A Master Class in Papermaking with Helen Hiebert!
I had the most fabulous week in tiny Red Cliff, CO, where Helen Hiebert, well-known papermaker, artist book maker, author and teacher of all things paper has her studio. I’d had a great time at Helen’s Paper Retreat in Red Cliff last summer, and I was eager to get my hands back into the paper vats.
This Master Class was limited to four students, and each of the others brought a wealth of experience in paper arts, printmaking and painting, adding to the intense learning going on. By noon on the first day of the week, I felt I had easily doubled my pre-existing knowledge of papermaking. (Twenty-five years ago, I focused on hand papermaking when I worked on my Master’s in Studio Art, but after I finished the degree, my life circumstances changed and I pursued other fiber arts.)
In Helen’s master class, I finally got to see a Hollander beater in action, turning paper fibers into high-quality pulp. I learned ways of making my own moulds and deckles, got to try a deckle box for the first time, pulled sheets of paper made from recycled denim (oooh, the indigo!), experimented with processing local plants in a blender to make paper, played with pigmented pulps and pulp painting. . . . We cut out and made paper with our own shaped deckles, stencils, and watermarks. We collaged and embedded other elements in the paper, and finally we worked with high-shrinkage abaca to experiment with paper stretched like a skin over reed armatures.
Oh, and we had a fascinating day with another local paper and printmaker, Susan Mackin Dolan. Susan works in a modified Asian paper making tradition with local plants, and we pulled impossibly thin and lacy sheets of paper with her. We even hand-beat kozo and mitsumata pulps. Papermaking is a full-body experience!
Back at home now, I am researching and pondering whether and how to set up a rudimentary papermaking studio here. If you’ve been following me at all for the past few years, since I left tapestry weaving, you know I’ve bounced around among various interests and media: stitching, book making, paper weaving, lace-making, earth pigments, printmaking. . . . I’m probably leaving half a dozen things out. So I distrust a little bit my latest, renewed enthusiasm for handmade paper. I’m reluctant to sink a bunch of time and money into sourcing and making papermaking equipment in case it all goes the way of, say, bobbin lace.*
It all boils down to this, I think: Can I make the artist’s books and prints and mixed-media pieces I want to make without making the paper myself? Or to put it another way, how much does using hand-made papers add to a piece? (A lot, as it turns out!)
I’ve been repeating to myself a mantra, “Live into the questions.” Don’t jump to an answer just to avoid floundering around a bit.
Take a look at the gallery of photos from the class below. Click to zoom in; hover for captions. Video of book of some of our paper samples at the bottom.
*Let me know, by the way, if you are interested in purchasing very lightly used tools and books for bobbin lace.
