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Michael Fallon

Michael Fallon

Executive Director

Michael Fallon is the executive director of Hand Papermaking. After graduating college with degrees in literature and art, Fallon studied books with the artist Buzz Spector and eventually became fascinated enough in them to earn an MFA degree in book arts at the University of Alabama, where he focused on letterpress printing and hand papermaking. In 1998 Fallon moved to Minnesota, where he served as an artist in residence at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and published an article on paper—his first published arts writing—for Hand Papermaking magazine. He eventually wrote for local and national publications such as Public Art Review, Art in America, and American Craft. In 2005, Fallon went back to school to earn a degree in nonprofit arts management and now has more than ten years of experience managing arts and educational nonprofits.

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Mina Takahashi

Mina Takahashi

Editor of Hand Papermaking

Mina Takahashi is the editor of Hand Papermaking. Formerly executive director of programs at Dieu Donné Papermill in New York, she directed artist residencies and publishing projects, curated exhibitions, and collaborated with artists in the studio. Trained originally in Japanese papermaking, she teaches and consults on the artistic and craft applications of hand papermaking across the country and internationally.

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Karen Kopacz

Karen Kopacz

Designer

Karen Kopacz is the designer of Hand Papermaking. She graduated from Columbia College with a BA in fine arts, minoring in fiction writing. For nearly 2 decades, Karen has worked and collaborated in the Twin Cities arts community as a designer, brand strategist, Web developer, and artist. In 2000, she founded Design for the Arts, partnering with organizations, businesses, and artists to develop and launch brands and creative initiatives. As director of online arts & literature magazine Mental Contagion (2000-2008), she was invited to be a panelist at the SXSW Interactive Festival for Fostering New Culture on the Internet.

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Sophia Hotzler

Sophia Hotzler

News and Social Media Manager

Sophia Hotzler (she/her) is a papermaker, photographer, and crafter living in Minneapolis. She was first introduced to the skill of papermaking while attending the University of Manitoba, where she graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with honors. She teaches paper classes at the Avon Hills Folk School and co-hosts a handmade paper exchange program based in Minneapolis. When she’s not in the vat pulling sheets, she can be found printing digital photographs and making journals with her handmade paper.

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Board

Jazmine Catasús

Jazmine Catasús

Jazmine Catasús is a New York artist and educator. After studying printmaking at CUNY-Hunter College, she trained as a papermaker at Pace Paper and Dieu Donné. While at Pace Paper she worked on projects for artists such as Jane Hammond, Will Cotton, and Donald Baechler. Jazmine has taught printmaking and papermaking workshops at Dieu Donnè, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, the International Print Center of New York, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Noguchi Museum. She is currently the Studio Coordinator at the EFA- Robert Blackburn Printmaking workshop in New York City and a Printmaking Technician at the Cooper Union School of Art.

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Kelly Taylor Mitchell

Kelly Taylor Mitchell

Kelly Taylor Mitchell is an installation, book, and print artist currently based in Atlanta, GA. Kelly earned her MFA from The Rhode Island School of Design and BFA from Tufts University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She has participated in artist residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (CO) and The Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MN). Her work has been featured in museums and galleries nationally including: Second State Press, Philadelphia, PA; Anderson Brickler Gallery, Tallahassee, FL; MCBA Main Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; and Not Gallery, Austin, TX. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College.

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Lisa Haque

Lisa Haque

Lisa (Switalski) Haque is an artist living and working in Miami, Florida; her work can be viewed at LISAHAQUE.COM. She was a Studio Collaborator and Production Manager at Dieu Donné, and a papermaker and bookbinder at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago, and has taught at Rutgers University, the University of Georgia Study Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy, and at a variety of other centers in the United States.

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Candy Alexandra González

Candy Alexandra González

Candy Alexandra González is a Little Havana-born and raised, Philadelphia-based, multidisciplinary visual artist, poet, activist and trauma-informed educator. Currently, Candy’s artwork explores themes of body politics, fat phobia and self-healing through photography, poetry, printmaking and papermaking.

Candy received their MFA in Book Arts + Printmaking from the University of the Arts in 2017. Since graduating, they have been a 40th Street Artist-in-Residence in West Philadelphia, a West Bay View Fellow at Dieu Donné in Brooklyn, NY, a Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation Micro-Grant Recipient, and the Linda Lee Alter Fellow for the DaVinci Art Alliance.

