Paper Talk

By Helen Hiebert StudioArts Visual Arts

Paper Talk episodes

February 15, 2019 Craig Anczelowitz
Craig Ancelowitz is an artist and designer affiliated with Awagami Papermill in Japan. I first met Craig over 25 years ago in New York City, when he was a paper buyer for Kate’s Paperie. We talk about Craig’s work in product development, which took him from Kate’s to ABC Carpet and then to Thailand and Japan. Continue reading Craig Anczelowitz
56 min
February 15, 2019 Craig Anczelowitz
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.
Craig Anczelowitz is an artist working with paper and mixed media, and he currently works as the director of Awagami International, where he handles international sales, new product development, overseas marketing and branding for this 8th generation Japanese papermill. Watch the video to see the way that traditional sheets are still being formed today.
Find out more about workshops & residencies at Awagami.
Here’s a great description of Japanese papermaking.
56 min
January 26, 2019 Aimee Lee
Aimee got interested in paper when she took a class about artist’s books at Oberlin College. She went on to focus on papermaking at Columbia College Chicago where she got her masters degree. It was there that she got interested in the history of papermaking, and when she learned how hand papermaking travelled from China to Korea to Japan – she got curious about hanji, Korean paper – Aimee grew up in New York City as the child of Korean immigrants – but she discovered that there wasn’t much information out there about papermaking in Korea. Continue reading Aimee Lee
1 hr 3 min
January 26, 2019 Aimee Lee
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.
Aimee Lee is an artist, papermaker, writer, and the leading hanji researcher and practitioner in North America. Her Fulbright research on Korean paper led to her award-winning book, Hanji Unfurled, and the first US hanji studio in Cleveland. She continues to consult on and build studios to accommodate Korean and East Asian papermaking. Her artwork resides in collections around the US, she has exhibited, taught and lectured at numerous venues, and her work has appeared in The Korea Times, The New York Times, The Plain Dealer, KBS World Radio, PBS, VOA, and CNN’s Great Big Story.
Hanji Unfurled is available from The Legacy Press.
Subscribe to Aimee’s newsletter in the footer at this link.
Making Milkweed Paper is the zine we talked about.
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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 paper and book arts folk songs.
Gary A. Hanson did the sound editing for this episode. He practices and refines his skills in audio production while making his own podcast I’ll Have a Beer and Talk, a show about tech news, culture, weird anima
1 hr 3 min
January 05, 2019 Arnold & Mabel Grummer
In this episode, I'm talking with Mabel Grummer, the wife of Arnold Grummer. Their daughter Kim Schiedermayer is with us too. We talked about Grummer’s career, which eventually led to the family business that Kim still runs today and provides papermaking kits and supplies for educators and artists. Continue reading Arnold & Mabel Grummer
46 min
January 05, 2019 Arnold & Mabel Grummer
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.
Mabel Grummer & Kim Schiedermayer
Mabel Grummer was married to Arnold Grummer, and together they founded Arnold Grummer’s LLC in 1976. Arnold Grummer gained understanding of paper’s structure and technology working with PhD scientists while on faculty at the Institute of Paper Chemistry. He later added the duties of Curator of the Dard Hunter Paper Museum where he assisted visitors and correspondents from all over the world with scholarly research. Blending knowledge of the historic snd scientific worlds of paper, Arnold Grummer’s respect and passion for paper along with a keenly developed ability to communicate led to five books and diverse presentations with his Great American Paper Machine’.
Here are two photos of the Great American Paper Machine:

