Since the Milkweed Residency, I've been tending daily to prep for every step of the process to film. In my newly dry garage, I sorted black milkweed from the greener stuff that needs steaming. The pot is filled with trimmed ones ready to steam.
Inner cores to discard after stripping steamed stalks. I should have brought these to my TV shoot but the car was outrageously full. There comes a limit, even if it isn't rational, to all the little things I was willing to shove into the car of a full papermaking rig + an entire solo show.
This represents a LOT of work: harvesting, trimming, steaming, stripping, and scraping. In the end, only half a pound for 14 thin translucent sheets. But lovely.
The non-scraped batches after cooking, being rinsed.
Beating in the basement to prep. I froze one of the darker batches so it wouldn't be AS stinky a week later for the shoot.
Finally set up and used my new drybox! It only took two years...or more?
The janitor cart is my new paper studio investment: the post goes up top, where I'll eventually drill a hole to drain into a bucket below. Keeps the floor dry and is easy to move around.
What else have I been doing? Interviewing Jim Croft over a couple days when the weather was gorgeous. I wish last week's weather repeated itself this week but alas, we had a storm front move in.
Like me (and probably most papermakers), Jim keeps all of his handmade paper offcuts. He uses this to make "barf board," heavy board that he can use for sturdy book covers. I make more hanji.
Once I was finally pushed to my deadline, I cut a beating stick into mushroom stands (it was scrap wood from a couple years ago in the wrong grain for the tool's purpose, works much better this way with needles stuck into it to help these wee ones stand up).
Yesterday, I drove to Oberlin to hang my show. Robert, who is in charge of the gallery, did a wonderful job as always. I loved his idea of a black & white wall here.
These are the long walls but there's also a corner with all of my larger woven things, plus books and dusters, and then a glass case of more woven things like small ducks, mushrooms, and plants.
After hanging the show, the PBS crew and I went to lunch and then to the farm at Oberlin. With their help along with Nick, the farm director, I was able to set up and strike my entire hanji getup in four hours. Nick and I walked the property to look like we were foraging and then I pretended that I was cutting down milkweed. I skipped the actual steaming but had pre-steamed stalks that I stripped, and then we set up the hot plate to cook (well, re-cook already cooked) stripped fiber. Then, a makeshift beating station to beat the fiber. Then sheet formation, couching, pressing, parting, and brushing onto boards. All this in the garish afternoon light, but better that + 70-degree weather than attempting the same today in the cold, rainy, windy weather as originally scheduled. I managed to unload my car after the hour-long drive home and even rinse the cooked fiber, as if this weeks-long prep had never happened.
Today I got up before dawn to swim, then freaked out that the goggle imprints would still be on my face for my sit-down interview. I was long-winded and zombied out from lack of sleep, and tried to talk over my growling belly once we passed the lunch hour. It was a delicate dance given the lighting (we wanted clouds, not sun) but hopefully all my imperfections will not be too glaring in the final cut. They stayed to document my show while I picked up dried paper on boards at the farm. It's a miracle I stayed awake on the drive home, though I crawled into bed at 4:30pm and stayed there until my birthday dinner. Well fed, gifted, and loved, I'm hoping now for real sleep before the crew arrives tomorrow morning for a home studio shoot. Halfway done!
