Paper Talk

Ray Tomasso lives in Colorado where he works as a professional fine artist exhibiting and appearing in corporate, public and private collections internationally.

Michelle Wilson is a printmaker, papermaking, book, installation, and social practice artist. Her practice includes frequent collaborations with other artists, in particular her ongoing projects Book Bombs (with Mary Tasillo) and the Rhinoceros Project (with Anne Beck). Wilson currently teaches printmaking at San Jose State University and Stanford University.

Mary Heebner’s artistic practice is deeply grounded in place. Acknowledging the power of ancient presences and landscapes is integral to the creation of her paintings, collages, handmade-paper, photography, and artist’s books. Fragments, both literal and metaphoric, are also vital to her process. Through a parsing out and weaving together of fragments — of histories, stories, objects — people fashion narratives that are personal, collective, cultural, mythic. Revolving shapes within these ancient orbits define us, portend the past, and inform what may come. In Heebner’s work, the literal tearing apart and piecing together of fragments – paper and other materials – approximates this larger metonymic process that allows us to connect, to imagine, and to create anew. Pictured above: INTIMACY: Drawing with light, Drawn from stone, 2017.

Originally from the California Bay Area, Jillian Bruschera is an interdisciplinary artist and arts-activist creating works in visual art, writing, public installation, body performance, and social practice. Alternating between a studio and a social practice, handmade recycled paper is a primary material for installation, assemblage and performance. As founder and proprietor of The Mobile Mill, Jillian works as a traveling teaching artist in hand papermaking. She, along with her brother Maxum Bruschera, are co-developers of the Papermaker’s Pack.

Jill Powers creates environmental art, mixed media sculpture, and installation fiber art with unusual natural materials. Her primary art material is bark fiber, which she has developed as a contemporary art medium.  Jill is on Visual Art faculty at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Jill has shown her work internationally, and her work is in private, corporate, and museum collections. Jill currently teaches about kozo bark fiber (her primary material), and other unusual natural materials and processes in her own studio workshops, and at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Jill has taught at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon, the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii, and is a speaker at the National Handmade Paper conference.  Jill is available to teach, lecture, and offer retreats.