The Sunday Paper #458

April 30, 2023

My husband Ted, our son Will and I are heading to Portland, OR on Wednesday to celebrate our daughter’s graduation from the University of Portland. Congratulations to Lucah, who started an internship last summer that led to a recent job offer. She’ll be staying in PDX for the foreseeable future. It’s a nice place to visit! Let me know if you have any Portland paper tips for me, and PDX friends: I’m hosting an open house/birthday party from 4-7pm-ish on Tuesday, May 9th at our Airbnb in North Portland. E-mail me for details.

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

How cool is this? An upcycled artwork that serves as a great reminder of your giving and the recipient’s intention. Heather Leavitt Martinez is creating these cut art cards that hang from a piece of jute twine and are temporarily backed by paper embedded with wildflower seeds. You get to: 1. Write intention(s) on seeded card with a pencil; 2. Plant seed paper; 3. Hang artwork in a window to serve as a reminder of your intentions; 4. Watch your intentions blossom and grow! Give the gift that keeps on giving!

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

I love this: Rather than a list of names or topics, artist Jacob Hashimoto’s index is purely visual, a demonstration of different motifs used by the artist in his sculptural works. For The Hashimoto Index I, the artist created ninety-six woodblock prints that can be arranged into endless combinations of compositions. I had the pleasure of seeing his work in Dallas several years ago. If you’re in Boise, go immerse yourself underneath his Fractured Giant installation; if you aren’t, you can watch a timelapse video of the construction). Thanks to those of you who alerted me to this show – it was featured in AAA Magazine.

Jacob Hashimoto (American, born 1973), The Hashimoto Index I, 2017, 96 woodblock prints on Igarashi Kozo 450g, edition of 19, Courtesy of the artist

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

Wowza! I can’t help myself – all of the features this week are knocking my socks off. Sho Shibuya started to reinterpret the sunrise outside his apartment window into bright, colorful paintings that masked the cover of the daily newspaper. The works became an exercise in simplicity, minimalism, and meditation, and today, they’re part of a growing archive that includes hundreds of the gradients, in addition to more evocative pieces that reflect on politics and current events. Click through to see more!

© Sho Shibuya, as seen on Colossal

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

This is a fascinating article about drawings on paper dyed with indigo. Though blue paper appears frequently in international museum collections, its historical scholarship is limited. Alexa McCarthy’s doctoral research at the University of St. Andrews represents the first large-scale study of blue paper, and she recently recapped her findings to the Bowdoin community in a lecture.

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

Paper Tidbits

• Have you had a chance to listen to my interview with Jane Ingram Allen on Paper Talk?
• In Cahoots offers both paid and funded residencies for printmakers, book artists, letterpress printers and writers.

Papermaking Series: Embedding

Here’s the latest in my series of papermaking videos. I’ll be filming a new batch of videos in the near future. Let me know if there’s a papermaking technique that you’d like to see a video about!

———————————————————————————————––––––