Paper Talk

Susan Mackin Dolan was born in a small town in Maine near the northern end of the Appalachian Trail. She received her MFA at the University of Colorado Boulder, in printmaking and papermaking. In 1984 she helped establish the first papermaking studio in south Texas, Picante Papers, at the Southwest School of Art and was the original Chairperson. She has been an artist and educator for over 30 years and has taught and had artist residencies at many colleges, universities, and art centers including: University of Colorado, University of Oregon, Colorado Mountain College, West Texas State, Haystack Mountain School and Oxbow School of Art.

Simon Barcham Green is the sixth generation of the family that ran Hayle Mill, Maidstone from 1812 to 1987. He has a BSc in Paper Science from the University of Manchester and worked in half a dozen machine mills before joining the family business where he introduced the first alkaline sized mould-made water color and hand-made papers in the world. He developed many new papers for conservation purposes and worked closely with some of the leading private presses to produce bespoke papers including special watermarks. He has visited hundreds of paper mills in recent years and provided consultancy services to many in India, Bhutan and the Philippines. He is now Business Manager of the Institute of Conservation, a member of the British Association of Paper Historians and is in continuous correspondence with people around the world on papermaking matters.

Mary Hark, Associate Professor in Design Studies, affiliated with African Studies & Art, teaches papermaking and textile design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is invited to conduct workshops and lecture at Art Centers and Universities internationally. She is the proprietor of HARK! Handmade Paper where she produces limited editions of high quality handmade papers in collaboration with book designers and artists, as well as paper artworks that have been exhibited internationally. Her work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, the Ginsberg Book Arts Collection in Johannesburg, South Africa, and in university special collections in the United States and Canada. 

Amanda Degener graduated from Bennington College and then received an MFA from Yale School of Art. Her work is in countless private collections including Library of Congress, Walker Art Center, and Cowles Media Company and she has collaborated with many talented artists from coast to coast. In 1984 she moved her paper studio to the not-yet-opened Minnesota Center for Book Arts where she was a Founder, their first Artist in Residence and later, their first Artistic Director. Cave Paper was the recipient of the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library 2012 Minnesota Book Artist Award sponsored by Lerner Publishing Group based on her work as a production hand papermaker. Degener founded and for eight years co-published Hand Papermaking Magazine, they just had their 30th anniversary. Her community service work includes volunteering for non-for-profits, co-organizing national paper conferences (four of them) and teaching Tai Chi. Degener educates through writing, publishing and traveling to teach and exhibit her work in the United States and in places such as Japan, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Korea, and Taiwan/China. 

Bridget O’Malley is a master papermaker and co-­owner of Cave Paper Inc., a handmade paper mill specializing in natural­ dyed flax papers. She is an adjunct professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She offers book, paper, and print workshops around the country. She studied papermaking with Timothy Barrett at the University of Iowa Center for the Book Research and Production Paper Facilities. While there she completed a five­ year papermaking apprenticeship. She also received her MA and MFA in printmaking from the University of Iowa. Her artwork focuses on forms found in nature, and bringing those to life through the interplay of print, paper, and sculpture. She received a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist grant in 1998, and more recently she was awarded the 2012 Minnesota Book Artist Award.