Michigan residencies two-thirds through

It's been a while since I've updated so this will be long! I've been in Michigan for almost two weeks and working every day, joyfully (though with a lot of negotiation with my body). My first stop, after seeing my publisher in Ann Arbor, was to do a mini milkweed residency with Tim and Pati. Their home is a refuge, a place where time stands still, and a location where I have always felt so safe.

I spent my time writing about Serge, and in between Pati and I harvested a bit of milkweed and processed it.

She also managed to orchestrate the most amazing birthday for me: friends, beautiful weather, glorious home-cooked meals, milkweed, writing, chocolate cake, and singing. I was so happy for one day to let go of whatever I thought my job was and simply be me while receiving love. On top of gifts, that was the ultimate gift.

Then I drove over to Kalamazoo to unload my car, which was completely stuffed with art, supplies, materials, and living needs for the next two weeks. I met Jeff at the book arts center, got groceries, and unloaded at the Airbnb (which is up a giant set of steps, and I decided immediately that I needed to only ever make one round trip a day because of how bad stairs are for my condition). Here is the gorgeous tree that I have been watching lose leaves in the backyard.

This is the giant paper studio full of all kinds of goodies, built by the late Paul Robbert (some of his equipment has been in Cleveland for years so I'm familiar with the kind of mind that would have come up with a lot of this rigging).

I steamed milkweed stalks right away,

to cook

 and beat

and pull.

Instead of the cleaned coma, I used my batch of seedy coma to try out in bulk (this is years of collecting).

Spray with water to try and get the buoyant silks to calm down and not fly away.

Add some soda ash before cooking to further calm and then torture an intern by asking him to pull out extra seeds. I hadn't cooked these in YEARS and didn't remember the horrid scary ammonia smell. The staff got a big whiff and I did my best to rinse IMMEDIATELY so that I could tamp down the odor instead of letting it sit. Then I tortured another intern some more with loading the beater; I had forgotten how hellish it is to get it going since the structure of the cellulose in the coma makes it so hard. Tons of clogs but once it went, done so fast!

I also asked one intern to trim old, tough, defrosted, bleached (b/c of the stink) Thai kozo so that we could run it in the beater since I did not have energy to hand beat such tough stuff. Then I found a big deckle box and cleaned it as best as I could, and set it up in the sink. I LOVE BIG SINKS in a paper studio. I had access to one in grad school and did the same thing whenever I could: set up in the sink itself to drain more easily.

I had brought a lot of old fiber so that I could make paper to get a sense of how to best set up work flow in a space that I had only once taught in, but not done any production in. This was old mitsumata that was extremely stinky (I did a few rounds of bleach and vinegar) and then frozen, courtesy of an Oberlin student.

This was a good way also to test the small press, since I didn't trust the mechanized hydraulic at first for this kind of pressing. I'm used to feeling it by hand but of course overpressed anyhow (that's why the sheet is pulling off in the corner).

But at some point you have to make friends with the big press and I was happy to see another Howie Clark/Sue Totten one in the shop. I thought, so big, too big for me! But then I saw that the couching cart was built at the right height to just slide the post right into the press, plus it's set up to drain right into a bucket, so no wheeling of the other press and putting vats on the floor around it to try and catch some of the water and then squeegeeing and bending down awkwardly to reach a low platen...now I enjoy this press but am barely tall enough on a stool to turn it on.

I also set up a prereduced indigo vat and have been doing lots of that every day in the hopes I will exhaust it by the end of this week, when I have to leave!

In between studio time and obsessing over places to eat/buy food, I've also had engagements at Western Michigan University. Jeff and I first went to hang the book portion of my show in their fancy archives/special collections building that is surrounded by rain gardens to hide the geothermal pumps that heat and cool this place.

Then I got a tour of the building, whereupon I saw the tallest archives and compact shelving I've ever seen. It's insane. Every employee here is trained on a big cherrypicker thing that looks like a tall forklift and has to wear a harness when they go up. Later last week I talked to a print class and did some teaching.

Back in the studio I had cooked some fresh Thai kozo and was very unhappy about the quality (terrible for lace), using it mostly to make new bark grids.

Just when it started to get disgusting (starting to smell like gross feet, which is NOT the smell I am used to for turning bark...the water here is very different!), I finally realized what I actually wanted to make.

For probably at least six years, I've been trying to make work about Korean door lattice patterns. I thought they were going to be small books but apparently I was supposed to make them out of bark! It's always wild when these old seeds finally sprout.

But that's the beauty of a residency, when your whole job is to be in the studio and stay present in your process so that you are prepared for these moments. I was so excited and took over the tables usually used for staff to work.