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Erik Saarmaa

Erik Saarmaa

Erik Saarmaa is an intellectual property attorney, living and working in the Boston area. He and his wife are avid collectors of works on paper and active supporters of the arts. Erik has a Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School, and a SM in Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering from Stanford University, and a SB in Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Marie Bannerot McInerney

Marie Bannerot McInerney

Marie Bannerot McInerney is a multidisciplinary studio artist and educator. Her site-responsive installations and discrete works in concrete, silk, handmade paper and canvas consider human agency within the framework of ecological systems, mystical thinking, and natural phenomena. She is a 2018 Charlotte Street Artist Award Fellow, a current resident at Studios Inc. and has exhibited extensively across the United States and abroad. Marie serves as associate professor in the Fiber Department at the Kansas City Art Institute.

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Richard Baiano

Richard Baiano

Richard J. Baiano is the President and Owner of Childs Gallery in Boston, MA. He has served on the Executive Boards of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA), and the Danforth Museum of Art. He also served on the steering committee for the Patron Program of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and recently finished a six year term as Chair of the Boston Chapter of Save Venice. Prior to joining Childs Gallery, Richard worked as an architect at GUND Partnership. His degrees in architecture include a BS from Clemson University and an MArch from Syracuse University. He resides in Boston and is an avid art collector, who has been engaged in the buying, selling, and appraising of American and European art for the past twenty-three years.

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Steph Rue

Steph Rue

Steph Rue is an artist and papermaker based in Sacramento, CA. She received her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, and studied traditional book and papermaking on a Fulbright to Korea in 2015. Steph is co-founder of the Korean American Artist Collective and co-founder of Hanji Edition, a publisher of limited edition works made with Korean paper.

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Lynn Sures

Lynn Sures

Lynn Sures is a recent Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2018-2020 President of North American Hand Papermakers, Founding Director of the Collegiate Paper Triennial, and guest editor of the 2016 Winter issue of Hand Papermaking magazine. Recent artist residencies were at Olorgesailie, Kenya; Museo della Carta (MCF) in Fabriano, Italy; and Museu Molì Paperer de Capellades, Spain. Her art is in collections of the US Library of Congress, Yale University, and NY Public Library’s Schomburg Collection. http://www.lynnsures.com Instagram @lynnsures

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Megan Singleton

Megan Singleton

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 create 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. She actively exhibits and was the recipient of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commision Artist Fellowship Grant, the Smelser-Vallion Visiting Artist Fellowship in Taos, MN and has participated in Artist Residencies across the US.

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Kazuko Hioki

Kazuko Hioki

Kazuko Hioki is the Preservation Librarian at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library. She earned an M.I.L.S with a Certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from the University of Texas at Austin, and was trained and employed as a conservator at various institutions, including the University of Kentucky Libraries, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. Before her career in conservation, she was a chemist at the Sumitomo Chemical Company in Osaka, having completed a Bachelor of Agriculture degree focused on Pesticide Chemistry from Kobe University. She has lectured and published widely on various topics related to conservation and preservation, ranging from sustainable environmental control and disaster preparedness to the physical characteristics of printed books and recycled papermaking in 18th -20th century Japan. More information about her research can be found here: http://works.bepress.com.

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International Advisors

Yousef Ahmad

Yousef Ahmad is a prolific contemporary artist born in Qatar, inspired by desert landsapes and Arabic calligraphy. He earned his BA in Fine Arts from Helwan University in Cairo, and his MFA from Mills College in California. Major international galleries and auction houses feature his work, including his most recent paintings on paper made from palm fronds.

Winsome Jobling

Winsome Jobling is an Australian papermaker living in Darwin. Her art practice is linked to the environment on both political and physical grounds, often using watermarks to reference the sometimes hidden nature of knowledge, ownership, power, and history. Jobling has experimented with approximately 60 native and introduced plant species over the past 30 years and participated in many cross-cultural papermaking projects.

Victoria Rabal

Victoria Rabal is the director of the Paper Mill Museum of Capellades in Spain, and a founding member of the International Association of Papermakers and Artists. An artist and master papermaker, she has organized paper workshops at the museum since 1984, and she has led workshops in hand papermaking at several universities and cultural centers in Spain, Japan, Ecuador, Brazil and U.S.A.

