Making Paper at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens

I was fortunate to teach Papermaking from Plants last week at the Berkeley Botanical Garden, as part of their Fiber and Dye programming. For the class, I decided to prepare some fibers that grown locally, so participants could learn how to make paper from their very own gardens. I also invited participants to bring plants from home, and asked the garden for any cuttings they could spare.

One of the fibers I prepared was yucca - that's what's beating in Dulcinea above. It's from my yucca plant that I grew in Richmond - you can see it in the picture here - that I'd harvested and dried before we moved. Winnie had warned me that the fiber would foam in the beater, but I didn't realize how much it it would foam! Even dried, the fibers were full of saponins.

Below, the beaten fiber, still sudsy.

I posted a picture of the suds to Facebook, and I think some people found it pretty gross. However, I found the suds almost like a luxurious bubble bath, and I was so enchanted I decided to write about it for Mary's "Eat Your Words" zine.

Every time I do a class like this, the prep exhausts me and I wonder if its worth it. Then I teach the class, and watch how people are transformed by making plant matter into paper, and realize it totally is. I've been thinking about how making paper from local fibers connects people to place, and how paper from local plants has what I think of as hereness - the sense of the landscape in the very fibers.

Along with the yucca, I prepared New Zealand Flax (which really isn't flax, it's phormium), daylily, and corn husk, and during the class we coaked and blendered some pampas grass leaves. It was so, so , so great to teach people how to make paper from scratch from their own gardens.

We started out with everyone making a sheet of each of the fibers from the pure botanical, and then added a little abaca so that we didn't run out too soon.

It was a full class, with very enthusiastic participants. The garden also gave us some banana cuttings, which we didn't get to, but they let me take them home.

Below, Lisa experimented with incorporating fresh plant matter into her paper.

I had been pouring our waste paper onto the plants, and took the press outside to press, hoping the water would drain into the garden - but then was chagrined to learn that the plants were under controlled watering conditions for study. Oops.

We went through almost all the pulp, and I let Christine take the remainder home - she used it up right away.

We ended the workshop with the pampas grass paper - completing the cycle of plant to paper in a day. We didn't have enough for everyone to make a sheet of pure pampas, so it was a pampas grass-abaca mix. All of my prepared fibers has been dried, so the bright green of the fresh fiber excited the participants and felt to me like the grand finale of the workshop.

Tomorrow I return to Half Moon Bay to teach at Judy's again!

In other exciting news, I've been invited by the San Francisco Center for the Book to make a book for their 2015 Small Plates Imprint! I'm going to work with a variation on the flag book structure.

I was also selected for Creative Capital's "On Our Radar" program!

Upcoming Workshops for 2015

Papermaking with Plants
MARCH 22 BERKELEY BOTANICAL GARDENS
10 AM - 4 PM
$80 members/$85 non-members
Contact for more information: Mary Mworka, gardenprograms@berkeley.edu

Learn to make art from your own garden! No experience neccessary. This class will discuss the basics of harvesting, cooking, and processing plants and forming into sheets of handmade paper. We will use some plants from the Botonical Gardens themselves, and participants are welcome to bring in contributions from their home gardens as well. You’ll never look at your garden the same way again!
To register, please visit here.


Hand Papermaking and Pulp Painting
9:30 AM - 4:30 PM
March 28, Kitsune Community Art Studios, Half Moon Bay, CA
Cost: $85 Covers class fee and all materials
Contact for more information, or to register: Judy Shintani, judyshintani@yahoo.com

Learn the basics of making handmade paper in the European tradition. Students will the basics, from dry fiber to sheet formation, as well as techniques for embellishing bare sheets into works of art using a technique called Pulp Painting. Pulp painting uses finely beaten paper pulp that can act almost like paint to make brilliant imagery in handmade paper. When dried, the painting is an actual part of the paper, which can stand alone or be transformed further through drawing, printing, traditional painting, or whatever you can think of for a mixed media creation. This class will cover various pulp painting techniques including direct painting, stencils, collage inclusions, and other means of pulp-based mark-making. Techniques for making paper at home will also be discussed. Students will leave the workshop will a number of their own wet papers that will dry at home. No prior experience necessary.

