I want to share the evolution of producing The Papermaker’s Studio Guide, which has been quite a feat! I have to say there were moments when I thought I’d throw in the towel, but now that we’re at the other end, I am proud of what has been accomplished and pleased that I stuck with it.
I sought funding for this project from the Celebration Foundation in Portland and the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA), asking for support so that I could hire a filmmaker to create and edit a how-to video. Both grants were awarded.
It was great to have the grant proposal as a guideline for the project. I knew that I’d be working with Ian Lucero who made a lovely little documentary about The Mother Tree Project. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that Ian knew very little about papermaking and I knew very little about producing a film. We really needed a director to pull this all together, but that wasn’t in the budget.
I spent a good six months tossing various ideas around and finally settled on filming in four different papermaking studios in and around Portland (we didn’t have a travel budget either) to show a variety of workplaces, papermaking equipment and techniques.
We filmed at Oblation Papers & Press,