The Rhinoceros Project

The Rhinoceros Project

The Sunday Paper #262
June 2, 2019

Paper of the Week: Double Sided Origami Paper

When I was in Korea about 10 years ago, I went to an amazing paper store in Seoul that had more origami paper than I could even imagine. I’m guessing there are shops like that in Japan (I’m finally planning to visit in 2020 to attend the IAPMA Congress). But I digress… it is June and today I’m featuring a specialty origami paper from the June project in the 2019 Twelve Months of Paper Calendar. The papers in this pack of 6.25″ square sheets feature traditional chiyogami prints, and the fact that they are double-sided really enhances this project!

The project is a candy dish, designed by 9-year old Trinity Adams of Paper For Water. She told me how sat down on a rock while traveling and tried to fold a fortune teller (you remember those things you folded in grade school)? Well, she made a mistake and invented this candy dish instead!

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In the Studio: Sarah Horowitz on Paper Talk

My recent interview with Sarah Horowitz is now on the podcast. Sarah and I have been accountability buddies for several years now, talking weekly about business-related issues. Sarah is a printmaker based in Leavenworth, Washington, who also makes drawings and artist’s books. We talk about how her parents fostered her artistic interests by always providing her with access to materials and art classes as she was growing up. She attended Hampshire College in Massachussetts, where she ended up focusing on printmaking. After college, she honed her printmaking skills at studios in Switzerland and Scotland before returning to the Northeast, where she got involved with the book arts community. Eventually, she ended up on the West Coast when she was looking for a community print shop to work in. She tells me how she discovered there were more papers to print on than Rives BFK, and we discuss one of her artist’s book projects in detail, which involved custom handmade paper. Sarah talks about the reciprocal process of printing on paper, as she explores how the paper responds to her imagery and the ink, and how her plates print on the surface of the sheet. We also have a long discussion about how she pigments and sizes Japanese papers to obtain the exact colors she wants and the tooth that allows her pen to glide smoothly across the surface for her drawings. Enjoy our conversation!

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Papery Tidbits:

  • Did you listen to Science Friday this week? There was a segment about parchment (pre-paper made from animal skins) and how a researcher came up with the idea of studying the DNA in books! I can’t find it at the link (but I know I heard it), so you may have to listen to the whole episode.
  • Rachel Hazell’s PaperLove online ecourse begins June 17th. Click through to find instructions for a Five Minute Artist Book and get a taste for the kind of things you will learn in the PaperLove ecourse. As a reader of The Sunday Paper, you will receive a 10% discount (enter code NEWIDEAS at checkout).

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A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of making a few stitches on the Rhinoceros Project, Anne Beck and Michelle Wilson’s life-size watermark of Albrecht Durer’s “Rhinoceros.” Nearly six hundred people, of all ages and walks of life, have contributed stitches. Now complete, they are seeking funds to create the finale of the project: a life-size watermarked sheet of paper created using the embroidered cloth as the mould surface. When complete, the two works will be companion pieces, suggestion presence and absence, and the slight of rhinoceros species today. Read more and help them reach their goal here. I encourage you to take a peek at the budget on the fundraising page. Projects like this really do cost money to execute!

Check out this flag made of crocheted crepe paper. It is 33″ x 55″ and signed by Meta Schmitt of Oklahoma in about 1936. The 48-star flag was probably made to display at a patriotic gathering, like a Fourth of July or a “Welcome Home Soldier” party.

Someone entered a Massachusetts home and cleaned it, leaving these toilet paper roses as a parting gift. Does that count as breaking and entering? I’d be happy if that happened to me!
My friend Jenny Pinto is the creator behind Oorjaa in Bangalore, India. We spent a month together in 2000 when she was an intern in my Portland studio. I remember testing the banana fiber she brought form India and comparing it to the abaca I had (from the Philippines). Jenny runs a papermaking studio that pumps out a lovely range of illuminated paper pieces. It has been such fun to watch it bloom through the years.

Click through to watch and listen to this animated + super sweet scroll book, called a crankie, by Sarah Gowan.

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Featured this week in my Studio shop:
Papermaking with Plants, a Package of 3 Films that you can download, the Twelve Months of Paper Calendar (now 1/2 price) and Alpha, Beta, …, an artist’s book.
Twelve Months of Paper


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