"Hallowed Grounds," Upcoming Solo Exhibition in Michigan

Happy 4th! It's been a hectic week, getting stuff ready for the my upcoming show! It runs from July 21-September 19 in the Baber Room Gallery at Central Michigan University. There will be an opening reception on Monday, July 21, from 2-4 PM.

Today, however, I'm off to Redwood Canyon for a picnic day with friends, a dog, sun, and trees!

A Visit to the Wounded General and more!

Two weeks ago, Robert and I finally made it out to see Heather's studio and her gallery, The Wounded General, out in Point Reyes Station.

It's a small space, but is doing rather well. While we were there, there was even a surprise encounter with Anne Beck, who happened to wander in!

Heather's work is influenced by 19th Century Art, narrative, wordplay, and playfulness, in paint, prints, and textiles (in addition to being a poet!) The image directly below is part of a series that she is doing in response to the Bayeux Tapestry. She described it as a woman's story of survival compared to a male story of conquest.

The Wounded General also features work from local Marin County artists, and a few familiar East Bay folks - like the Don and Era Farnsworth piece centered on the wall below:

Other works:

After a lunch at Marin Sun Farms, Robert and I popped into Gallery Route One, a space I've driven by many a time but until now had never wandered in. In their Project Space, there was an exhibition called, Disappearing Act, Our Role in Species Extinction, with works by Marie-Luise Klotz and Xander Weaver-Scull. I was very excited to see Weaver-Scull's 30 foot long accordion book, printed with stencils:

Not only a pretty cool piece, a helluva way to display it.

Every time I visit Point Reyes, I feel like I could live there happily, if I only had a paying job that could keep me in plenty of cheese from Cowgirl Creamery. Right now, it's way, way too long of a commute for me.

Detergent

This is Dulcinea, beating a load of a friend's jeans. All those suds? That's detergent. Detergent that didn't wash out of his clothes when he washed them.

Any papermaker worth their sizing knows this. You only need the barest amount of detergent - in fact, you can sometimes skip it. Detergent not only stays in the fibers of your clothing (where, in my case, makes me itchy all day), it builds up in your washing machine.

By the way, I scraped suds off the top of this load SEVERAL TIMES.

Washing machines and dishwashers are made to use far less water now than older models and, therefore, need less soap. And detergents have also become increasingly concentrated. So a little goes a long way.

“Most people use 10 to 15 times the amount of soap they need, and they’re pouring money down the drain,” Mr. Schmidt said...

... “If people see suds, they think their clothes are getting clean, but that’s wrong — it means you’re using a lot of extra detergent,” Ms. Notini said.

Here is Mr. Schmidt’s test to determine if you’re oversoaping. Take four to six clean bath towels, put them in your front-loading washing machine (one towel for a top loader). Don’t add any detergent or fabric softener. Switch to the hot water setting and medium wash and run it for about five minutes.

Check for soap suds. If you don’t see any suds right away, turn off the machine and see if there is any soapy residue. If you see suds or residue, it is soap coming out of your clothes from the last wash.

“I’ve had customers that had to run their towels through as many as eight times to get the soap out,” Mr. Schmidt said, who lives in Indiana.

(Source.)

Laundry detergents contain sodium triphosphate, which causes eutrophication. Green laundry detergents do better, but maybe, also, consider using less laundry detergent?

Moringa Paper

A few months ago, I was invited to experiment with some Moringa fiber for Signa-Haiti, an NGO that is developing a biodynamic and sustainable economy in Haiti. They are promoting the growing of Moringa, a plant native to subtropical Africa whose leaves may be a superfood. However, as they continue their development, they are considering developing a artisanal paper out of the leftover stems and petioles.

Above, you can see the stems that were shipped to me. (For some reason they are being wonky about uploading, sorry if they are awkward in whatever platform or device you are viewing this on). I started by "pond"-retting the fiber. After the fiber had soaked for a few days in the sunshine, the bast fiber easily peeled off the inner stalk.

Click on any picture for a larger image.

I divided the fiber into two batches for cooking, so the second batch kept soaking while I cooked the first. I discovered that with this additional soaking, the outer green bark dissolved away, and was easily just brushed off the bast fiber with my hands! No picking chiri! However, even after cooking, the outer bark was fairly easily washed away, but if there's a next time, I'll just soak the fiber a few more days.

I was asked to keep in mind water disposal and water issues while working with this fiber, so I decided it would be better to cook the fiber in wood ash over soda ash (see here for an explanation of cooking with caustics for fiber preparation). However, I found the fiber extremely tough. I kept using the Korean fiber test, and the fibers would not tear and seemed reluctant to split. In addition, to my eye, the fiber itself just seemed harder than I felt comfortable putting in my beater. Yet after ten hours of cooking and no softening of the fiber, I switched to soda ash and cooked it for several more hours, yet the fiber still seemed like it was not getting any softer.

The second batch I began cooking directly in soda ash. Again, I cooked the fiber for almost fifteen hours, and it seemed pretty tough. However, at this point, I decided to give it a go with beating.

The fibers as they go into the beater:

After two hours or so:

After three:

To my surprise, the fibers broke down easily. I'm wondering now, if for large-scale production in Haiti, if they might not need the amount of cooking I did. Some of that might also vary on when the fiber is harvested, and of course conditions like soil and water quality. However, to answer these questions, I'd need to do more tests.

Another concern would be the smoothness of the sheets. Perhaps if I'd cooked them less, the fiber (and thus pulp), might have had a rougher quality.

Sheets were pulled without formation aid (remember, water quality), and the pulp drained on the slower side, but not ridiculously slowly. I used two moulds (Western style), trading off between draining into a small vat and pulling.

