Un/Natural Occurances at Central Booking (and other stuff!)

Chacaltaya is part of this exhibition opening this week at Central Booking, now at its new location on the Lower East Side! The press release can be read here, and a catalog of the exhibition can be purchased here.

Book Bombs will also be part of the citywide exhibition Intertext in St. Louis this October. And Carbon Corpus is going to be part of the OFFspace exhibition Brave New World, at the Spare Change Artist Space.

All in all, going to be a busy fall.

UNBOUND at SAGE Projects

Infinite Thread, the artist book I collaborated on with Marie Elcin, is part of this exhibition in Sheridan. Making me miss my time at Jentel....

Maps in Pulp Paint

Things are coming together, or maybe back together, on a project I began and put aside years ago. I started an artist book I planned to call Future Tense, which was an intersecting narrative between endangered languages and birds. I'm actually glad for the delay, as it's allowing the book to incorporate some materials and methods which, while not part of the original idea, I think make it more interesting.

Since getting interested in paper, I've been intrigued with the idea of material=content. However, I'm starting to think that material is more a signifier for content. In this case, I'm working with invasive plants (broom), however, here I'm using it to reference the Westernization of indigenous cultures, invasive European plant as a representative for invasive Europeans.

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?

More collages

Turning

Interval

Waterbride

Deluge

Auspex

Wildcat Canyon - new artist book

Some shots of my newest artist book, Wildcat Canyon. It's a unique book, made of handmade paper with pulp paint and inclusions, using some of the techniques I will be demonstrating at my upcoming pulp painting workshop.

This book is an example of something I encourage people to consider when making paper and pulp painting - is the piece finished when the paper is dry? Or does something more happen to it (drawing/printing/painting/collage....). In this case, I assembled the various experiments into a book.

There is still room for a few more people in the workshop on July 27. Hope to see some of you there!

Upcoming Workshop - Pulp Painting

The Bryant Street Studios Papermaking series has started up again! I'll be teaching Pulp Painting on July 27 - info is below. To learn more about other papermaking workshop at Bryant Street Studios, please check here.

CLASS DATE: July 27th, 2013
CLASS TIME: 10am - 4pm
1890 Bryant Street, San Francisco CA 94110
Finely beaten paper pulp can act just 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. Sheets will be air dried and some left to dry under pressure for several days and mailed to students.

CLASS FEE: $150
MATERIALS FEE: $10

Materials are included, and there is a short tool list which will be emailed for the class once you are enrolled. To register, visit here.