A beautiful week for hanji

I should be sleeping so I can drive a TON tomorrow but wanted to do this sooner than later—about to leave Wells College in the morning. Here are Nancy and James board drying hanji.

We started out in REALLY wet and rainy weather. All of the wet work happened outdoors.

Our first post had deep drip marks from the leaking tent.

On Thursday, the sun finally came out and the rain said goodbye! Jane is pulling while intern Willa is watching.

Emily is looking at her beautiful bark lace in the trees.

Heather and Willa did a great job getting their bark lace type high to make a printed edition (2 more runs after this one).

This is the highest post any of my hanji students have ever managed (the final post, maybe #4?).

Always looking for places to board: Nancy and Willa at work.

When we started, we only had basement space, and I worried so much about how we'd pull it all off. When the rain started flooding the floors, it was time to find space upstairs even though we had no A/C.

We boarded onto every indoor window on the 2nd and 3rd floor. It's always a toss up about old glass; sometimes the release is not good. So I had them do it on the textured side, with flower patterns.

These in the top window were a test and I was relieved when they released.

The gallery install (there was also another short wall and a table). These students did fabulous work.

Emily took the picture so she's not in it, but we are goofing off on the vat as it dries. I was so grateful to have such a hard-working, resilient, and non-complaining group. Often I like to take a break from my students during meals but this week I was happy to spend all of my time with them. More pictures here. Hitting the road in the morning!

Triple booking

Today was show install for my new local exhibit at the Orange Art Center. It's the first time I think that I am using Korean words in the title that are not "hanji" so it kind of freaked out the spell check functions in their computers. It's a risk but seemed like a good idea at the time.

Emmalyn and Amalia were there to help the entire time and did a GREAT job hanging much of the show. Charity came over to help, and I felt super supported and grateful that I could hang back and let them do most of the work.

The entire show spans three rooms, and it was great in the end how well the sightlines work so that you can see work from one space to the next and it all pulls you through the gallery.

I felt a lot of deja vu to my Albion show when Tim and Pati came to help me hang the show (basically, Pati curated the entire thing and Tim hung it, because I was so delirious from not sleeping enough while teaching for a week in the woods). I didn't have a zillion pedestals to float in the main room today, but was perfectly content to let everyone else decide where things would go.

I had fun hanging that dress in the corner and using the monofilament guard line trick to keep it from spinning in a circle. It's always so satisfying to have the work out of my house and out in the world, with more space to breathe. It was my first load/unload/return while living in my new digs and I am over the moon to not have to climb so many stairs to load my car. This is easy to say when the weather is good and not raining (my garage is detached, so check back with me when the weather turns).

The final exciting news (for me only) is that I actually finished my book edition! I didn't think I would, but yesterday got revved up and printed the final three copies and glued up the spine pieces for three more covers. This is my pile through number 7, and 8, 9, and 10 were born tonight. Just in time to sleep and get up early tomorrow to see the doctor, PT, and mechanic. Back to body maintenance after an unfortunate taxi crash (I am okay but it definitely messed with me—all I was doing was sitting in the back seat of a taxi after flying around the world), and car maintenance to make sure it is ready to drive east this weekend to teach hanji in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of NYS.

The final work vacation before vacation's end

I am trying to get all caught up so I can feel good about getting back to work at home tomorrow. In case you thought I flew all the way back home and then stayed home, HA HA HA. I got home the night of the first day of July, and could barely unpack before leaving the next morning for Ann Arbor. I went to pick up artwork from a show that had closed so I can open a new one in a couple weeks, to get more of my books from my publisher, and to meet a very important papermaker. Above (and the next two pictures): an exhibit of Japanese miniatures at the Toledo Museum of Art.

Fortunately, my dear one was the driver for this trip, so I didn't have to worry about being behind the wheel of my car in my jet lagged state. His alma mater is in Ann Arbor, so he was delighted to plan this trip, because his old college friend was the one who made the VIP meeting possible: his late mother was friends with Laurence Barker! I was very excited to meet him, after having read his articles and seen his art and known his name in the paper world. Laurence, who taught printmaking for a long time at nearby Cranbrook (and set up papermaking there, the first such studio in the country in an academic setting) was wonderful and shared lots of great stories and details from his long career and fascinating life in the art and paper worlds.

It's also always a pleasure to see my publisher and catch up with her latest research, which is remarkable. I can't wait for her to publish it though I know there's lots more to do before we get a book in hand. She and I had returned to the U.S. from overseas work journeys on the same day.

On the way home, we stopped at the Toledo Museum of Art and of course visited the glass pavilion (that was kind of the whole point). This award-winning piece was hand cut but actually broke the first time and they had to re-make the whole thing in time for the 1904 World's Fair.

There's the picture of a man polishing the punch bowl. This show even had dresses and a parasol made from spun glass, which are apparently too heavy to wear anymore or display upright. The glass cuts the thread that has woven it together so it's quite delicate.

What I liked best were the ancient pieces of glass, which may have been the medium in which marbling began. I've been slow to get back to a full work schedule but have also been reminded that it's okay not to do that! Even though I only have two weeks before the next trip. I'm hoping to get back to the important work ASAP: making new art.

Cali jewels

It felt slightly over the top, but I agreed to a hanji event at Caltech for the night after I arrived back in the U.S. (after a New Zealand to Australia flight, then Australia to LAX). My flyer is in the top right corner here.

I'm so glad I did! I saw very little of campus and probably none of the rest of Pasadena, but what I saw was GORGEOUS. I can't believe all of these genius students and teachers get to work and study on such a beautiful campus.

