to the shop, which opened the door to carving 3 dimensional molds for cast paper. After seeing Brian Queen’s 3D printed mold, deckle and laid mold surfaces, Sullivan acquired a 3D printer and has been creating moulds and deckles with interchangeable screen surfaces up to 16 x 20, plus assorted shaped deckles.

Sara Garden Armstrong is a visual artist whose decades-long practice embraces a wide range of scales and techniques, from large site-specific sculpture to artist’s books. Lyrical, nature-based biomorphic abstraction characterizes the work, focusing on life processes and systems. It addresses organic change and transformation, while exploring properties of materials. Armstrong received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and a Master of Art Education from UAB. After living in New York City for 36 years, in 2017 she returned to Birmingham, where she currently lives and works.

I interviewed Nicole Magistro, the author/publisher and Alice Feagan, the illustrator of the picture book, Read Island. Join a very brave girl and her furry friends on an adventure to Read Island! Through the power of imagination and the pleasure of reading, this curious trio set sail for a magical island made of books. On their way they discover a joyful collection of animals converging by sea and land, just in time for an unforgettable story hour.

Nicole Magistro is the author and publisher of Read Island. She is a professional reader and amateur mother who lives in the mountains of Colorado. She owned The Bookworm of Edwards here in Colorado for 15 years, wrote thousands of book reviews and memorized a few too many bedtime stories. Her favorite place in the world is the real Read Island, which inspired this story. Magistro is also a mentor, journalist, consultant, and community leader.

Alice Feagan is a children's book creator known for her distinct cut-paper collage style in The Collectors and School Days Around the World. Her lifelong love of storytelling and art making led her to the world of picture books where she creates playful illustrations for children's books, magazines, apps, educational products, and games. When she is not making picture books, Alice can be found reading them with her two young sons.

Ilze Dilane is a papermaker and artist in Riga, Latvia who runs a papermaking studio out of the Pardaugava Music and Art School, where she teaches children, teachers and adults about the art and craft of handmade paper. Dilane also runs an annual papermaking symposium in Rite, Latvia.

Sammy Lee is an artist based in Denver, Colorado. Lee was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to Southern California at the age of sixteen. She studied fine art and media art at UCLA and architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Among her many accomplishments is a performative collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma during the Bach project tour in 2018.

Kelsey Pike is a production papermaker based in Kansas City, Missouri. She learned papermaking and started her brand Sustainable Paper And Craft while attending the local art institute in 2010 and since then she’s sold over 100 thousand sheets of paper. She specializes in papers specifically designed for artists and makers, made from recycled fabric and other sustainable fibers. She’s currently searching for a long term apprentice who will work with her in the studio for the next few years to learn the tedious and back-breaking process.

Tom Balbo has spent most of his life in and around Cleveland, Ohio. His earliest work was primarily in ceramics and printmaking. As his interest in papermaking grew, his work turned towards expressing his artistic creativity in this area. Over the past 40 years, Balbo's work has been exhibited and shown in a large number of shows and galleries, and he has garnered numerous awards and critical attention for his artwork. In 2008, Balbo founded The Morgan Art of Paper Conservatory and Educational Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio along with other local artists. He continue to work in paper, printmaking, and ceramics and divides his time between creating in his studio and as the Artistic Director at the Morgan Conservatory.

Simon Arizpe is an award winning pop-up book designer, paper engineer and illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY. His work received the 2018-2019 Meggendorfer Prize, the highest honor in pop-up book design, as well as the Award of Excellence from the Society of Illustrators. A graduate of The Pratt Institute, Arizpe worked for over 10 years as the senior paper engineer at several of the top pop-up book studios in the world before opening his own pop-up book studio in 2014. Working on every aspect of pop-up book design: from concept and engineering to mass production and printing on over 35 projects. Arizpe has also designed several award winning holiday cards for Museum of Modern Art Design Store. In addition to his design work, Arizpe is the professor of paper engineering at The Pratt Institute and  Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Dorothy Field is a visual artist who uses handmade paper for sculptural works and artists’ books.

