Paper Talk

By Helen Hiebert StudioArts Visual Arts

Paper Talk episodes

May 31, 2019 Sarah Horowitz
Sarah Horowitz is a printmaker based in Leavenworth, Washington, who also makes drawings and artist’s books. We talk about how her parents fostered her artistic interests by always providing her with access to materials and art classes as she was growing up. She attended Hampshire College in Massachussetts, where she ended up focusing on printmaking. After college, she honed her printmaking skills at studios in Switzerland and Scotland before returning to the Northeast, where she got involved with the book arts community. Eventually, she ended up on the West Coast when she was looking for a community print shop to work in. She tells me how she discovered there were more papers to print on than Rives BFK, and we discuss one of her artist’s book projects in detail, which involved custom handmade paper. Sarah talks about the reciprocal process of printing on paper, as she explores how the paper responds to her imagery and the ink, and how her plates print on the surface of the sheet. We also have a long discussion about how she pigments and sizes Japanese papers to obtain the exact colors she wants and the tooth that allows her pen to glide smoothly across the surface for her drawings. Continue reading Sarah Horowitz
1 hr 1 min
May 31, 2019 Sarah Horowitz
You can listen to this episode by clicking on the white arrow above, or subscribe to the Paper Talk podcast in iTunes so you never miss an episode. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about it! Thank you so much.
Sarah Horowitz’ work is based primarily in drawing, printmaking, and book arts with a focus on formal aesthetics and the natural world. Her limited edition books are published under her imprint Wiesedruck (after the river ‘Wiese’ along the northwest border of Switzerland) and can be found in collections across the country including at the Yale University Beinecke Library, Harvard Houghton Library, the Library of Congress, Boston Athenaeum, Boston Public Library, The New York Public Library, Wesleyan University, and the Portland Art Museum. She has received grants from Portland State University and the Regional Arts and Culture Council as well as residencies at BellwaldArt in Switzerland, Caldera, and the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium. Her work is represented by Froelick Gallery in Portland, Oregon and Ken Shure of Two Ponds Press.
We chatted about her book Lepidoptera, which features Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘The Death of the Moth’ and Sarah’s moth etchings.
Here is one of her pine drawings, on okawara paper from Hiromi Paper, which was sized with gelatin colored with blue and black dry pigments.
We also talked about a mitsumata paper, which you can find here.
You can read more about Sarah on her website, and follow her on
1 hr 1 min
May 09, 2019 Nancy Cohen
Nancy Cohen is a New Jersey artist who was introduced to handmade paper during a residency program at Dieu Donne Papermill in New York City in the early 1990’s. She became entranced with paper as a material, and she talks about the similarities and differences she finds between paper and glass, a material she also works with. Nancy creates all of her work without a papermaking studio – she brings wet sheets that she makes at Dieu Donne back to her own studio – and she is pushing the medium in really interesting ways. We discuss the life cycles of her installations, which she often exhibits multiple times, her pulp drawings that were recently on view in NYC, and how she helped her son and daughter-in-law create their handmade paper wedding invitations gorilla style. Continue reading Nancy Cohen
41 min
May 09, 2019 Nancy Cohen
You can listen to this episode by clicking on the white arrow above, or subscribe to the Paper Talk podcast in iTunes so you never miss an episode. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about it! Thank you so much.
Nancy Cohen’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and is represented in important collections, such as The Montclair Museum, The Newark Public Library, The Weatherspoon Art Gallery, and The Zimmerli Museum. She has completed numerous large-scale, site-specific projects including for Thomas Paine Park in lower Manhattan, The Staten Island Botanical Garden, The Noyes Museum of Art, The Katonah Museum of Art, and Howard University.
Hackensack Dreaming, 2014-2015, Glass, handmade paper, rubber, monofilament
Her traveling installation Hackensack Dreaming was exhibited at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, New Jersey City University, The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Philadelphia, PA and at Duke University, Raleigh, NC.
41 min
April 19, 2019 Lynn Sures
Lynn Sures is a Maryland-based artist who works with handmade paper in a variety of ways. Lynn tells me how she first discovered that paper was made by hand while reading the book Papermaking by Dard hunter, and that she assumed that nobody on earth made paper by hand anymore (she was wrong!). We talk about her teaching philosophy and her work with pulp painting. And we discuss the paper she makes to draw on (she says if you make your own paper, it isn’t scary to draw on a blank sheet). She describes one paper she took to Africa with her on a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Lynn has spearheaded several unique papermaking efforts, including the Pulparazzi and the National Collegiate Handmade Paper Art Triennial. And she was recently elected president of Friends of Dard Hunter, the national papermaking organization that was founded to preserve Dard Hunter’s collection and currently meets annually in a different part of the country. Continue reading Lynn Sures
51 min
April 19, 2019 Lynn Sures
You can listen to this episode by clicking on the white arrow above, or subscribe to the Paper Talk podcast in iTunes so you never miss an episode. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about it! Thank you so much.