Vicky Sigwald

Vicky Sigwald worked for Fred Siegenthaler at his papermill in Switzerland, where she was formally trained in production hand papermaking. With her husband she established El Molino del Manzano, a hand papermill in Buenos Aires. She has travelled widely, teaching, learning, exhibiting her paper works, conducting research on the Tururi paper in the Amazons, authoring three books and dozens of articles on handmade paper, and working to promote the use of paper and pulp as an art medium.

Timothy Barrett

Timothy Barrett is an associate professor in the University of Iowa Center for the Book and the School of Library and Information Science. Barrett serves as director of the UICB where he also oversees the papermaking curriculum, and related production and research programs.

Therese Hofmann

Therese Hofmann is a professor of fine art at the University of Brasilia in Brazil.

Simon Blattner

Simon Blattner lives and works in Sonoma, California. After a long career in the printing, paper, and fine arts industries, Blattner is investing in the occasional real estate transaction and volunteering in non-profit activities. He is President of the Board of the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. From 1985 to 1995 he was a papermaker at Magnolia Editions and later founded Eastside Editions, where he made handmade paper and small intaglio editions.

Simon Barcham Green

Simon Barcham Green’s family have been papermaking since at least 1812 and he made his first certified sheet by hand in 1955. He has a BSc in Paper Science from the University of Manchester and joined the business at Hayle Mill in 1968 which he later ran until 1987. He has provided professional papermaking consultancy in India, the Philippines, Bhutan, Kenya, and the UK; and seems to be in constant contact with papermakers, artists, and other users around the world.

Roberto Mannino

Italian artist Roberto Mannino works in sculpture, relief, printmaking, and installation. He often uses the papermaking process to converge various disciplines. Mannino started working in handmade paper in 1995. As an art educator, he has taught at various US colleges (Cornell, Temple, Loyola, RISD) and in Rome where he lives. He has taught workshops on 3D and relief papermaking in the US (Dieu Donné, Cooper Union, MICA, Pyramid Atlantic) and at various institutions throughout Europe.

Radha Pandey

Radha Pandey is a papermaker and letterpress printer. She earned her MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book where she was a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship. She has studied Western and Asian Papermaking techniques with Timothy Barrett and teaches book arts classes in India and the US. Her artist bookwork has been exhibited in the US and abroad. Her interest in the history of papermaking led her to research creating stop-motion animations using watermarks, and she is currently working on such a project in collaboration with artist Brian Queen.

Peter Ford

Peter Ford specialises in artwork with paper and on paper – in particular etching, woodcuts, and print processes of his own invention. In 1994 he began making paper with the tutelage and encouragement of Maureen Richardson and he continues to discover new ways of combining print and his own paper, sometimes on a large scale. His prints and paperworks are represented in public and private collections worldwide. He has made several working visits to China and soon will be artist-in-residence at Ningbo Art Museum, near Shanghai.

Mandy Coppes-Martin

Mandy Coppes-Martin is one of the founding members of the Phumani Paper Project (a poverty alleviation programme in South Africa). She has been involved in various outreach and paper-training initiatives in South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Germany and Belgium since 1999. Her MA in Fine Art focused on the research and development of local and invasive plant fibres. Mandy is a full-time paper artist based at the Newtown Artist-Run Centre at Assemblage in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Lynn Sures

Lynn Sures is Professor of Fine Arts at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. Her pulp paintings, prints, and sculptural paperworks have been written about in Art in America, Fiberarts, and Hand Papermaking; her artist books appear in Penland Book of Handmade Books and 500 Artist Books. She has traveled within the US and to Italy, Japan, Australia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey to exhibit, lecture, and offer workshops on hand papermaking.

Kyoko Ibe

Since receiving an MS from Kyoto Institute of Technology in the late 1960s, Kyoko Ibe has pioneered contemporary washi art and design, and worked in more than 20 countries. The recipient of numerous awards worldwide, Ibe has pushed the limits of washi into a unique art form, combining her respect for tradition with radical experimentation. She is now a professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology, the director of Japan Paper Academy, and a special advisor to the government of Japan for cultural affairs.