I did as many as I had bark for and yesterday cooked some old Thai kozo, batches from the same supplier, from over 20 years ago. It was wonderful to time travel, since this is the fiber I trained on in 2003, when we could soak overnight and then cook for 1.5 hours, 2 hours tops. Now we have extremely old, tough, thick fiber that we have to soak for days and then can cook ALL DAY (I've done 8 hours before) and it will never break down. Today I'll rinse the old/new batch and see how it laces/grids/beats.

After cooking, I drove to East Lansing for the first time ever to meet Katherine at the Broad Museum to see Samia Halaby's retrospective. That was her idea, and I was glad to go but very sad about the drama around that show.

There was a show about the Puerto Rican diaspora through collage and to get to it, you walk through a piece by Edra Soto.

What isn't obvious at first is that some of the circles are filled with mirrors that have holes, and you can look through each hole to view images from PR.

There were also two beautiful installations by Esmaa Mohamoud. I was glad to make this trip and have a bit of a weekend. The driving nearly did me in but I managed to start some embedding experiments with my leftover abaca before I turned in for the night. Now it feels like crunch time! Katie is sanding the gallery walls now that the last show is coming down and tomorrow we start to hang mine. I also give an artist talk tomorrow at WMU and then the show opens Friday. I leave after that to return for a full milkweed residency with Pati and Tim and two of my past hanji stduents. Wet work has to stop Thurs but it feels like I'm just getting started.

Drew brings Peace Paper to Oberlin

So as not to be a total downer lately with posts, here is a bit from early October, when I visited Oberlin to see Drew Matott. We overlapped one year in grad school (2005–2006) and then I didn't see him again until 2012 when he zipped into the tail end of a papermaking conference in Cleveland. 12 years later, we are middle aged and embedded into our own papermaking trajectories that look so obvious now in hindsight but required years of ups, downs, running around, very hard work, and finding the right partners in crime. I was so glad to witness how he frames his story, as it is so necessarily incomplete when I explain his work to my students. Now I can fill in more, and Oberlin owns more of his archive so the story goes hand in hand with the artifacts.

I loved seeing my old and soon to be new students together with him, and always enjoy seeing fellow papermakers teach what I do, because you always learn something new in a turn of phrase or approach to technique transmission. Plus, I wanted more pictures of a Lee McDonald Oracle in action. And, of course, it was so helpful to have him visit the paper studio on campus to help advise on a few things. I have been on the road for days and too worn out from that to do a full recap but you can see pictures here. It was a great way to spend the weekend at my dearest alma mater.

More losses: RIP Michael Bixler and Helmut Becker

Not long after I heard about losing Serge, I was stunned to hear about the passing of Michael Bixler. We only met once in2010, and while his work was centered in printing and type casting and design, my interaction with him was through his building of one of the first American hanji vats (made for Lynn Amlie when she taught at Wells—another RIP!!). I wish I knew where that vat was now. Here are very cursory bits of my passing interactions with him and Winnie, and his obituary.

I feel like I was still such a baby then, all of these images are from almost exactly 14 years ago.

Soon after that news, we lost an unparalleled papermaking giant, Helmut Becker. I failed to meet him in Canada over the last years of my research but always knew of him as a generous, community-minded paper person with a giant wealth of experience and information, especially around his deep research and practice with flax. I am in touch with his family to try and glean enough info to do him justice in my book, since he also made beaters in his wide-ranging career, but if you have any images or stories that you are willing to share, please let me know.

RIP Serge Pirard, mould maker (1974–2024)

Last week I was in NYC for a whirlwind trip to see friends, family, and table at an art fair that went really well. Except when I got horrible news right before my last two days of tabling work.

I learned from Claudine Latron that on July 16, we lost the inimitable Serge Pirard, a Belgian mould maker who worked directly in the English mould making tradition, trained by the late Ron Macdonald. Serge would have been 50 yesterday (Sept 10) and left us far too soon.

I am far too bereft and heartbroken to adequately pay homage to Serge's memory, but all of us who had the joy of knowing him, working with his tools, and meeting him at various gatherings of papermakers, have lost a giant. Not only was he very tall, he was the last thoroughly trained mould maker in this tradition, making every bit of the tool by his own hand, and received Ron's blessing to continue his legacy.

Serge and his friend Bernard transported Ron's enormous loom to weave mould facings from England to Belgium, which had been built in 1889 for Amies and was in continuous use until now. All of Ron's old tools, supplies, notes, and anything related to mould making were carefully cared for by Serge in his Brussels home and mountain studio. This latter studio was housed at his best friend Jean-François' family home, in the detached workshop of his friend's late grandfather, who was a woodworker. In the midst of old woodworking equipment, work benches, and a climbing wall (Serge had been an avid rock climber earlier in his life) was the loom, giant spools of wire, bags of tacks, wood pieces, and god knows what else.

