Walnut-in progress

Currently carving a big board that I've had for a while, saved for something special. It's four feet long, this is just a detail....stay tuned.

Adhesive

Came across this list with the recommendation that all teachers should have it handy. However, this list doesn't include wheat paste, unless that's considered "craft glue"? But then it's not something recommended for paper? How could that be?

Lists, guilt, labyrinths and extinct volcanoes

At the beginning of 2013, I resolved to worry less about my "to-do" list. 2012 had many accomplishments, many of which I'm proud of, but keeping on top of so many things left me worn down and unable to enjoy the moment. I realized I wanted my life to be more than just a list that I check things off. I know I'm not the only one - I constantly see posts on Facebook from other friends and colleagues as they get caught up in the same pattern. It's addictive.

Yet, this past week, as I prepare to go back to teaching, I found myself getting sucked into a to-do list again. I was trying to complete several project reports and some admin, and I could feel that dopamine satisfaction of being able to say "done!" to myself.

As a means of clearing my head before I return to work full time, I took a hike today in the Sibley Volcanic Preserve - which contains the ten thousand year old remains of a volcano, now known as Round Top. As I walked widdershins around it, I found myself feeling a sense of déjà vu, and realized it felt familiar to another volcanic formation I had circled a few years ago.

I found myself reflecting on my personal brand of perfectionism. When I was last teaching at SF State, I remember a conversation with Gail about perfectionism. She remarked that I was probably a perfectionist in my studio practice. I replied I wasn't.

This isn't to say I don't have high standards for myself. However, I think perfectionism is born of fear - fear of failure, fear of mistakes. And I don't let fear interfere with my studio practice.

I've been working with my hands long enough that I'm pretty damn skilled, where so much of what I do is muscle memory. And, to quote a Judith Schaechter essay that I wish I wrote:

To be highly skilled, is ultimately an advantage, but it’s a very tricky one. It needs to remain a choice rather than a mandate. As artisans, we transition from holy fools to journeyman to master and ultimately into something like a Zen Master. We go from simple play to learning, to knowing how to fix our mistakes to knowing when fixing them is desirable or not. And hopefully, ultimately, how to balance striving for perfection and when to play like a child. To not go through those stages is to deprive one’s self of full actualization as an artist.

Where my perfectionism comes into play is in interpersonal relationships. I am afraid not to be the perfect daughter, sister, friend, spouse...I'm terrified to let someone down. And then, when I fail (or more appropriately, just be human) I feel guilty. (Patti Smith's Book of Neglects could be my life.)

As I was walking today, I also found myself thinking of this etching I saw by Squeak Carnwath and Paulson Bott Press.

Carrying these multiple thoughts along the hike today, I came to my New Year's Resolution. I don't want my life to be a to-do list; I don't want to feel guilty.

Typically, I carry so much guilt, I can't conceive of being free of the weight of it. This holiday season I could just feel it piling on. So, I have given myself permission, and forgiveness, to not feel guilty this year. How I will achieve this, I'm not sure.

Vast and trunkless legs of stone

Feeling reflective on this New Year's Day. Back in October, Robert and I went searching for the papermill ruins in Samuel P. Taylor State Park. (They are fairly easy to find).

The first papermill on the West Coast, their claim to fame is that they were the first to produce square bottomed paper bags, although I think that claim is shared by a few others.

The mill was a hugely successful operation, launched by a man who actually found gold during the California Gold Rush. At its peak, apparently around 100 families were employed.

It seems bleak to post this on a day focused on looking forward. A once productive operation, now reclaimed by trees and moss. I think some will look at this post and see it as a statement that death and decline are inevitable, but I see the inverse: growth and renewal are undeniable.

Between the dense and the distilled...

As I've been working on these recent collages, it's come to me that as an artist, my studio practice has frequently swung between highly detailed, dense works, and very minimal, materially sensitive, distilled pieces. With these collages, with their layers of printed imagery and cut paper, things feel like I'm currently in a dense stage.

Click on images for larger view.

It's interesting, because after spending months and months making pieces like this one, or this, or this, which are basically just paper, these collages come together in a matter of hours at most. (Although, if I counted all the time that led to the waste prints and paper that went into assembling the collage, it would be much, much longer). Of course, the paper portfolios are also editions, while the collages are unique works.

I think most artists who have made minimal work that is similar to my linked examples will agree that the precision required to work on something that is so exacting and simple is often as equally challenging to produce as something complex and highly detailed. There's just no wiggle room.

However, I find myself wondering what these divergent methods mean to my overall practice. I keep coming back to the concept of distilling when I think of the paper portfolios - I had clarified my vision and ideas down to a material essence and process. Simultaneously, it's a challenge to myself - how good are my skills? (how much can I show off?) Completing such work honors the medium and its potential.

These collages are more ambiguous - multiple nonlinear narratives colliding, a burgeoning lexicon of imagery.

Right now, after all those months of meticulousness, getting to use all that lovely paper that Jerarde gave me last year, to layer, to delight in my love of pattern, it's a release to embrace complexity. It feels like an indulgence.

The Studio is operational!!

At least for printmaking. Papermaking set-up still in process. I'm actually working in the space, so that's a good sign. So far, all I've finished is the holiday present above, a woodblock portrait of my wonderful little niece Olivia. But it's a start.

Hamadawashi at Kala

Back in October, during the frenzy leading up to my move, I attended a talk and demonstration at Kala by some Japanese master papermakers - Hiranao and Osamu Hamada (pictured above). Hamadawashi Mill is known for the paper Tosa Tengucho - "Wing of the Mayfly," - handmade paper that has the distinction of being the thinnest in the world. Osamu, who apprenticed at Mino Washi, is a master of rakusui (lace paper).

Some of the talk focused on young artisans like themselves, who are choosing to take up skills such as papermaking in a modern world. They compared traditional papermakers to ghosts, saying that many printmakers never see them.

Two points in particular resonated with me - the first being the farmers and growers of kozo are just as essential as the papermakers.

The second point was that papermaking is more than just a skill set, it's a feeling from inside. Hiranao compared it to cooking, or more accurately, the desire to make delicious food.

Which made me wonder - the desire to make delicious food, for me, is about more than eating. It's about sharing. And I wonder, to them, is papermaking also about sharing? The idea that one makes a sheet, which is then transformed by another? The act of papermaking is then realized as a continuum and community act.

I think my favorite question after their talk was from someone who asked, "How long did it take to get your mastery?" to which they simply replied, "Three years." (I think the audience was expecting them to say most of their lifetimes, although when I mentioned this to Don, he just answered that it used to be seven, but they've reduced it so as not to drive young interested people away).

Following the talk was a nagashizuki demo.

Papermaking is indeed a community act, although I will argue that the community is much more extensive than those who just go on to use the paper. Cellulose, as Don likes to say, is a polymer made up of strings of grape sugar molecules, one of the most plentiful polymers on the planet. To make paper is to be interconnected to a myriad of histories, processes, art forms and sciences.