The Sunday Paper #301
March 1, 2020

Paper of the Week:

I was focusing on abaca over on instagram this week, where I shared several works I’ve created over the years with this incredible, shrinking, sculptural material. Abaca is banana plant waste that I grind into a mushy malleable pulp and turn into sheets of paper which are smooth enough to draw on, supple enough to fold into book pages and strong enough to construct sculptures and installations. This is a mock shoji screen. I visited Japan early in my career and wondered why there weren’t any shoji screens with organic shapes. So I made one, and it was incredibly labor intensive (plaster wrapped wire screening, artist-made abaca with onion skin).

———————————————————————————————–––––––

In the Studio:

Registration for Flexible Book Structures officially opens tomorrow, but since I’ve got everything ready, you can sign up now! Please click through to watch my 3 minute video about the course, read all about it, and register! And feel free to spread the word to your paper and book loving friends.

———————————————————————————————–––––––

Toyota, a staunch supporter of Woza Moya, tasked the women of the organization with producing 8 000 origami cats for an installation at launch of the new luxury Lexus at the Investec Art Fair 2020 in Cape Town. I couldn’t find an image of the cats at the fair which took place recently, but the idea behind the project is to show how much skill and dexterity is required to be a Takumi craftsman or artisan, one of the supremely skilled craftsmen who work on the exclusive Lexus. Here’s a bit of info about Woza Moya, which is behind the craftspeople who created the cats. It was founded in 2000 in direct response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic that was ravaging the Ufafa Valley Community in South Africa.

A Japanese papermaker has started making postcards from strings of origami cranes that were donated to the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki Prefecture as symbols of peace. Having visited the memorial in Hiroshima just months ago (where I received a similar postcard with admission), I know how many cranes are donated, and this seems like a worthy venture to turn them into handmade sheets!

Check out this amazing paper cut art by Antonius-Tín. Click on the image, and you’ll be taken on a gallery tour through their exhibition, ‘finding heart’.

This is a fascinating story about a limited edition book featuring handmade paper covers (with mica)! Charnel House, longtime publisher of artfully designed limited editions in Catskill, New York, has released Ellison Under Glass, a collection of stories written mostly in bookstore windows.

I love this story about a 4th/5th grade art teacher who won a grant for her proposal to create handmade paper art lessons to engage students in the harvest of cotton and flowers from the school’s garden. A teacher after my own heart (I developed and ran Papermaker’s Garden projects in NYC and Portland, OR).

———————————————————————————————–––––––

SHARE THIS blog post with your paper-loving friends!