It's that time of year again: time for Hanji Retreat! This was the first year we piloted at the papermaking studio I built for Oberlin College Libraries, and it was an incredible group. We shifted completely to papermaking this year, and they began by scraping bark sourced from Florida, then bark sourced from Thailand. The first afternoon, we cooked the fiber that they scraped in the morning, which sat to cool for rinsing and cleaning the next morning. This was the cleanest batch I've seen in years (granted, we had a conservator and printmaking artist on board, but still...so clean. It may also be that half the batch was from Amy's new style of stripping that removes a LOT of black bark)!
Once we had a good amount of separated and cleaned fiber, we beat over two different days.
After practicing with only water in the vat, we charged it on Day 3. It was great that people were always willing to agitate, though I still have not sorted out the best way to teach this besides telling people to listen for the right sound in the vat.
I had a hard time figuring out the best way to help our lefty, Rebecca, but she was a very good sport. Also by this time, we had taken two field trips during lunch on Day 2 & 3, to see
the show I am in at the museum, and to visit
Special Collections and the
letterpress studio at the main library.
Webal tteugi, or heullim tteugi: the 'flowing' 'scooping' method. Leigh went full-on pro from the start and never held the bal (bamboo screen) with her thumbs. The only person I've seen do that is my national treasure hanji teacher, Shin Hyun-se. There's a lot to be said for training in art from a young age, she has an innate and well-trained sense of material, process, and observation (which makes her a great professor, I'm sure!).
Also a lot to be said for good form! This is the part that most students skip: left hand on the vat to support your body. I've watched at least one person fall onto the post (wet stack of paper), and it's something you want to avoid at all costs.
Jesse is modeling the same technique, even though he is tall enough to reach the back end of the post without straining. Always develop good habits early; bad ones are very hard to break (I say this because I've done things with the wrong hands, etc., and it truly is so difficult to train yourself out of muscle memory).
Andy is modeling another key good habit (I did this wrong for years until Mr. Shin explained): always stop short of the edge of the bal when rolling, otherwise you risk damaging the edge. It's such a pain to sew on that fabric border, no need to yank on it every time you roll.
After pressing the post, we started to part. Thankfully, I only over-pressed on the last day, so the first two days they had success parting without too much tearing. This year, when I saw parting errors in seconds from my teacher's mill, I felt so much better knowing it's not just me.
See? Nice clean parting.
Leigh was also unafraid of the center shower stalls for boarding sheets. This gym's locker room and showers have not been used in a very long time for much more than storage. Even as a student in 1999, I only ever saw these stalls used by art students to create performances.
The big long marble wall is the best one for big sheets as long as you work around the hardware.
Small sheets on short walls, and everything else where you can fit it! Miraculously, even without a dehumidifier in here, the sheets dried overnight.
The mornings after sheet formation are always joyful because you can finally see the fruits of days of labor.
This was our fridge test. I've used mine at home with no problems, but its sides are blocked by my cabinets. We learned that for this particular fridge, the side does not release the sheets as well as the front. I'm pretty sure Jesse is my tallest student ever, as you can see from the non-custom fit of the apron I sewed.
Sorting, curating, and distributing sheets is the final step—socialist paper all the way. While this retreat iteration was a ton of prep for me, I was so grateful to have Michelle to assist; she's been assisting since 2022 and I'm spoiled to have such a great student/assistant/person to help and advise me. She knows the space very well and learned to make paper here for the first time in 2020. It was a perfect combination of people, and I felt so good about the group from the first morning. Papermaking is by nature and custom a communal process, and I was overjoyed to share it with this group last week.
Excited to see Michelle and Leigh next month in Minneapolis, and happy that Leigh is meeting three Hanji Retreat alumni this very week at Penland when she teaches screenprinting. I love that our madang is growing.
More pictures of the week
here.