The final sheets - I got about 30 or so from the amount of fiber they sent me - are a golden color with a soft texture and little rattle. Signa-Haiti had originally asked me about bleaching sheets and mentioned their concerns over using severe bleaches, disposal, and water supply, and I had countered this with the idea that maybe they didn't need to bleach them. I personally love the natural color, however, further experiments with pool-grade hydrogen peroxide (which, I believe, would break down into water and oxygen) might yield a whiter paper.

This is here

Some work in progress from late last year (Christmas Eve to be exact!) as I prepared for the upcoming show at ECHO Gallery. This piece above is one of two seven-foot long pulp paintings/prints (see previous post) that I'm going to be showing as part of that exhibition. Behind me, you can see my studio assistant, Izzy.

The base fiber for this piece is a combination of Andean Pampas Grass seed hair and (drumroll please) flax I grew myself! The pampas grass was harvested near Miller Knox, less than a mile away. I had a moment while making the base sheet, standing and working in my backyard a few feet away from where I grew the flax, and all I could think was, this is here. Really here, from here, grown here, made from this place.

The colored pulp is actually made from a pair of grungy overalls that I used to wear all the time in grad school - any of my Book Arts buddies will remember them. Some of it stayed straight blue, but some was pigmented green and black for other parts of the image.

When exhibiting handmade paper, it's often difficult to make a viewer, particularly a non-papermaker, understand that each sheet often has a hidden story. Here, this is flax I grew, it is a record of the sun and the soil, here, this was my overalls from a certain period of my life, when I think of them I remember school, what I learned there, the community of fellow artists I shared space with and got to know. Making paper can be like making a quilt out of old clothes, art forms that transform narratives and memories while launching new ones simultaneously.

As a final note, a reminder that the Carbon Corpus project is still looking for investors! Visit here or contact me at michelle(at)michellewilsonprojects(dot)com if you are interested in being a part.

Fibershed Papermaking Workshop

This month has been a whirlwind, and I've barely been able to keep up with this blog, as exemplified by the tardiness of this post. Two weeks ago I taught an intensive papermaking workshop for the Fibershed. Specifically, it involved a group of teachers from the Marin County school system who are incorporating sustainable and bio-regional art making activities into their curriculum.

The class covered how to paper from vegetables, invasive plants, and clothing. Here, some students harvest Andean Pampas Grass seed hair.

The class also covered various preparation methods, from hand beating, to blenders, to the beater itself. Many of the teachers really liked the idea of a classroom full of kids expending their energy by hand beating fiber, but to me it sounds like a cacophonous nightmare.

After learning about prep, we moved on to actual sheet forming. I also discussed techniques on preventing water from getting everywhere in a classroom situation. Over the course of the day, I kept making jokes about kids and how they react to various art classroom situations, and how I tend to handle them, which kept the teachers amused. One even commented that it would be very entertaining to watch me handle a group of kids making paper.

It was a great class, and great to share papermaking with a group of enthusiastic people who asked so many good questions, danced around my studio, and kept me on my toes the entire day.

Richmond Library Papermaking

I was fortunate to teach a short, introductory papermaking workshop this weekend at the Richmond Public Library. So lovely to teach close to home. It was a promotion for Richmond Grows Seed Library, focusing on using leftover food materials. As examples, I had prepared artichoke and corn husk, as well as some leftover daylily-palm bark-fennel-hodge-podge mix leftover from the Papermaking with Plants workshop. The daylily in particular I'd scavenged on a walk past the Richmond Art Center while they were pruning, and it felt very appropriate to share it with fellow Richmond folks.

Just a reminder - there are still spaces for this Saturday, August 18's, Watermark Workshop in San Francisco at Bryant Street Studios. Follow the link to register.

Fibershed Camp Papermaking Workshop

This week I was so happy and excited to teach a workshop for the Fibershed Camp! My workshop was the last day of their camp - before I came, they had been dying, felting, weaving, and generally learning the basics of how to grow and/or raise their own fiber, as well as the understanding of issues of locality and sustainability in relationship to the clothing industry.

And on the last day, they got to learn how, after their clothes wear out, they can be re-purposed into paper!

I wanted to give the kids the idea of how something like jeans become paper, so we began with the kids having a chance to cut up some jeans. I was a little nervous that the kids would instantly become bored with such a beginning, however this group was blessed with good attitudes. Other than the issue of lacking any left-handed scissors for one child, they all seemed excited to chop up some jeans.

However, I ddin't want to lose time beating (and moving my beater is a whole other issue), so, as Rhiannon likes to say, we did it cooking show style. As they were cutting, I explained how this fiber would need to be soaked and beaten, and then voila! brought out the pulp I had prepared in advance.

Once I pulled out the pulp, the kids couldn't get their hands out of the bucket. We almost had to physically pull them away so they could learn to actually make the paper.

But once we got started....

...things just took off! Some of the tables were a little tall for the kids, so some took to standing on chairs to reach the pulp.

Below, Rebecca and a camper pull sheets.

Finally, the paper was pressed and transferred to paper towels for the kids to take home.

My workshop was in the morning; my afternoon was just spend hanging out at the farm and getting to know the kids a little bit.

The garden has certainly grown since my last visit!

The coreopsis was blooming while I was there.

After lunch, I went with Julie, the kids, the dogs, and the goats on a short little hike to see the waterfall on her property.

Spending time on Julie's farm makes me dream of moving to rural Marin, planting flax and starting a full-on papermill. Heck, Lagunitas Creek was once known as Papermill Creek, so there's evidence of a precedent. If only....