February 13, 2016: Catherine Nash specializes in Japanese and Western hand papermaking, encaustic painting and mixed media drawing. She is a teaching artist who balances her studio work with artist-in-resident teaching, lectures and workshops internationally. Continue reading Catherine Nash

Tatiana Ginsberg makes drawings, prints, installations, and books, most of which use her own handmade paper. She studied at the University of Iowa Center for the Book before spending two years in Japan researching naturally dyed papers under a Fulbright grant. Continue reading Tatiana Ginsberg

Timothy Barrett is a professor in the University of Iowa Center for the Book and the School of Library and Information Science. He was director of the Center between 1996 and 2002 and became director again in the fall of 2012. His recent research can be found here and by searching “Chancery Papermaking” on YouTube. Continue reading Timothy Barrett

Andrea Peterson is an internationally exhibiting artist and educator. Her work is multifaceted exploring all types of paper fibers and processes and includes paper works, prints, artist books, and environmental installation pieces. She combines paper arts, printmaking and book arts to make works that address human relationship to the environment. Continue reading Andrea Peterson

Eden Marek is a unicycle-riding, soccer ball-wielding artist from Ames, Iowa. She has a B.A. in Studio Art from Grinnell College, where she graduated in 2015. Eden works in sculpture, hand papermaking, and sound art, preferring to combine all three when possible. A recipient of the Faulconer Gallery Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship, she remained at Grinnell College for a year to assist with the Artists@Grinnell Residency Program, help coach the Grinnell Women's Soccer Team, and collaborate with sound artist and composer Abby Aresty. Continue reading Eden Marek

Bridget O'Malley is a master papermaker and co-­owner of Cave Paper Inc., a handmade paper mill specializing in natural­ dyed flax papers. She is an adjunct professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She offers book, paper, and print workshops around the country. Her artwork focuses on forms found in nature, and bringing those to life through the interplay of print, paper, and sculpture. Continue reading Bridget O’Malley

Amanda Degener graduated from Bennington College and then received an MFA from Yale School of Art. Her work is in countless private collections including Library of Congress, Walker Art Center, and Cowles Media Company and she has collaborated with many talented artists from coast to coast. In 1984 she moved her paper studio to the not-yet-opened Minnesota Center for Book Arts where she was a Founder, their first Artist in Residence and later, their first Artistic Director. Cave Paper was the recipient of the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library 2012 Minnesota Book Artist Award sponsored by Lerner Publishing Group based on her work as a production hand papermaker. Degener founded and for eight years co-published Hand Papermaking Magazine, they just had their 30th anniversary. Her community service work includes volunteering for non-for-profits, co-organizing national paper conferences (four of them) and teaching Tai Chi. Degener educates through writing, publishing and traveling to teach and exhibit her work in the United States and in places such as Japan, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Korea, and Taiwan/China. Continue reading Amanda Degener

Mary Hark, Associate Professor in Design Studies, affiliated with African Studies & Art, teaches papermaking and textile design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is invited to conduct workshops and lecture at Art Centers and Universities internationally. She is the proprietor of HARK! Handmade Paper where she produces limited editions of high quality handmade papers in collaboration with book designers and artists, as well as paper artworks that have been exhibited internationally. Continue reading Mary Hark

Simon Barcham Green is the sixth generation of the family that ran Hayle Mill, Maidstone from 1812 to 1987. He has a BSc in Paper Science from the University of Manchester and worked in half a dozen machine mills before joining the family business where he introduced the first alkaline sized mould-made water color and hand-made papers in the world. Continue reading Simon Barcham Green

Susan Mackin Dolan was born in a small town in Maine near the northern end of the Appalachian Trail. She received her MFA at the University of Colorado Boulder, in printmaking and papermaking. In 1984 she helped establish the first papermaking studio in south Texas, Picante Papers, at the Southwest School of Art and was the original Chairperson. Continue reading Susan Mackin Dolan

Jill Powers creates environmental art, mixed media sculpture, and installation fiber art with unusual natural materials. Her primary art material is bark fiber, which she has developed as a contemporary art medium. Jill is on Visual Art faculty at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Jill has shown her work internationally, and her work is in private, corporate, and museum collections. Continue reading Jill Powers

Jillian Bruschera is an interdisciplinary artist and arts-activist creating works in visual art, writing, public installation, body performance, and social practice. Alternating between a studio and a social practice, handmade recycled paper is a primary material for installation, assemblage and performance. Continue reading Jillian Bruschera

I interviewed Mary Heebner at the CODEX Book Fair in Berkeley, so pardon the background noise and distractions! What I find fascinating about her work is the way that she takes her understanding of paper and the papermaking process and collaborates with experts to create the papers for her books. It is a lovely organic process. Continue reading Mary Heebner

Michelle Wilson is a printmaker, papermaking, book, installation, and social practice artist. Her practice includes frequent collaborations with other artists, in particular her ongoing projects Book Bombs (with Mary Tasillo) and the Rhinoceros Project (with Anne Beck). Wilson currently teaches printmaking at San Jose State University and Stanford University. Continue reading Michelle Wilson

Ray Tomasso lives in Colorado where he works as a professional fine artist exhibiting and appearing in corporate, public and private collections internationally. Continue reading Ray Tomasso

