Paper Talk

Nicholas Cladis is an interdisciplinary artist and papermaker who lives and works in Iowa City, IA. He is the papermaking specialist at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, where he lectures and manages the Oakdale paper research facility. Cladis is an active researcher and practitioner of traditional and non-traditional papermaking processes. For six years he lived and worked in Echizen, Japan — an area with over 1,500 years of papermaking history — and continues to maintain an active relationship with the papermaking community there. He regularly contributes to the Future of Craft Villages research group at Fukui Prefectural University, and serves on the executive committee of Imadate Art Field, a non-profit arts organization based in Echizen.

We talked about Cladis’ work at the University of Iowa Center for the Book and Oakdale Paper Facility. Here you see the wet and dry working spaces at the Oakdale facility.

The annual kozo harvest at the University of Iowa.

Cladis spent 6 years in the papermaking village of Echizen, which has over 1500 years of papermaking history and is home to a papermaking goddess.

Cladis has created many installations. This is a detail shot of his piece, Landscape Recollecting, made from kozo, stone, and cypress.

Here’s Cladis’ Papermaking Soba Noodle recipe.