Once Serge realized that mould making would become his passion, or, as Tim Moore said, his "second act," he went full force into learning everything he could from Ron, and then reaching out to the papermaking world. He donated his moulds to a Hand Papermaking auction, devotedly attended Dard (NAHP) meetings before and after pandemic, and connected with all of the people and places that would need or want top-notch tools across the European-style papermaking world. In my visits with him, it seemed like after his adventures climbing, learning didgeridoo in Australia, and sailing around the world (where he eventually in South America fell alarmingly ill and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes)—after all that, he had finally found a community that loved and embraced him and his impeccable skills.

After working at Coke since the age of 19, he left his job on April 30, 2021 to make moulds full time and never looked back. He had previously made moulds on the weekends, and after negotiating a 4-day week with Coke, on the long weekends. But there was never enough time, always too many orders, and too many places and people to visit. He burned himself at all ends but somehow was full of energy all the time whenever it came to his work.

We talked a lot about how he wanted to start making su and bal, Japanese and Korean bamboo tools for papermaking, because he couldn't imagine it being that much harder than the moulds he made. He searched for European sources for adequate bamboo and traveled to London in the spring of 2023 to meet my Korean bamboo screen weaving teacher, the national treasure of that craft. He had planned for years to visit Japan to meet screen makers there but was stymied by pandemic until June 2024, when he was finally able to meet bamboo specialists despite health challenges.

I wrote to him in Sept 2022 to confess I had made very little headway on my book about toolmakers for hand papermaking, and noted I had to hurry before more people died (this was after Ron passed away). I had no idea that Serge would be next, and have been blindsided by grief. As I dig further into our correspondence, I see how we shared our own worries about not getting enough done, yet being too worn out to do everything we wanted: he had to recover from a shoulder injury and reminded me last year, "take your time and put priorities on things that matter most. I learned it the hard way."

I have not been able to upload all of my photos from my European research trip of 2019, for which he was my wonderful host. For now, you can learn a bit about him in old blog posts:

My first visit with Serge in NYC in 2017

The second part of this post is about Serge's work for Pascal Jeanjean (2019)

The first part of this post is about Serge (2019)

Scroll past my Netherlands visit to see Serge with his loom in 2019

He is survived by his parents, sister and brother-in-law and their children, brother and his children, his best friends and their children, and his aunt, uncle, and cousins. His ashes were interred on July 24 in La Hulpe. The French notice is here.

I had intended to write my chapter about Serge for over a month (as you can see from this to do list that is still sitting under my computer), and am aghast that he is not around anymore to edit my mistakes. I will still write it, so if you have anecdotes, stories, or photos to share about him, please let me know soon as my manuscript is due at the end of this year. This is a devastating loss, not only personally, but to the entire papermaking world and the wider world of those who are safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.

A final summer of hanji retreats

I made this one in July with 100% bark lace, a mini version of something I had wanted to do all along.

These came out of consignment and then I covered them in ink.

 

This photo is by Gus Chan, a great photojournalist I've been fortunate to work with before.

 

He came by during my first hanji retreat of the summer. It already feels like eons ago, but it was a wonderful group as always. Above is Delaney, and below is Lisa working and Justine assisting, another great shot by Gus.

Delaney cracked me up when she complained about the blue tape on my apron. It's intentional, to cover a hole. I've had that apron for at least 10 years if not more, and it's layers are peeling away. You can make a version of it yourself!

Both sections of class loved bark manipulation. Lace, grids, thread, casting.

Here, Myong is using a tool she made in one of Jeff's workshops and it was great to help lift the dry bark that had been hammered onto the wood board with a rock.

After a week off in between classes (while my students were heavily impacted by the CrowdStrike debacle), I had another group of students (not all pictured but all present) that took to the vat like a fish to water. Victoria was more Wonju style,

and Myong more Uiryeong style. We can't get into the epigenetics of it all, but from the first hanji retreat I offered, my students said they felt more Korean after working at the vat. It's a gift to meet people who take to the techniques so smoothly.

Parting and boarding! I will miss these walls.

Because the week after the final class ended, I moved out of the second hanji studio I built in this area.

Unfortunately, unlike the first, this one will no longer continue to exist as a hanji studio. The beater was the big beast for the move. You never know until the movers come if they can handle it, but I was impressed by their technique. That entire thing weighs over 1100 pounds.

I am grateful to have been able to build a space from scratch and host six sessions over three years of students who have become very dear. There's more to leaving than, "time to go!" but not something I want to disclose publicly. The incredible support I've gotten from friends, students, and family since has been heartening. There is even more good news that I have to keep under wraps for now. Suffice it to say, everything falls into place once you act on the big hard decisions.

Things start to flow again after being stuck for a long time. Priorities become extremely clear.

More often than not, many signs light up along the way as a reminder that you're on the right track.

What's coming up? I'll be in NYC for parts of the BOOKSMART fair at Art on Paper in Sept. In Oct, I'll be in Michigan and will teach a paper rope workshop in Kalamazoo, before my show that opens there in early Nov. I'm already taken aback that fall might be even more hairy than summer.