Fourth month's end

[Steph near her two drawings, one already sold, and Jared in foreground, at Heights Arts.] I am over the moon happy with the new place, and wish I could have everyone over who has ever extended that hospitality to me, but I'm still nowhere near furnished. It makes me nervous to invest in that kind of thing, not knowing really how long I'll be here, or how hard that will make the next move (I always think about the next move in the middle of the current one! Because I always assume it will be in a matter of months or less). But I can finally unfurl and hang art that I've kept for years for exactly this purpose. There is so much space! And the kitchen is so roomy that I keep cooking, slowly sorting out the best setup and ergonomics of the workspace. Today, I finally brought the surviving bits of my brick wall home, since the Morgan is going to start some major renovations, and I have space for them!

Ivey came in today, and I had forgotten that she had switched her days this week, which was a great surprise. I really needed the help and she was a trooper with all the work she did. Yesterday, I watched Mason and Tom drop the beater roll back into the epoxied beater (the red beaters are now red only on the outside; the epoxy is baby blue). Today, I tried to move a backing press so that we could have clear access to our picking station, and started screaming as I watched it slide off the dolly. Sigh. Always an adventure! Tomorrow is my FINAL day teaching printmaking and I can't wait to be free for really focused Morgan work, even though I leave in just a few weeks for Penland! Tomorrow marks the second half of the apprentice's training and the last three months of my contract at the Morgan.

On the other side of the country, Jessica and Chandler had an amazing Wayzgoose. I so admire their ability to collaborate, and love their commitment to place, the Tacoma where they live and work. Time for me to test my own commitment to this place. Sleeping soundly is a good sign.

Overabundance of wonderful

The tororo has grown into a second set of very different leaves from the first set! We cleared out the non-starters and are planning for the raised beds that will go up in a month.

Picking, picking, picking away. It's endless and yet I can't make them stop doing it. Paper without the black bark is so very lovely.

I couldn't get good pictures from the show's opening on Friday, but it was a wonderful exhibit and with a fantastic turnout! So great to see old and new friends and a gathering of Morganites who happened to be in town.

Can't say much because my mind has melted as my body has fallen apart from this move. WOW, moving. But wow, so grateful for all my friends who stepped up to help me out. I can barely move or think but am very happy in the new place. This is my last week of teaching—the semester is almost up! And hopefully I'll be in good enough shape to get back to the vat this week.

F i n a l l y

This was a piece I made for my solo show that closes in a week at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes. An acquaintance bought it immediately at the opening and I never got a chance to document properly. I did a very cursory shoot with my outdated camera before rushing to the car wash (poor car was still covered in winter salt since Feb). I pulled half the amount of paper I wanted to that afternoon because my body was falling apart, and tried to cook Japanese kozo.

By 7pm, it was not cooking through (weak ash water) and my knee was insisting that I go home. The next morning brought a grant application and teaching before I saw Charity at the Morgan, who had pulled exactly the maximum number of sheets I had hoped for. I still felt horrible, so left work early but packed at night. Last week, I had a yoga injury in my left shoulder, and papermaking and working on concrete floors has been rough.

Today, I woke up to sciatica and decided to take the day off. I dropped off winter clothes at the dry cleaners and bought new shoes with better support. At home, I packed until my body stopped me, and sat down to check email. Yesterday, I had gotten a rejection letter for a grant. Today, I got an award letter to fund a trip to Korea this fall!!! I've been trying to get back for the last five years, and this means that I can study with my jiseung teacher again. For months, I've had a feeling that this was the year I'd return, that there was a reason for my completely unbooked autumn calendar (though I was also fantasizing about a fall where I could leisurely make art and do nothing else). I'll have to supplement with my own funds to make it the trip I need it to be, but this is the boost I've needed and prepared for over the past several years.

In the meantime, we are steadily pulling lovely gampi/kozo blend sheets, I move this weekend to a beautiful new apartment, and this Friday we celebrate papermaking at an exhibit that opens at Heights Arts! Tonight, I will attempt to NOT pack anymore and rest, if I can stand staying still.

