Booksmart
The Sunday Paper #570
August 31, 2025
As you’re reading this, I’m be on the plane(s) to Atlanta (via Dallas). I remember riding in my first glass elevator in Atlanta when I was a kid; and coming from behind to win a 500 yard distance race at a college swim meet (perhaps at Georgia Tech, where I’m headed. My memory is fuzzy on the details, but I’ll never (I hope) forget the adrenaline rush from the event, which was enhanced by the reaction from my teammates).
Memories aside, tomorrow morning I’ll hit the ground running to install my work at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, along with my co-exhibitors Nancy Cohen and Sara Garden Armstrong. We hope to see some of you at the opening reception this Thursday, September 4th!
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Woven Dialogs by Gina Pisello, 2024.
The University of South Dakota presents “Bound and Unbound VIII”, an altered book exhibition, now through January 5, 2026. It is open to the public for viewing during library operating hours and can also be viewed online in the Digital Library of South Dakota.
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I had a lovely conversation with Dorothy McGuinness, a contemporary basket weaver who lives and works in Everett, Washington. McGuinness took her first basketmaking class in 1987 and has studied basket-weaving techniques that have been handed down through the centuries. She has worked extensively with Jiro Yonezawa, a contemporary Japanese basket maker and teacher and discovered her medium of choice in 2000, when she took a workshop with Jackie Abrams, who introduced her to watercolor paper as a basket-weaving material. McGuinness now works exclusively in diagonal twills and mad weave, creating contemporary sculptural baskets, and enjoys exploring the interplay of weaving, color, and design in her sculptural woven paper pieces. Enjoy our conversation!
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Special thanks to a reader for sending me this profile of Pam DeLuco of Shotwell Papermill in San Francisco on Craft in America, the architect of the project Paper Dolls: stories from women who served which contains 20 stories spanning more than 40 years of service and all branches of the military. These stories represent the collective experience of women in the armed forces. Using paper created from military uniforms as a starting point, DeLuco asked women veterans to share personal stories, donate uniforms, and participate in the hand making of these carefully conceived limited edition books in an attempt to change people’s preconceived ideas of women in the military.
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Paper Tidbits
- If you’re in NYC next weekend, check out the Booksmart Fair as part of Art in Paper.
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2 Comments
Thank you for drawing my attention to the Paper Dolls project with women from the military. Fascinating with so many layers. It’s similar to a project I worked on recently, on women’s memories of garments, and your post has inspired me to revisit it.
so happy you were inspired!