The Sunday Paper #382

September 26, 2021

Every so often, I make a batch of translucent abaca sheets. It’s that time again, and you can order them in sets of 5 sheets that are 12″ x 18″ for $50. Click through to place your order by October 3rd, and your paper will ship by mid-October.

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I had a lovely interview on Paper Talk with Miri Golan (this is episode #80)! Golan an entrepreneur, educator and origami artist  who hopes that her installations are 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!

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It is so fun to discover art in public places. Check out these giant origami forms (fabricated in steel, but designed in paper) in New York’s garment district. Created by California-based artist Hacer, the installation will be on display along Broadway between 36th and 39th Streets through November 23.

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Also in NYC, at the Morgan Library & Museum, Another Tradition: Drawings by Black Artists from the American South, opened September 24, 2021, and runs through January 16, 2022. This exhibition celebrates the Morgan’s 2018 acquisition of eleven drawings from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting Black Southern artists and their communities.

Thornton Dial, Ladies Stand by the Tiger, 1991. Watercolor on paper. Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection and purchase on the Manley Family Fund. Photography by Janny Chiu, 2021 © Thornton Dial / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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This is a fascinating article about a shortage of craftspeople who can preserve national treasures and important cultural properties in Japan. The list is dominated by fields where the skills and materials are endangered, such as lacquerware and samurai armor restoration, the production of handmade paper used in hanging scrolls and paper screens, and Japanese indigo dyeing. The average age for these experts is 73, and their priceless technical knowledge could be lost forever at any time.

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Paper Tidbits:

• My membership program, The Paper Year, opens for registration October 1-10!

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In the Studio:

I’ve had an intern in the studio for the past 10 days and we’ve been exploring the properties of abaca. Here you see a wet sheet on the left that is nailed to a board, and on the right you can see how it dried. There are some interesting pleats that are created between the two nails. I’m just beginning to think about a new book that will document the ways that I’ve experimented with abaca over the years with actual samples that show off the potential of this wonder fiber.

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Featured this week in my Studio shop: Papermaking with Garden Plants, Tangential, an artist’s book, translucent abaca, and Playing With Pop-Ups.

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