Paper Talk

Jennie Frederick earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in fibers, followed by an MFA from Indiana State University. She apprenticed with Douglass Morse Howell, Bob Serpa, from Imago, and received her MFA for apprenticing at Twinrocker Handmade Paper. Frederick founded Kansas City Paperworks, Inc. in 1983 and has taught at the Kansas City Art Institute and MCC-Maple Woods, where she developed a Fiber & Papermaking Program. She is currently a full-time artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and her current work utilizes techniques/processes that she developed following documentation in the Mexican villages of San Pablito, in Puebla State, and Lacanha and Naha in Chiapas.

Brian Queen has been making paper by hand for 30 years and utilizing a wide range of materials and techniques. His interests span the book arts including hand papermaking, bookbinding and letterpress printing. As a craftsman and toolmaker, he explores how new technologies such as 3-D printing, laser cutters, and CNC machines impact the book arts. Along with his brother, he owns and operates Sensa-Light Ltd., a company that manufactures customs architectural lighting for offices, hotels and restaurants.

Sammy Lee is an artist based in Denver, Colorado. Lee was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to Southern California at the age of sixteen. She studied fine art and media art at UCLA and architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Among her many accomplishments is a performative collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma during the Bach project tour in 2018.

Peter Thomas is a book artist, and a hand papermaker with a special interest in production papermaking. He has been making fine press and artist books in collaboration with his wife Donna Thomas since 1977. All of the books they make us their own handmade paper, and some of their books relating to papermaking include Beater Time Tests (1987), A Collection of Paper Samples from Hand Paper Mills in the United States of America (1993), Paper from Plants (1997), The History of Papermaking in the Philippines (2005), Tuckenhay Mill: People and Paper (2016), and Paper Samples (2022). Peter Thomas has written books and articles about papermaking and the book arts, produced a documentary/educational video titled “The Ergonomics of Hand Papermaking, and been active in the leadership of IAPMA (International Association of Papermakers and Paper Artists), and the Friends of Dard Hunter (now North American Hand Papermakers).

Madonna Yoder started folding origami tessellations after taking Erik Demaine's Geometric Folding Algorithms class at MIT and she has designed over 300 new tessellations since 2018. Yoder helps aspiring tessellation folders to deeply understand tessellations so that they can fold from crease patterns, reverse engineer from photos, and even start designing their own tessellations through online videos and courses with her business, Gathering Folds. And unlike most origami instructors, she doesn't focus on individual designs in tutorials, but instead teaches broader structures, theory, and skills so that you can start folding new designs with confidence and get the most out of any tessellation workshop you attend.

Jane Ingram Allen is a sculptor and installation artist who uses hand papermaking with natural materials and collaborative processes to create indoor and outdoor artworks that raise public awareness about environmental issues. Jane has received numerous awards for residencies and community public art projects in the USA, the Philippines, Japan, Nepal, Brazil, China, Tanzania, Taiwan, Turkey, Indonesia and other countries. She was a Fulbright Scholar artist-in-residence in Taiwan in 2004 and 2005 and a Fulbright Specialist in Turkey in 2015. Jane is a former college art instructor and currently teaches workshops and writes about art for SCULPTURE and other art magazines as well as doing independent curating. She was born and raised in Alabama and has lived in 7 different states and in Taiwan for 8 years. Since 2012 she has been based in Santa Rosa, CA, and continues showing her work in the US and internationally.

Margaret Rhein has been involved full time in the art & craft of making paper by hand at her studio, Terrapin Paper Mill in Cincinnati, Ohio for the past 47 years. She has exhibited her paper collages in galleries and craft shows throughout the country and has taught many workshops in papermaking and book arts to adults and children. Over the years, she has made thousands of sheets of handmade paper, experimenting with a variety of fibers, shapes, colors and textures in 2- and 3-dimensional approaches. Rhein works spontaneously using colored cotton & linen pulps and combining patterned fabrics of various textures with other collage elements. on the paper surface. She is inspired by plant forms, landscapes and figurative themes and finds that papermaking lends itself to the collage process – the base fibers in a sheet of fresh handmade paper integrate with the components she applies to its surface. By adding artifacts and autobiographical treasures, paper excels in being a platform for telling stories, capturing memories and bringing deeper meaning to the resulting works of art.

Carol Barton is a painter, paper engineer, book artist and teacher who has published several editions and has organized both local and national shows, including the traveling Books and Bookends show and the Smithsonian Institution’s Science and the Artist's Book exhibition. Her work is exhibited internationally and is in numerous collections, including the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She has taught at elementary, high school, and university levels, and has conducted adult workshops at art centers internationally. She was on the faculty at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia for 35 years and George Washington University’s Corcoran School of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. for four years. She has had residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy and the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil, GilsfjordurArts in Iceland, and the VCCA residency in France. Her Pocket Paper Engineer workbooks in three volumes are how-to guides to making pop-up cards and pages. She is now producing a series of watercolor landscape paintings for exhibition.

Andrew Dewar was born in Toronto in 1961, and has degrees in Journalism, Japanese Studies, and Library Science. He has lived in Japan since 1988. Since completing his Ph.D. studies at Keio University in Tokyo, he has taught at several colleges, and for the past decade has been principal of Tokai Daiichi Kindergarten as well as professor and Library Director at Tokai Gakuin University in Gifu, Japan. Soon after arriving in Japan, he rediscovered his childhood love of paper airplanes, and has been flying, designing, and publishing for more than three decades. He also teaches papercraft at schools, community centers, and museums around the country. He has more than 40 publications in English and Japanese.

Megan Singleton is a practicing artist, educator, and mother located in St. Louis, Missouri. The investigation of ecological relationships within society and the landscape is the basis of her work. As an interdisciplinary artist, she creates works that resonate with the materiality and rhythms of the natural world. Her creative practice intertwines sculpture, handmade paper, found objects, photography, and books arts. Singleton received her MFA in sculpture from Louisiana Sate University and her BFA in Photography form Webster University in St.Louis. She actively exhibits and was the recipient of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellowship Grant, the Smelser-Vallion Visiting Artist Fellowship in Taos, NM and has participated in Artist Residencies across the US.