Kathryn and Howard Clark

Kathryn and Howard Clark founded Twinrocker Handmade Paper in 1971. Their mission was to encourage the revival of hand papermaking in America, and to establish a permanent, low production handmade paper studio in order to supply the highest quality handmade papers from a European tradition. Twinrocker continues to fulfill this mission in Brookston, Indiana.

Jane Farmer

Jane Farmer is an independent curator of traveling exhibitions. She is Director of the Crossing Over Consortium, organizing international artist exchanges. Jane is also a director of Paper Road/Tibet, an organization working to reestablish the traditional art of hand papermaking displaced by China’s incursions into Tibet.

Helen Hiebert

Helen Hiebert is a Colorado artist who constructs installations, sculptures, films and artist books using handmade paper, thread and light. She teaches and lectures about papermaking and lampmaking and exhibits her work internationally. She is author of the books Papermaking with Plants, The Papermaker’s Companion, Paper Illuminated, Playing With Paper, and Playing With Pop-Ups. Helen has an extensive network of paper colleagues around the world and her interest in how things are made (from paper) keeps her up-to-date on current paper trends, which she writes about in her weekly blog called The Sunday Paper. Helen’s most recent installation, The Wish, is a giant dandelion sculpture at Anythink Huron Street Library in Denver. She holds an annual paper retreat in her Red Cliff studio each September.

Helen C. Frederick

Helen C. Frederick is an American artist known mainly for printed media and large scale works created by hand papermaking and the use of language. She is recognized as a distinguished curator, educator, coordinator of international projects, and as founder of Pyramid Atlantic. She has exhibited, curated exhibitions, and fulfilled speaking engagements around the world, always emphasizing collaboration across disciplines. She serves as Professor of Art at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Giorgio Pellegrini

Giorgio Pellegrini is director of the Museo della Carta e della Filigrana (Museum of Paper and Watermarks) in Fabriano, Italy, now celebrating 750 years of western papermaking. Fabriano is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

Carolina Larrea

Carolina Larrea, a papermaker and paper artist since 1994, is head of the papermaking and bookbinding program at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile School of Arts. She teaches paper as a medium of expression as well as artists book classes, and she is helped to create the first papermaking and bookbinding program in Chile. Her work is exhibited internationally.

Brian Queen

Brian Queen lives in Calgary and has been making paper by hand for 20 years. He specializes in creating light and shade watermarks, and building papermaking equipment; but his interests span the book arts, including letterpress printing, and the impact of new technologies. In his day job Brian owns and operates Sensa-Light, a company that manufactures custom architectural lighting for offices, hotels, and restaurants.

Bob Matthysen

Bob Matthysen is a Belgian papermaker and artist. For almost 30 years he has lived and worked daily with handmade paper in his well-equipped studio (three hollanders and large vacuum table). Bob helped jury the past four “Dutch Papierbiennales” in Rijswijk. He travels often, meeting papermakers, and studying innovative techniques.

Beatrix Mapalagama

Beatrix Mapalagama studied Western painting in Austria, Chinese brush-painting in China, and sculpture in Egypt, before getting involved in the field of paper. She maintains PapierWespe, a papermaking and paper art studio in Vienna, Austria, where she organizes an annual program of lectures, workshops, and exhibitions.

Aytekin Vural

Art historian Aytekin Vural is curator of the new Ibrahim Müteferrika Paper Museum in the coastal resort of Yalova, south of Istanbul, Turkey.

Founders

Amanda Degener

Amanda Degener

Amanda Degener is co-founder of Hand Papermaking magazine and produces sculpture and artist books using handmade paper and various other materials at Cave Paper Editions. She received an MFA in sculpture at Yale School of Art and a BA at Bennington College. Amanda travels internationally to show her artwork and conduct lectures and workshops. You can learn more about her work at http://amandadegener.com/.

 Michael Durgin

Michael Durgin

Michael Durgin co-founded Hand Papermaking with Amanda Degener in 1986 and served as its editor for 18 years. He was first exposed to making paper by hand in 1980 and has studied and been deeply engaged in papermaking and book arts ever since. For the last few years, he has sold books for charities in Beijing, Silver Spring (Maryland), and Frankfurt (Germany), where he now lives. He was the guest editor of a special issue of Hand Papermaking (Winter 2014) devoted to China.