Sizing seduction

An array of the tests I have been making over the week with pigmented and sized kozo (Thai and Japanese) and gampi. I'm now wishing I could make more right away, but we really need to get cracking on production for snail mail papers, which are NOT going to be green.

Inspiration for the duck that I started weeks ago and then stopped working on once it got hard.

Jamye shows us the Japanese papers they use in conservation at ICA. We went on a trip yesterday after a long day of work to for a session tailored just for us.

An engraving of the Declaration of Independence, on parchment, repaired with Japanese papers.

A lovely assortment of Japanese brushes. I can't wait until we offer some tool making classes here and already have one of the best guys in the country willing to do it.

As we were leaving, Wendy talked to us about this amazing old sarcophagus that she is working on.

This morning, finally! Took long enough, but I finally made unsized (below) and sized (above) samples of Japanese kozo paper. It takes some getting used to in the vat, but we'll finally have some sized Asian style papers on the production line!

Stepping forward and back

Our chiritori station, where we pick the cooked bark before beating. Yes, it seems like there is way MORE bark inside the tray (on top of a light table so you can see the dark bits more easily when the light is turned on) than inside the white bucket, where the picked bark resides.

I float the bark inside the colanders and then transfer the dark bits to the tray and clean bits to the bucket. This was a solo day when my standards kept slipping as I went along because I just wanted to be done with it. The warm spell made the fiber turn in a whole different way. It's interesting to smell the difference between fiber turning slowly in cold, cold weather, and the same fiber turning right away in a day or two in warmer weather. So that's the Japanese kozo. I forgot to shoot over the last few days because of the papermaking, but it's very green. Also, lots of flocculation issues with chemicals fighting each other (retention aid, sizing, PMP, PEO). But I got a handful of nice sheets even amidst the chunky ones. Things never go as fast as I'd like, and we keep meeting roadblocks, but I'm still feeling optimistic about the whole project.

I like to go to the Chinese grocery nearby for produce and banh mi and snacks. This guy greets me every time. Do you see his gourd? Love it. This week I went to a very intense yoga class and hopefully I will get back in shape and not end up looking like him. But being happy like him, yes!

Here is Liz at Zygote giving us a great tour/talk. My students acted just like children who embarrass you would act: blank stares when asked about things I've taught them, making me look like the idiot. Sigh. But it was great to see them so attentive for once, and I wish we could have stayed longer. We had a van not show up so we were late, and then one carload of students never made it from Zygote to the Morgan, but I suppose that's how things go as we get late into the semester. Good news: I've finally booked my travel and hotel for Convergence! When I get the energy, I'll break out all the classes I'm teaching that week (four in six days on jiseung, joomchi, and artists' books).

Cold to HOT

It has been a busy, busy week, but also highly productive because I set our production goals at 50 sheets a day, and put the burden on me to pick up slack. Which is great, as I very much need to move around and start to lose the winter sedentary body that I've been dragging around. Here are very poor images of the green, blue, and yellow pigment tests after teaching my apprentices how to pigment fiber.

Today was VERY exciting because we finally plugged in our new heat dryer from U of Iowa that Julie so kindly delivered last weekend and it gets hot! Hot enough that the familiar steam comes off of the paper once you brush it on. Of course it has hot spots and we need to eventually replace the screws with stainless ones, but this is a great option. I was disappointed with myself for being too tired last weekend to rescue the Japanese kozo cooked in wood ash lye—I let it sit in the cooking liquor for too long before we rinsed, so the final paper is too soft. Sigh. I know better, that you can do everything right but get one step wrong and there goes your lovely batch of paper.

At least our tororo is enjoying the sunlight. I wish I had more time to talk to them. I'll go in tomorrow to rescue the Thai kozo (less of an issue because it never cooks down enough in the first place), rinse, pull more sheets, and pick more Japanese kozo before hand beating. The warm weather makes me nervous. The pressure is on!