Oblation Papers & Press is an urban paper mill, letterpress print shop, hand-bindery and fine paper boutique. Our in-house team of designers releases roughly 30 new items annually, inspired by music, quirky conversation, toys, textiles, travel, food, architecture, literature and historical objects. Continue reading Oblation Papers & Press

From being a TV commercial producer and director in bombay, Jenny Pinto moved to bangalore 20 years ago where she now lives and has a studio where she and her team make paper from banana and lokta fibres. She also designs and produces a range of lights from both paper and papercrete. Her interest in sustainable materials and practices urges her to keep exploring. Continue reading Jenny Pinto

Jennifer J. Woodward is an artist and small business owner living and working in Portland, OR. With a background focused on mixed media installation, drawing and papermaking, Jenn is currently exploring the relationship between local and sustainable materials and the themes of empathy, identity and mindfulness in her art practice. Continue reading Jenn Woodward

Shawn Sheehy has been teaching book arts courses and workshops on the national level since 2001. His broadsides and artist book editions have been collected by numerous prestigious institutions, including Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, Library of Congress, UCLA, and Harvard. Sheehy's trade pop-up book Welcome to the Neighborwood (a mass-market version of his artist book) was released in 2015, winning numerous awards. He's currently at work on his next trade book—a mass-market version of his artist book Beyond the Sixth Extinction—and it will be released through Candlewick in Autumn 2018. He holds an MFA in the Book Arts from Columbia College Chicago. Continue reading Shawn Sheehy

Beck Whitehead is a San Antonio artist who served as Chair of Papermaking and Book Arts at the Southwest School of Art until 2016. In addition she has taught workshops in papermaking around the country and in Canada. Exhibitions include the Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago and the Robert C. Williams American Museum of papermaking in Atlanta. Continue reading Beck Whitehead

Priscilla Robinson is an artist who divides her time between studios in Austin, Texas and Taos, New Mexico. In the early 1980’s she began working with handmade paper, when she was exhibiting abstract paintings in Santa Fe. Her work has been shown internationally, she exhibits regularly in national and international galleries and she has created commissions for Boston University, Chevron, Vanderbilt University, and Kaiser Permanente to name a few. Continue reading Priscilla Robinson

In this episode, Sue Gosin discusses her childhood in a commercial papermaking family and her desire to get away from paper. But she saw paper in a new light during her college years at the university of Madison and shortly afterwards moved to NYC to start a paper studio in a loft in Soho in 1976. She tells the story of how the mill almost fell through the floor when they first turned on the Hollander beater and how she met the painter Howard Hodgkin when he walked into her bathroom. We talk about how young the field of hand papermaking was when she started and how she had to find rags in the garment district, research chemicals to come up with the proper pigments for coloring pulp and commissioned a press that looked like a tinker toy compared to the other equipment in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Sue’s journey ends with a glimpse of the show she is currently co-curating with Mina Takahashi at the International Print Center New York, which will tell the story of how hand papermaking has been revolutionized from a craft into an art form. Continue reading Susan Gosin

In this episode, Mina Takahashi reveals how a college internship in Philadelphia planted the seed for her career in hand papermaking, she talks about a key moment when a Japanese papermaker showed her his hands and she understood what it means to dedicate yourself to a process, material and way of life, and she discusses her visit to a Thai village where they made hospital gowns out of handmade paper. We also talk about her work as an advocate and promoter for hand papermaking as an artistic medium as director of Dieu Donne Papermill and her current position as editor of Hand Papermaking Magazine. Continue reading Mina Takahashi

Today I’m talking with husband and wife Pat Gentenaar Torley & Peter Gentenaar in the town of Delft in The Netherlands. Peter & Pat met in the late 60’s at the California College of Arts & Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in Oakland and settled in the Netherlands shortly afterwards. Peter talks about how the struggle to make three dimensional prints led him to envision making his own paper, and how an introduction to commercial papermaking at the Royal Dutch Paper Factory got him started. Pat talks about how studying fiber arts at CCA with well-known fiber artist Trude Gueromonprez ultimately led her to creating pulp paintings before there was even a name for the technique. We discuss how they navigated the financial support system for Dutch artists, raised two daughters, and restored the historic farmhouse where they still live and work. Continue reading Pat & Peter Gentenaar

In this episode, Tom Leech tells us about his early memory of the smell of paper, when his missionary aunt sent him toys from Japan wrapped in Japanese paper; his first experience with papermaking when he studied sculpture and printmaking with Winifred Lutz; and how his interest in environmentalism led him to make recycled paper at 18,000 feet on Mt. Everest. He also tells us about reintroducing monks at a monastery in Tibet to hand papermaking and how the word ‘recycled’ wasn’t translatable so the closest they could come was to call it reincarnated paper. At that point, everyone at the monastery was interested! Continue reading Tom Leech