Paper Talk

© Eden Marek, Panorama III; Abaca, Cotton, Wood Stirrers and String; 1’x5’x5″

Eden Marek is a unicycle-riding, soccer ball-wielding artist from Ames, Iowa. She has a B.A. in Studio Art from Grinnell College, where she graduated in 2015. Eden works in sculpture, hand papermaking, and sound art, preferring to combine all three when possible. A recipient of the Faulconer Gallery Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship, she remained at Grinnell College for a year to assist with the Artists@Grinnell Residency Program, help coach the Grinnell Women’s Soccer Team, and collaborate with sound artist and composer Abby Aresty. In search of adventure, art, and social justice, Eden is joining AmeriCorps and moving to Portland, Oregon this month (August 2016). 

Andrea Peterson is an internationally exhibiting artist and educator. Her work is multifaceted exploring all types of paper fibers and processes and includes paper works, prints, artist books, and environmental installation pieces. She combines paper arts, printmaking and book arts to make works that address human relationship to the environment. She received her BFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA in printmaking from U of MN in Minneapolis. She has lectured and taught extensively including at Ox-Bow, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sciola de Graphica (Venice, Italy), Paper Museum Steyermeuhl (Austria), Syracuse University and Indiana University. You can find her work in several private and corporate collections.

Tim’s facility is rather large, so we broke the video into two sections. The first one is an overview of the facility.

The second video is about drying Japanese papers. Here’s a link to the Chancery Papermaking video that Tim refers to.

Timothy Barrett is a professor in the University of Iowa Center for the Book and the School of Library and Information Science. He was director of the Center between 1996 and 2002 and became director again in the fall of 2012. His recent research can be found here and by searching “Chancery Papermaking” on YouTube. Barrett’s studies have been funded by the NEA, the Kress Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Services and a MacArthur Fellowship. Conservators, fine press printers and book artists use papers produced by Barrett and his student co-workers.

Tatiana Ginsberg makes drawings, prints, installations, and books, most of which use her own handmade paper. She studied at the University of Iowa Center for the Book before spending two years in Japan researching naturally dyed papers under a Fulbright grant. She completed her MFA at UC Santa Barbara. After teaching papermaking and printmaking for the past decade she is joining the staff of Dieu Donné as Studio Collaborator / Production Manager. Her own work integrates traditional skills with contemporary techniques, and is exhibited nationally and internationally.

A long time resident of Tucson, Arizona, Catherine Nash is an artist who freely mixes media in her work to express her ideas. Specializing in Japanese and Western hand papermaking, encaustic painting and mixed media drawing, Nash is a teaching artist who balances her studio work with artist-in-resident teaching, lectures and workshops internationally. She shares her studio with her photographer husband Robert Renfrow.

Nash has published 4 educational DVDs on the art of papermaking, as well as a book that surveys international artists entitled “Authentic Visual Voices” that includes her interviews with 28 international artists about their creative ideas.

After receiving a B.F.A. in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of New Hampshire in 1980, Nash spent a year and a half creating prints and drawings in Paris. In 1987, she graduated from the University of Arizona with a Masters of Fine Arts in Mixed Media. Two independently designed research trips to Japan enabled Nash to study the techniques of Japanese woodblock printing and papermaking in depth. From 1996-2002, her extensive research in Italy and Scandinavia increased her knowledge of historical and contemporary Western papermaking and paper arts. Nash has combined encaustic waxes and filtered earth pigments with her handmade paper works since 1994. The landscape, aesthetics and cultures of Japan, the rich gradations and spaciousness of Scandinavian summer night skies, experiences with Native American friends and her explorations into the wilderness of the southwestern deserts have deeply influenced and informed her work.