Paper is: Circulation

I have nearly finished my most ambitious piece for the exhibition next month at Mont de Lancey in Wandin. I've called it Paper is: Circulation playing on the title of the exhibition and on newspapers and the spots and other circular imagery in my spherical books.

When I took these photos I had made six books with cases but decided it looked better with an extra three so I have now made nine books and have nearly finished the cases and I've used each of the colours of the hemp paper that came from Bangladesh and has been living in my studio for around a year.

Second box

My second box also incorporates the well beaten abaca plus the hemp that used to be my Christmas tree. 

I made a drum from a cardboard cylinder with abaca and hemp. I made the string from a mix of the two fibres and the bits on the end from hemp pulp. The abaca worked beautifully as the drum surface.  It makes a lovely sound, I made a video but unfortunately had the sound turned off.

I cut all the musical symbols out of abaca.

One Black Box down

As part of our Paper is exhibition we have a black box challenge where we make a work to fit inside the box. My first piece is done.
After two trips over to Bundoora and 7 hours in the valley beater I have some abaca that I am loving. It stretches beautifully over armatures and is almost like velum in appearance and feel.

This piece is Paper is Light and although you can't see in the picture a small battery operated tea light sits inside.

The green in the background and on the wires of the armature is hemp that was my Christmas tree this year.

IAPMA, Papermakers of Victoria and paper donation

Early in December Barb was contacted by Liz Z to see if Papermakers would like some paper donated, of course we said yes and I volunteered to store it. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for though I must say I was warned. There are three types of paper mostly made from off cuts from the garment industry in Bangladesh. Lots of lovely colours of silk paper, it isn't paper as you know it but is big enough to use as wrapping paper and would be great in collages. Papermakers is selling the sheets for $2 each, contact me if you are interested in purchasing some.

Some of the silk paper

Some of the silk paper

The other paper there is lots of is this highly textured card made from hemp and cotton, it appears to be mould dried so isn't very dense but recycles beautifully.

Some of the hemp and cotton

Some of the hemp and cotton

Two thirds of the paper in my guest room

I have recycled some of the white and cream in my Lander critter and used the paper for my works that I have proposed for the exhibitions that IAPMA is running in celebration of 30 years. The theme is luminous within and here are some glimpses of three of my pieces.

Detail of Pearl

Detail of Pearls of Wisdom

Detail of Precious

last minute card and libris

Tonight we are going to a homecoming celebration for a couple who just got married, our friends daughter married a Sri Lankan and I believe this is a Sri Lankan custom. I bought a gift before Christmas but this morning decided I should make a card to go with it, so I dusted off the vat and grabbed the pulp that was left over from my Christmas cards from the fridge and made some sheets for the basis of the card. Luckily I had some cast pieces from another project so I painted them with irridescent medium this morning and am just waiting for the paper to dry before putting the card together. I have a choice of three symbols, the Maori fish hook or is it a spiral? The fish hook symbolizes prosperity and the spiral new beginnings. Both appropriate for a wedding greeting.

The Hindi prana which means life force.

And the endless knot which according to a book I have called The Secret Language of Symbols means continuity, longevity and eternity also appropriate for a wedding card although I'm not 100% happy with the original carving of this one so I think I'll go with the Maori one.

The paper I made before today's batch was for samples for the Deckle Edge (Papermakers of Victoria magazine) and I made red watermarked banana fibre paper since the next edition is going to be dedicated to banana and I had some in my freezer. Here are the removable watermark templates, blutac on fibreglass flyscreen and the stacks of samples.

The wider strips of blutack showed me where to tear the paper to get five strips per sheet, I tore the strips in half so that 15 sheets gave me the required 150 samples.

I was very disappointed that my book was not accepted into the Libris Awards and my proposal to talk about artists who use handmade paper in their work has been ignored even though I both emailed and posted a copy in good time for the deadline for proposals I haven't even had a response. I was hoping to improve the status of papermaking but I guess that is not going to happen it seems that printmakers do rule! in the Aussie artist book scene anyway.

Here are some pics of my book which is not quite finished but the impetus is gone now, I am waiting for a Japanese translation of the haiku I wrote to go in the book.