To see images of previous workshops at Kitsune Community Studio, please visit here.


Hand Papermaking and Pulp Painting
1-5 PM
April 4, Rocinante Press, Oakland, CA
Cost: $80, covers materials and class fee
Offered through ExchangeWorks
For more information, or to register, please visit ExchangeWorks.

A class simliar to the one offered in Half Moon Bay, in Oakland, CA. Follow the link to ExchangeWorks to register.

Upcoming Workshops for Spring 2014

Pulp Painting Techniques at Magnolia Editions
Saturday, April 5, 10 AM - 4 PM
Oakland, CA

Handmade paper can act as more than sheets - finely beaten paper pulp can function like paint! When dried, the pulp painted imagery is a part of the actual paper, which can stand alone as a work of art or be transformed further with printmaking, photography, collage, painting, becoming an extraordinary mixed media creation. This class will cover various pulp painting techniques, such as direct painting, stencils, and collage inclusions. Students are encouraged to bring items for inclusions, such as fabric, old photographs, thread, lace, or other items that will not bleed when wet.

Please reserve your spot by emailing papermagnolia@hotmail.com, and don't hesitate to pass this info on to anyone you know who might be interested.

Handmade Paper from Plants
Pollinate Farm and Garden, Oakland, CA
Sunday, April 6, 1-3 PM

In this fun workshop, students will learn the basis for Western-style paper making, using edible and ornamental plant fibers. The hands-on portion of the class will cover basic paper sheet formation as well as fiber preparation and artistic embellishments. Participants will leave with several wet papers to be dried at home. This is a wet class! Please bring a new roll of paper towels and wear clothing and shoes that can get wet. This class is appropriate for children over the age of 8 when accompanied by an adult.

To register, please visit here. For more information on Pollinate Farm and Garden, please visit here.

"Clarity" at Napa Art on First

Some photos from the opening for Napa's "Art on First" event this week. For the event, artists take over the empty storefronts in downtown Napa, and the installations will be up for the next year, barring any spaces getting rented.

These are shots of my installation, Clarity. The panels are made from Schoenoplectus californicus, better known as tule or California bulrush, harvested from the shores of Winery Lake.

(Click on images for enlargements).

To me, this is an example of how handmade paper art can transcend being just a an art object made in a craft tradition, to becoming site-specific and a form of Land Art. Clarity is made out of the land itself, and is being shown only a few miles from where the plants that it originated from grew.

As I said in my statement, I called the piece Clarity in reference to the "transparency and purity of the Napa River, but also [to suggest] the insight gained when we understand its value." Today, as I look at these photos, I can't help thinking about my conversation earlier this week with Jill about water usage in handmade paper, and how water will play out politics and survival in the future.

I love the Napa Art community, such wonderful, inspiring and amazing folks. Some very sweet friends from Napa told me that this piece was "poetry on paper, in this little context it is a huge continent."

Special thanks goes to the Arts Council of Napa Valley, particularly Christy Bors for all her organizing, and Cohan Sculley, for coordinating installation, general helpfulness, and above all, patience with me as installing dragged on and I kept saying I was almost done....thank you.

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.

Photos from Papermaking from Plants and Exotic Fibers

This past weekend was the second session in the four part papermaking series I'm doing with Rhiannon Alpers, focused on making paper directly from plants. Rhiannon and I both gathered a variety of fibers, and some students brought in plants from their gardens that we incorporated.

For larger images, please click on the photos.

We had samples of straight plant fiber and mixed with abaca, so students could explore the differences.

The class began with fiber preparation, focusing on some blender tricks for those that might not have a beater. One thing I learned from Rhiannon that day, when using a blender, to ensure that a large blender batch is evenly prepared, count the seconds, usually in units of ten. This way, all the pulp has been prepared the same, preventing lumps, clumps, and uneven sheet formation.

After the fiber was blended, we spent the rest of the afternoon making paper!

Our next workshop - Watermarks - is coming up in August - to register, visit here. Thought please note, due to unforeseen circumstances, the date has been changed to August 18. We will also be offering Sculptural Techniques in September. Finally, to see photos from our previous workshop, please visit here.

