August 2, 2020

In the Studio: Online Paper Starts NOW!

Here… we… go! Shop for handmade papers you won’t find anywhere else in the world. Click through to watch a video of me handling and describing the papers. Supplies are limited, so don’t delay. Thanks for supporting Helen Hiebert Studio!

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Papermaker of the Week: Cathleen Baker

This is a new column. If you’re a papermaker and would like to be featured in the coming weeks and months, please fill out this form. I’d love to hear from you!

I had the pleasure of interviewing Cathleen Baker on Paper Talk recently. We talk about how she moved to the U.K in 1968 where she eventually became the paper conservator for the Courtauld Institute Galleries in London, and how handling the old papers in the documents she was preserving sparked an interest in paper. Among many other interesting projects, Cathy wrote the biography of Dard Hunter, which involved moving into his home in Chillicothe, Ohio (which his grandson now owns). Cathy publishes her own work, along with award-winning books about the history and technologies of papermaking, printing, and bookbinding by others under her imprint, The Legacy Press. Enjoy our conversation!

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Papery Tidbits

• Participants in my Paper + Light online class are doing some amazing things with… paper + light (take a peek over on Instagram). If you’re interested in signing up for Session 2, we start on tomorrow!
• Did you catch the virtual studio tour I gave a few weeks back through the Creative Arts Workshop?

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My beloved abaca appears to be a good material for the face masks and hospital gowns the world is making to fight the coronavirus. I am going to have to try to make a trip to The Philippines one day!

This ‘rice paper’ from Vietnam made it into my news feed, although it is not truly paper, but an edible rice paper. I had to laugh because there is a misnomer that Asian papers are made from rice (you can make paper from rice straw, but the rice we eat does not have enough cellulose to make paper). From what I know, there is a paper made from the rice pith plant, but it is a shaved paper, more similar to payprus or amate. Anyways, I thought I’d throw these in here, because they are so beautiful! And if anyone was with me in 2014 after the opening of my installation of The Wish, I think we ate these at dinner afterwards!

This is a mesmerizing video about the paper marbling of Garip Ay, and I love how the work is described as painting on water.

Someone over in my facebook group (The Paper Studio) mentioned this cool community engagement project: The Rubin Museum Invites the Public to Participate in The Lotus Effect, a Community-Built Installation.

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