In 1999 the Friends of Dard Hunter captured the essence of Arnold’s distinctive contribution with it’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award: “For advancing the art of paper making…and sharing your infectious joy of the craft with us all.” In 2012 Arnold Grummer gained honor for his unique contribution to the Paper Industry by being inducted into the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in the category of Service, Educator, Entrepreneur.
46 min
December 14, 2018 Rachel Hazell
Rachel Hazell divides her time between Edinborough and the isle of Iona in Scotland. We discuss how she teaches five or so workshops in cities around the world (Venice, Iona, Paris anyone)? These sound absolutely delightful – I’ve seen photos of some of the book and paper shops she frequents. Rachel is perhaps the first book artist to offer an online class – you’ll hear about her two popular courses: Paper Love and Book Love as we chat about some of the advantages of taking an online class. And we talk about Rachel’s brand new book: Bound: 15 beautiful bookbinding projects. You’ll hear about some of her favorite tools and papers, how she helps break down the barrier of facing a blank page and her belief that everyone has a book inside of them. Enjoy our conversation! Continue reading Rachel Hazell
42 min
December 14, 2018 Rachel Hazell
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.
Portrait & photo below by Susan Bell
Drawing her inspiration from remote landscapes, typography, shorelines, flea-markets and remarkable literary cities, book artist Rachel Hazell takes people on creative journeys, making books and unfolding stories. Home is the city of Edinburgh and the small Hebridean island of Iona. With The Travelling Bookbinder, she holds bookart workshops across the world, from a palazzo in Venice to a library on Nantucket. Her online courses, PaperLove and BookLove enable people, regardless of location, to develop ideas, imagination and technical skill.
Rachel’s new book, Bound: 15 Beautiful Bookbinding Projects, is available wherever fine books are sold.
Learn more Rachel’s online courses, Book Love & Paper Love
We talked about where Rachel gets her favorite bookbinding supplies: Hewitt & Sons in the UK.
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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 paper and book arts folk songs.
Gary A. Hanson did the sound editing for this episode. He practices and refines his skills in audio production while making his own podcast
42 min
November 21, 2018 Laurence Barker
Laurence Barker is an influencer in the field of Hand Papermaking. Born in 1930, Barker went to Principia College and got his MFA from Cranbrook, where he also ended up teaching from 1960 – 1970 and ran the first classes in hand papermaking at the college level in the US. Several students (and others who visited that studio) went on to become luminaries in the field of hand papermaking. A theme that came up time and again during our conversation was the way Barker followed his intuition. After college, he wrote to Stanley Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris about the potential of studying with him. He never heard back, but he went to Paris, looked up Hayter, and he was able to study with him! Later, he wrote a letter to Dard Hunter asking whether he knew of a beater he might use to set up a papermaking studio at Cranbrook, and Dard Hunter found one for him! And after reading James Michener’s book Iberia, which describes Spain as a place centered around the book, Barker surmised that printing would follow the book, so he moved overseas and started a papermaking studio in Spain. And he was right! Enjoy our conversation. Continue reading Laurence Barker
1 hr 2 min
November 21, 2018 Laurence Barker
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.
Laurence Barker, an eloquent apologist for the history and artistic potential of the handmade paper medium, wrote that it is “precisely in the hyphen between support and medium, where ground becomes figure, that much untapped poetry resides, acting paper that is in turn acted upon….Like a rheostat, paper can be easily dialed down, as it were, to the near-zero assertiveness of pure support –i.e., sheets that are white, smooth, and square – as it can be cranked up through stages to an intensity of activity that is pure medium.”
Barker was head of the printmaking department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan from 1960 to 1970. He cites as a “key moment” in his life, when in 1962, a student gave him a piece of Douglass Howell’s handmade paper. Barker recalled, “This wrinkled, semi-translucent paper discreetly proclaimed a life of its own.” Barker attended a two-week seminar at Howell’s Long Island home and mill that summer. Upon returning to Cranbrook, Barker assembled the necessary equipment to establish a fine arts papermill, which opened in January 1963 as the first university-based papermaking program in America. Barker’s program at Cranbrook ultimately served as the breeding ground for some of America’s leading papermakers, including Walter Hamady of Perishable Press, John Koller of HMP Papers in Connecticut, Aris Koutroulis (who, in turn, taught Kathryn Clark of Twinrocker Papers), Winifred Lutz, and Roland Poska of Fishy Whale Press.
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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 paper and book arts folk songs.
Gary A. Hanson did the sound editing for this episode. He practices and refines his skills in audio production while making his own podcast I’ll Have a Beer and Talk, a show about tech news, culture, weird animal stories and of course, beer. Gar
1 hr 2 min