2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and current National Museum of Natural History Research Associate; Lynn Sures is a Washington, DC based artist working in handmade paper, pulp painting, drawing, artist books, printmaking, and ceramic sculpture. Her focus is the nexus between art and science, in which she considers the physical world and its juncture with the origins of humans—noting that early humans’ interdependence with ecology has currency with our contemporary discourse. Her work is held in collections including the United States Department of State, the US Library of Congress, Yale University, New York Public Library’s Schomburg Collection, the Fabriano Museo della Carta e della Filigrana, and the American Museum of Papermaking. Lynn has exhibited in solo shows in New York, Istanbul, and Mexico City, and created art works for events in Australia, Japan, Italy. In Sri Lanka, she was a U.S. State Department American Artist Abroad. Her artist books have appeared in several published collections, including the Penland Book of Handmade Books. She has had artist residencies at the Museu Molì Paperer de Capellades, Spain; The Pittman/Corcoran Residency at San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and the Accademia delle Arti Cartarie, Fabriano, Italy. She was guest editor of the 2016 Winter issue of Hand Papermaking magazine, on the papermaking of Italy.
You might be interested in reading more about these topics that we discussed:
The National Collegiate Handmade Paper Art Trienniale, which offers college students a way to show the country what they add to the field of handmade paper art.
The Friends of Dard Hunter an organization in the United States that connects, encourages, and educates anyone interested in hand papermaking.
The Paper/Print/Book 2019 tour of Northern Italy, which Lynn has led for numerous years.
You can read more about Lynn on her website, and follow her on facebook and instagram.
51 min
March 29, 2019 Peter Dahmen
Peter Dahmen is an artist and designer based in Dortmund, Germany. I discovered Peter’s work on the internet, which is how he has become well known in the field of pop-ups, and has connected with clients around the world. We talk about the first pop-up book he saw in a bookstore as a child, how that interest was rekindled about 10 years later when he was studying communication design at the university, and how he became a youtube sensation 20 years later! Peter describes some really interesting projects he’s been involved in – from designing a pop-up wall for a car manufacturer to creating a pop-up book for a magician – along with the challenges and breakthroughs that he’s made with new paper and new technologies. Continue reading Peter Dahmen
1 hr 8 min
March 29, 2019 Peter Dahmen
You can listen to this episode by clicking on the white arrow above, or subscribe to the Paper Talk podcast in iTunes so you never miss an episode. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about it! Thank you so much.
Peter Dahmen, born in 1967, studied Communication Design at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund, Germany. Since his studies, he passionately creates three-dimensional folding objects out of paper and cardboard. For a long time, only a few people had seen his work, but that changed dramatically when he published a short film of his paper sculptures in January 2010. Peter’s paper artworks became very popular on the internet – with millions of views on his YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest pages (see links below). Since then, he has received commissions from companies worldwide.
© Peter Dahmen 2010, paper and card stock, approx. 25-1/2″ x 19-3/4″ x 11-1/2″ open
Peters pop-up designs range from small-format packaging concepts to large-format stage sets, but he has not yet published a book. Working as a freelancer, he has produced amazing designs for major brand owners, such as Iggesund paperboard, for whom he created a spectacular „Snowflake Card“, which can be folded in thousands of d
1 hr 8 min
March 09, 2019 Leigh Suggs
I met Leigh Suggs 10 years ago when she took a sculptural papermaking class with me at The Penland School in North Carolina. We talk about her upbringing with a mom who was an art professor, how she didn’t think she’d ever be an artist, but how her life just kept going in that direction and today she makes a living making paper art. She tells me about the process of applying to grad school and finding the right fit, both in terms of funding and discipline. And of course we chat about her work, which involves optical trickery. She’s interested in getting us to think about how we see and how we use language to describe what we see in her pieces that employ optical trickery. And we discuss a unique ongoing collaboration Leigh has with two women she met during that session 10 years ago at Penland. Continue reading Leigh Suggs
1 hr 2 min
March 09, 2019 Leigh Suggs
You can listen to this episode by clicking on the white arrow above, or subscribe to the Paper Talk podcast in iTunes so you never miss an episode. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about it! Thank you so much.
Leigh Suggs was born in Boone, North Carolina and currently resides in Richmond, VA. She received her BFA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2003 and her MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University in Craft and Material Studies in 2015. Her recent shows include a three person show at The Visual Arts Center in Richmond I >< YOU >< WE (2018-2019), a two person show at Penland Gallery Conversation | Unspoken Language (2016), and several solo shows. Her notable group shows include Go for Baroque at the Racine Art Museum in Racine, WI (2016), NCAC Fellowship Exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC (2014), and Art on Paper (2012) at the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, NC. Suggs has been awarded several grants and honors, including the North Carolina Fellowship Award, a city of Richmond CultureWorks Grant, and a residency at the Quirk Hotel & Gallery in Richmond, VA. Her work is a part of corporate collections, including the Federal Reserve Bank, Capital One, Markel Corporation, Suntrust Bank and Fidelity Investments.

Own Place, handcut, acrylic on Yupo, 72” x 72”
Find out more about Leigh on her website
Follow her on Instagram
Here’s an article about Leigh’s show with Tara Donovan & Richard Roth
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Music featuring excerpts of Makin’ Paper folk song by Peter Thomas. Listen to the full song and find out about other
1 hr 2 min