Workshops taken and giving

Last year when I was in the US I took a class with Karen Hanmer at the San Francisco Center of the Book. The class was making a pyramid book made up of triangles. When I returned Val, who organises workshops for Papermakers of Victoria asked if I would run the class for PoV. That is happening Sunday Week 21 April out at Bundoora Stables, PoV's studio space.

Karen mentioned in her notes that the method could be used for other shapes like hexagons and squares so I have made up a model using hexagons, the first problem was getting an even hexagon. I tried using a compass to draw a circle then mark off the circle into six. This should have worked but didn't because my pencil slipped in the compass. Next trial I folded a strip of card in half and cut off a triangle at 60 degrees to the fold, I then used the cut side to measure the second side and cut another triangle at 60 degrees to the fold. I then unfolded and used this as a template to cut my sheets. I had already printed some etchings of bees onto some handmade paper so these became the backing for the hexagons.

Bee Hive 2013
Acetate etching on handmade paper 

The Hexagon

That leads into another workshop taken this year with Liz Powell. It was called Eco Friendly Etching and we used zinc plates and copper sulphate. I was quite pleased with my second plate that was a delicate line drawing but not that impressed with the first. I printed a few versions of both plates and made up a small book as suggested by Liz. She was a great teacher very patient. The book was formed with a concertina spine and windows in pages that were folded in half and glued to the concertinas.

some new leather bound books

My postcard for the Yabbers postcard exchange from our session of plant and metal dyeing

My contribution to the Contemporary Art Society Brooch show, all pieces around 5 x 10 cm

Butterflies and keepsakes

Back in late January on return from holidays I noticed that a couple of my daphne bushes were looking very sad, I think they had got wet feet, one had died and the leaves on the other had gone very yellow. What does a papermaker do but steam the stems and cook up the inner bark then stick it in the fridge!

A healthy daphne

The stems in the steamer

The stripped stems

Two hours later the inner bark ready to cook

Sheets of coffee chaff paper. Last year I was sent a big box of coffee chaff,
I cooked some up and washed and made paper without any beating.

The backs of my sheeting couching cloths, the coffee paper shrunk quite a lot.

The third lot of sheets that are part of the keepsake exchange for Watermarks 2012, FDH and IAPMA joint meeting in Cleveland. These sheets are bluebell flower stems courtesy of Beverly Bennett who brought a giant bag of dried stems to the last Papermakers of Victoria meeting laminated with well beaten cardamon stems and leaves from Margaret Mason's garden. Koala, kangaroo and wombat signs were made from gaffer tape to form stencils.

As usual I have gone over the top my keepsakes are taking ages to put together, they have daphne, then coffee chaff then the laminated cardamom and bluebell (scilla), I have done about a third.

I have a bit of a butterfly theme happening at the moment, yabbers are making a range of butterflies for the PoV exhibition that's to be held at Open Drawer in November. I have made these with black card and coloured New Zealand Flax, I liked them so much I decided to frame some. 

Papillon Three, is currently on show at the Contemporary Art Society Members Exhibition at 314 Church Street Richmond until 16 September 2012

I have used butterflies on books and cards

I also made some origami butterflies out of paper I made from recycled teabags, I had asked the T'Arts to save me some teabags then remembered how well teabags work with photocopy transfer using oil of wintergreen. This pic shows the original butterfly and the transfer onto teabag and the paper that was under the teabag.

Lemons on our tree

Lemons again transferred onto a piece of silk that Ruth left under the teabags she was collecting for me.

Pulp Fiction my contribution to Book Art Object Edition Four

Christmas Book and card swap

We had our Yabbers breakup on Wednesday and exchanged Christmas cards so here they are.

This one is mine, I was lazy this year and bought a punch and am using up lots of coloured papers that I made for the books I put in 'Opus', the decorative paper (purple and gold) is some scraper paper I made as a sample for my Tassie workshop.

Tricia's star card

Jan's

Antje's using some of the silver star shapes we got from Reverse art a few years ago.

Ursula

Marie white paper with geranium petals

Beverley

Dorothy

The Collection

Last Saturday was the final Papermakers of Victoria meeting for the year and those who participated received their five books that were part of the book swap, there were 17 participants this year who each submitted six Christmas books (this year we were requested to avoid using red and green). One of each book goes to Papermakers archives and each participant receives five books by other people. Here is my collection. I don't know all the artists but will label those I do know.

Jan

Beverly

Tania

Chris

?

The collection.

Christmas bookswap, Art at Burnley Harbour, Recipe and workshops

I have finished my books for Papermakers of Victoria's book swap and will post off this week before I go to Tassie, they are in the theme of my workshop too being quite sculptural. All made by pouring recycled pulp through a tin can with both ends removed. I then pressed lightly then rolled onto lace on fibro cement. I made the little bags the same way, getting two out of one A4 sheet.

The book can be hung from a Christmas tree.

In the last few weeks I have been working on a series of pulp paintings directly onto canvas, this one is for the exhibition at 69 Smith Street Gallery called Recipe (30 Nov to 18 Dec 2011) so includes the first couple of recipes from my falling apart PMWU basic cookbook.

Recipe ?

The other works are for the Contemporary Art Society exhibition Art at Burnley Harbour, December 2-4.

Vessel 3

Vessel 2

Vessel 1

Small vessel 1 (trial attaching paper and writing)

Small Vessel 2 (includes pineapple fibre as well as recycled)

In preparation for my Tassie workshop over the weekend I trialled doing solar printing with acrylic paints, I got some nice effects but also had problems with the things sticking to the paper. I have done it in the past very successfully using the paper dyes that I use for colouring my papers but since my notes said dyes or acrylic paints I thought I should try the acrylics. The method is to soak the paper (I used 130gsm cartridge) then tip off most of the water place flat things on and cover with plastic wrap the put in the sun to dry.

This is the back of a piece that was dried between two pieces of plastic wrap.

I used lace, leaves and a few plastic bits and pieces and am hiding all the spots where the paper came away with the items.

I had planned to pack for the workshop today since I'm out most of tomorrow at Women's Art Register then on Wednesday Yabbers is here and I'm going to be showing what I learned at Liz Powell's workshop the weekend before last. We won't have time to do the whole thing since the workshop was two very full days and we have less than a day but we can make a start. I liked the design process of continually simplifying the design. We started with a section of a photo that we drew up to twice the size and used the lines to form our key plate. Then we divided the plate into areas and made a collograph using different material for each area. Then we drew our collograph and carved it into lino using the different lino tools manipulated in different ways. then finally we made a jig saw on a fresh piece of lino using our last design.

The lino and collographs

The photograph and design

The prints, many still in progress

Four of my favourites, the idea is to overlay all four prints and gradually build up a multi coloured image, I found the registration quite tricky and the most I printed was three but I mostly preferred the single prints. I quite like the lower left which was the jigsaw with one of the collographs that stuck to the paper and pulled the colour away.

Today's solar prints, I'm really happy with this one, the paint was very thin when I put it on and it hardly stuck at all just a little bit where the larger circles are, that was a piece of rubber, the engine and the bus are flat glow in the dark toys that are plastic, the dots near the bottom are from a piece of lego and the letter A is wood.

The red wasn't quite as thin, I put more paint on and it stuck a bit to the star. So the trick is to use very thin acrylic paint. Now to get off the computer and pack a few things.