I kept looking for similarities between the plants in SoCal and down under.

The architecture is stunning, and I love all the colors and textures. The landscaping is also incredible and it was so nice to walk by scented blossoms.

This is one of my favorite buildings, with tile work that feels so subtle to me. Apparently when it was built, it was considered way too out there, so they didn't do the same tile pattern on the other sides of the building as originally planned.

This is where I stayed, which was so lovely and comfy. I also spent most of my downtime talking to Velma in the shade while looking at the building and finally wised up to stand around barefoot in the grass to get grounded.

My hosts at CWC set up a gorgeous spread outside the lecture hall with fresh flowers, Korean tea and cookies (flown back a day prior by the wife of the person who got this whole thing rolling), and refreshments.

They have a turtle pond that I didn't know about until later in the day. Taking advantage of the hot midday, they come out to sun themselves. I love the way Cali evenings cool down.

This was the side of the tiled building earlier. I didn't take my phone in to see one of the newer buildings, with an art installation inside and architecture that refers to the destruction of the atom to create more energy. I love that a lot of the old architecture was preserved here, and wondered if the students appreciate it at all. I assumed that places where people study such hard sciences would not be so gorgeous, so this was a wonderful treat for 24 hours.

I got to see two old friends in SoCal, one that I met in nursery school and the other in kindergarten. Frustratingly, I got into a taxi at LAX to meet one friend and the cab driver smashed his car into another vehicle just minutes away from her house, so that's car crash #4 in the last three years that I've been in (with four different drivers). Agh! It wasn't as serious as #1, though serious enough to start the rounds again with massage, acupuncture, PT, and a doctor's visit. I know what to do now and finally have the network of practitioners that I trust who can help. I need to research rituals to get rid of my bad juju around cars.

I got to meet four new kids (new to me!) of these friends and hang out in beautiful weather. This may be Laguna Beach but I've already forgotten (the first ocean pic definitely is).

This is in San Clemente and there were so many people out, including lots of them fishing on the pier. It was so nice to relax with old friends and catch up. I had eaten SO much down under and was trying to cut back, but people here are just as generous, so I was stuffed silly again.

I ended the trip the way I had started, right near the water. Looking at the pictures makes me want to swim but I know it's cold (as was the sea in Tasmania). I got to fly back to the middle end of a heat wave but home is still home even when it's hot.

Where was I? Last bits of NZ

I'm back home but only now have the wherewithal to finish up the rest of my trip sharing. Here is Mark, using the other side of his bandsaw blade that he has sharpened with a grinder, to slice up old bed sheets that he finds at second hand stores. It took him a long time to figure out the best way to do this quickly. Many papermakers would appreciate this kind of repurposing, as cutting up rag is one of the least fun parts of prep when working with fabric.

This is his 20-lb beater, where he has already loaded rag and harakeke. He likes to add some of the latter, always, to strengthen the rag sheets.

He took a break to show me the patch of harakeke down the road, and showed me the baby leaf flanked by the parents, then the grandparents, and so on. Of course you only harvest from the outside leaves, the oldest ones, and he says a prayer before he begins harvesting in the same spirit as the Maori ask permission to harvest.

Here are three old washing tubs repurposed to chunk up his harakeke, that would have already been cooked at this stage.

This is the contraption he made to cut the long leaves into workable lengths.

When I got up my final morning, this is what I saw (well, the morning after that we all had to get up at 3:30am to get ready to head to the airport. I can't believe Jan got an entire breakfast ready, as I told her not to—at least not for me! She said it was okay as long as I had one tiny spoonful of porridge and one frozen blueberry). I was still jet lagged from Melbourne/Tasmania time (not to mention American time) so I had been sleeping late during my stay, but of course Mark was up at 7am because he was excited to get back to papermaking. Can you imagine moving from one house to another, having some random lady come stay with you from Cleveland, and then beating 22 lbs of fiber to pull sheets right away?

Mark likes to harvest his colors from the land. These get ground up into pigment that he uses on his paper in a painterly way.

This is his 2-lb beater, one of his early machines, and it has been chugging along for 20 years or so.

[You can tell I'm still tired because I'm not fixing the order of this to make more sense in sequence.] After the teeth in the washing tubs that he installed chew up the harakeke, it empties into a holding tank to drain, and then into an old washer where he spins the excess water out. Then it goes into the beater.

He was figuring out different ways to make paper for his flower installations, and this is the latest version, pulling 11 at a time, rather than pulling one at a time in old mesh moulds where he needed lots of volunteers to help. These are the medium sized shapes for the flowers, as he layers them all to get dimension and color.

My final night I went through Gin Petty's A Papermaker's Season, which is a book I so covet. Of course I went straight to the milkweed bits. She is AMAZING, something of a national treasure, especially in putting this book together to share her immense knowledge of papermaking from plants. Her handwritten note to Mark was in there, and it was nice to see the connections between these people who live so far away but do similar work.

By lunch, Mark had probably pulled all the sheets he had screens for, which would be 110. In the afternoon, some were already dry.

This is the size of the DHL box that he ships all of his little Critters in, and they fit snugly.

These screens are drying against circus tent poles, from his son, who manages circuses. He had abandoned one after the big earthquake as it was a terrible time for everyone's businesses and lives, so Mark got the poles: lightweight and perfect to prop screens against.

Grateful for all of the time that these artists/builders have given me throughout this long drawn out project! This is definitely the furthest I will have to travel for an interview and I'm glad for the opportunity. Now, time to go over notes and photos and the strategy for interviewing the North American and European folks.