Fibershed and Community

Last Friday I headed across the water to Lagunitas to meet with some of the mavens of the Fibershed project. I'm going to be teaching a papermaking workshop for their day camp. We had a lovely conversation around the esoterics and logistics of fiber, plants, craft, and the possibilities of making.

And they have goats. Goats!

And baby goats!

The vegetable garden:

A sun shed with a small "greenhouse" for sprouting seedlings on the side. It was built from an existing structure that needed repair. All the windows were found on the property.

The farm where they host their camp is an old carmelo walnut orchard. The trees were planted by the former tenant of the property, and now are around forty years old. Lot of nuts to eat and dye with....

Before I left, they let me help myself to the broom plants - or rather, weeds - that are popping up on the property, to see if they have paper possibilities. I'm going to see what I can do with them.

So much paper to make! I wish I had more time.

Chiritori

It was a productive weekend of fiber preparation. I decided to go ahead and make paper from some of the dried plants I'd been hoarding, although I'm not sure what I'll be doing with the paper once it's made. Meanwhile, it provided a lovely opportunity to spend time in my garden. Above, the fiber is cooking, near plants with paper potential - yucca and rose-of-sharon, with some calla lilies that appeared, as well as white sage.

I began the weekend by stripping the bark off of the stalks and soaking them in water.

After stripping, the bast fiber is cooked in soda ash, as seen in the image at the top of this post. It cooked for several hours, and then sat in the liquor overnight. The next morning, it was rinsed, and then I commenced to pick off the remaining little bits of bark on the fibers, in a practice the Japanese call chiritori.

It was the first time I ever really spent an extensive span picking chiri. I've done it before, but never this intensely. I kept thinking about how in Tim's book he mentions that for a single batch of pure white paper, it usually takes about nine hours to pick it clean. At Shikoku Wagami, it takes them about two months for their entire yearly paper production.

I lost track of how many hours I spent. Yet, it was such a gift to slow down, sit quietly, calmly focus, and pick chiri. And to feel that all I had to accomplish was clean fiber. I was resigned to beating and sheet formation for next weekend, so I didn't pressure myself to rush in order to squeeze in the entire process. And after watching this, I was trying to enjoy the moment I was given to work, and to work well.

While picking, I kept thinking of the song Simple Gifts. It was a simple task to pick bark, to clean fiber, and let the part of my mind that has a continual to-do list running be quiet.

I managed to pick through about half of the fiber. Have to admit, I'm in love with the clean fiber just as it is. Of course, after all this gentle labor comes the beating.

On a humorous note, I made mention of chiritori on Facebook, and Marie, using Google translate, was told it meant "dustpan." So now I'm wondering about the etymology of the word...anyone out there who could explain it to me?

Sneak Peek: Installation at SOMArts

I need to write a post concluding my experiences at Jentel, but the day after I arrived at home I had to install my piece for the exhibition Get Lucky, the Culture of Chance, at SOMArts. Just jumped back into my life, and I haven't had a chance to process my final Jentel days or photograph the work yet. I will soon.

This are some images during installation of my piece there, before lighting was adjusted. The show is responding to ideas of chance, particularly in reference to John Cage. Responding to Cage, I made a series of edible fiber papers. Despite being a native of Los Angeles, when Cage worked with Beverly Plummer to make his papers, they used fibers from the East Coast. I wanted to explore my new West Coast home. Above is a panel made from ice plant. Interestingly, ice plant, when cooked in soda ash, turns a rich purple. I suspect it would make a lovely dye, which I will have to investigate further.

Below, from left to right, zucchini, corn, mint, iceplant, sunchoke, artichoke, fennel.

Other than artichoke, I'd never worked with any of these fibers before. This experience has introduced me to many possibilities in the landscape of my new home. As for chance, it's made me consider the idea of greater chance in regards to weather, and harvests, and how that influences what grows and what survives.

The opening reception for Get Lucky is on Friday, January 6, from 6-9 PM, and the show will be up till January 26. SOMArts is located at 934 Brannon Street in San Francisco. Hope to see you there!