I pulled over 50 sheets yesterday with the Japanese kozo on my Japanese sugeta using the folded edge technique rather than threads to separate. Ivey and I dried these all morning and then tried to visit the Cleveland Flea, but it was a traffic/parking nightmare, so we visited Zygote instead and then Superior Pho, before returning to load the big drybox. I would have done it yesterday but knew people would freak out by all the noise with our first opening of the year (and a gallery talk today).

Speaking of noise, the garage door guys came today to start work on the new door. This one will be history very soon (anyone need metal to scrap?). Yesterday was warm enough for Tom to pull out the outdoor furniture so that he and Kirstin and Ivey and I could have lunch in the garden. I made a salad for all because it was a salad kind of day and all of us women were making paper. All of that wore me out but last night's Zygote benefit and Morgan opening were great, especially because I was able to carpool with friends. Today was too hot for my liking (shaking fist at global warming for taking away true spring) but I know it's nothing compared to what is actually to come! No time to waste; hoping to make paper every day until the swelter and bugs arrive.

Returning to the known

We had a little shoot outside for fun while the morning was still quiet. This reminds me again that I need a new camera. Which also means a new computer. Which explains why I'm avoiding all of it (because I also need dental work! But can't seem to find anyone so far in this town. I keep hearing, "I have a dentist, but I can't recommend him/her." Yikes).

After some tedious admin that goes hand in hand with the Eastern Paper Studio, I finally got to pick some Ohio mulberry but had to stop myself from doing the whole batch or I knew I'd never get around to papermaking. I only had a cupful of clean bark but it makes lovely, lovely paper. It's quite white, which surprised me. But then I remembered that our kozo is quite yellow/green.

This is the hydrated mulberry (not paper mulberry! Just the stuff growing wild in the back that Tom has us harvest. I remember trimming these trees with Juan in November, and it yielded us just about a half of a dry pound)—clearly, the unpicked batch. But still lovely. I beat the picked batch more than this one and of course got spatters all over my coat.

A new volunteer spent at least five to six hours separating dried black bark from green bark and I dumped all of that hard work (black bark) in the garden today. I pulled a few more deckle box sheets and ... OH NO!! I just realized now that I blotted them with the mulberry paper, loaded the latter into the drybox, but totally forgot to un-blot the rest! Sigh. This is what happens when I try to do too many things at once.

Dinner was at Felice with a lovely local couple. I completely splurged with food and drink and dessert and though I love living close enough to walk, it was eerie to be walking as the only person in the street on the way there. I've been stressed out lately, mostly about things completely out of my control, so it was vital that I pulled sheets today. I know that it's good for me, yet I don't do it enough. Everything gets solved when I'm really working, or at least the trash gets taken out in my head (apparently, the brain literally takes out its trash while sleeping, so I need more of that, too). Looking forward to more of that as we go into serious production. My goal: 50 sheets/day, 3 days/week, for 7 weeks. That gives us just over a thousand sheets, half of which will not be good enough for sale—this is optimistic. But that leaves 500 as we proposed, by the end of May.

Down to the bone

I'm beyond exhausted. I don't remember what happened last week aside from days where I'd wonder what day it was and what happened the prior day while accessing big black holes devoid of memory. Oh! I know: I finally chose a new apt, put down a deposit, and delivered the executed lease today. I was delighted to end the daily viewings of potential homes, and now only have to worry about transferring utilities and all of my belongings. Three more weeks and I finally get to feel at home! Praying for no more smoking neighbors.

I also saw a bunch of wonderful friends both from out of town and locally, weaving around my extra teaching for the week (a high school field trip and a teacher training). Lots of great food, trips to Little Italy, sunshine, and hugs. A couple of my college students got into the student art show and won prizes, so that was nice to see. I was bummed that the Morgan missed a really important grant deadline, but I can't police everything. The big goal for this week: more sleep! And paper/art making!