For the first time since 2013, I took the time to figure out which windows on the outside correspond to the paper studio inside. This old gym houses a performance space/cafe, bowling lanes, art spaces, and a million organizations/groups that range from aikido to steel drum to brass musicians to fitness to theatre and who knows what else. It's slated for demolition but no one knows when. Hopefully not soon.
Here are the student tools, both sugetas and moulds and deckles. I repeated the tool cage of grad school tradition where paired tools are named after plants that are good for papermaking.
One of the final activities of each class is making thank you notes for all of the people on campus who make this course possible. I may be old fashioned, but I think that this is a very important practice so I like to assign each student one (or two) to make, and then we pass them around to sign collectively.
This was our group photo on the last day in front of the exhibit (we had to reduce number of cases and change locations this year and I got kind of lazy arranging the front but that comes from peak weariness + juggling too many things to do all on the last day).
These are some of the books that came out from under the pressboards after drying, with covers made from marbled papers and paste papers that they had made the prior week.
Instead of having two people per case as in prior years, one student suggested that we try to fit samples of each student's work into each case, so there should be work by six people in here.
We've never had this type of space and it took a while to arrange, but thank goodness for all the eager hands and for Ed's speediness in printing out and mounting all of the pictures from the month. I know this has been over for a while but guess who has not had the energy to
share it all until now?
For the first several days after the intensive ended, I could do nothing but "busy" work. I'm no good at laying around to rest, so I rested by keeping my hands busy. Made more honeycomb paper, sewed up paper envelopes, pieced more paper scraps to cover a window at home for more privacy, reorganized things, cleaned the studio table.
Once I got back to feeling somewhat normal, I got to the work work (aka paid work): duck commissions. This is for a couple that eloped unexpectedly rather than doing a wedding, so it came up faster than planned but I was glad to get back into the groove. There are about four and a half ducks more by now and I've been doing my best to pace myself so my hands continue to function. I conducted/gave four phone interviews, juried a show, dealt with "surprise!" home repairs that wiped out the latest sales, and only half-heartedly tried to get back into an exercise routine. Aside from that, days are calmer and I'm grateful for the solo time before the travel/teaching ramp back up in a couple of weeks.
A tiny book with big and sweet sentiments. This was the book I got at the end with a contribution from each student inside its pages. The month was fully invigorating while also squeezing every last drop out of me, so it all balances out in the end. I hope that my students learned as much as I did!