Here is the cover of the slipcase made from hemp paper with hemp string embedded inside, the catch is a bone piece with hemp string.

The slipcase is lined with a digital print of ferns on hemp paper and the book is kozo with fern bound with hemp string in a toji or stab binding.

Endpapers have ferns embedded.

Text and images are printed on hemp paper and woven into the kozo pages.

Papermoon

The Papermakers of Victoria exhibition 'It's Only a Paper Moon' is almost over, it has gone really well with lots of visitors and a few sales. I got a notice in our local paper and the Whitehorse one too, I hope people weren't offended that the articles were all about me. I did give others the opportunity to send their own press releases.
Here are some gallery shots:- Two of my pieces are in the background here.

Two views of the Yabbers piece. Another of my pieces is in the background of the back of the yabbers banner.

My Time and Tide piece is in the front of this cabinet.

Ladders to Fire 2008


I'm working on paper for a project I intend to submit for 'Shared Journeys', next year's PoV exhibition and have just finished making the paper from the hemp for the Higher Ground Gathering in Kuranda. The raw hemp was not breaking up in my beater was just getting very stringy so I took it to Box Hill and put it through the Valley beater and it came out almost overbeaten. The first picture shows a stack of the raw hemp paper with some paper made from hemp fabric and the second picture has the light shining through the paper.


I've also popped in a picture of Daughter and dog, just for fun.

Webpage and Alcove

We had the opening of 'More Spin on Textiles' on Thursday night at the Alcove Art Shop. I was very pleased that three of my scarves sold that night. Might have to make more! I've got plenty on my plate at the moment so I guess I won't be making any more probably until next year. I sent off my application form for 'Into the Fold' yesterday, the exhibition will be held at Artisan Books from the 2nd to 30th August. I also sent off my contribution for 4 words 4 paper on Friday and have been working towards workshop and exhibitions in July, October and March next year.
I have finally updated my webpage for 2008 and have included a page with exhibition opportunities.
Today I have cut up the raw hemp and some hemp fabric so I'll be able to cook up the raw and beat the fabric next week.
One other bit of news is that 500 Artist Books is out, I haven't seen it yet but a friend has and two of my books are in it. I'm hoping I'll get a copy sent to me.

Hemp and Felt

I have just joined a new Artist book forum, the address is http://artistbooks.ning.com/ . I'll get off the computer some time today! It has been a week of meetings and there are more to come and a few jobs to go with them.

I am not long back from a week in Cairns. It was great to warm up a bit, we even swam in the hotel pool (I hadn't had a swim for over a year before then). It wasn't long enough but we take what we can get and enjoy that. Just before we left there had been some talk on the yahoo papermaking group about hemp and Dianne spoke of organising a conference related to hemp and I discovered that she was from Kuranda in the hills above Cairns. She was visiting Adelaide and Brisbane for some of the time we were there but we managed to catch up before I came home. I'm planning to make more paper from the hemp fabric I have at home and she gave me some raw hemp to try as well. I will need to chop it up and cook it with alkali before putting it through my beater.

I decided to use some of it to make some string before I turn it all into pulp.

I learned to make string from some members of Basketmakers of Victoria many years ago. Here are some notes I made about using New Zealand Flax to make string, the principle is the same no matter what you use for the string.

Making string from NZ flax
Take a thin strip of the flax and with thumbnails or a shell scrape off the outer skin. (optional)
Find the centre of the strip & twist away from yourself with your right hand. Cross hands by taking the right over the left then swap hands and repeat. To add in extra pieces find the centre of the new strip and hold it between the two old pieces and twist together.

The Alcove shop is holding it's Winter exhibition for the next few weeks and the opening is tonight. I have put in some books that I made a while ago, coptic journals with heavy leather covers (from Reverse Art of course!).

I have interleaved some of the sections with some handmade paper, the yellow book had red and yellow wax resist paper and the blue has denim paper.

And I've made a few more felt scarves, I got busy on Sunday and used up all the wool I had and some of the silk. I did two blue scarves with bright yellow flowers,

two landscape scarves

and one abstract.

While I was away Antje's vege papyrus postcard arrived, I missed Yabbers so didn't see the rest of the cards.