Laurence Barker  Untitled, perforated pulp painting. Colored cotton rag pulp, on cotton rag, cotton linter, and synthetic fiber base sheet. 1.5” x 27.25”, 1999. Photograph by Maria Dolors Carmona.  The medium may be pulp but the vehicle is water. Thus, with so much hosing and splashing, I think in terms of water painting, water drawing, and finally water shaping, with the use of perforated protective stencils wherein exposed pulp is washed away. The use of stencils—the careful designing and cutting of them—provides just the corrective I often look for to complement the slop of pulp play (in the spirit of Georges Braque’s “rule that corrects the emotion.”)  If one is willing to entertain the reciprocation or dialogue of printed image with exuberant paper, then the step from pulp painting to printmaking is small. The conventional rationale for quiet, uninflected white paper is to eliminate all distractions from the printed image. Against this irreproachable logic, however, lies the sheer theatricality of the composite image of print and paper, which raises a novel set of aesthetic considerations.  Previous references to this artist in Hand Papermaking: Summer 1988; Summer 1997; Winter 2000.   Georgia Deal  Triple Delight. Artist-made paper using cotton and abaca pulps. 30” x 40”, 2000. The image was made using a combination of stenciling and transfer techniques, using pigmented pulps for both “painting” and “drawing.” The finished piece was treated with cold wax that was tinted with additional pigments. Photograph by Derrick Deborja.  These works are images, recollections, and impressions from my visual memory and are informed by my travels, relationships, and personal history. Here, I have attempted to break down the narrative to a more refined and skeletal state where the images are not so much stories as junctures. I hope they hum with the intent of a story. But, contrary to the rules of storytelling, I have tried to let go of the narrative controls. I continue to work with handmade paper, as I find its inherent richness and tactility matches the phenomenon of memory, with its own vivid and textural impressions. My training as a printmaker informs the work as much with the layering and transferring of images as with the ideas. Previous references: Summer 1996, Winter 2000.  Amanda Degener  Ancestor Balloon. Handmade kozo and sea grass paper. 10 feet in diameter (balloon), 2000. This image shows the work as installed at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, as part of the exhibition Pedagogy: Beyond Reeling, Writhing, Uglification & Derision, in early 2001. Photograph by the artist.  Where would we be without what we have learned from our ancestors? They often keep us grounded. For Ancestor Balloon, I mailed participants paper I had made, they wrote narratives about their ancestors and sent them back. These stories are sewn together in several small books. In this installation, the balloon and books are attached to an old school desk, with a blank book for visitors to write in. Ultimately I hope to launch this sculpture, perhaps over a body of water. For Ancestor Balloon I made 250 sheets of 2 ft. x 3 ft. kozo paper. I cast the freshly made, still wet sheets onto one eighth of a sphere carved from Styrofoam. My art group and I sewed the pieces together, made them air-tight, and then inflated the sphere. During the Second World War, Japanese school children were forced to make nine thousand of these washi balloons, which were eventually launched toward the US carrying bombs. Students had only half days of classes, because of “the war effort.” Cutting out education for bombs negates the future.  Previous references: Winter 1989, Winter 1999.  Lesley Dill   Radiance Blood. Tea-stained paper, cast paper, threads, gold leaf. 70” x 51” x 1.5”, 2000. Photograph courtesy of George Adams Gallery, New York.  We are animals of words. Inside us lie all the words that were and all the words almost to be. If you were to cut us open anywhere, what would come out would not be just blood and organs, but also language—thoughts, emotions unspoken but layered and packed into our bodies for a lifetime. In this piece, Radiance Blood, the fingertips have been cut to release the words out into the air like smoke. I think that speech is given out of our mouths and off our flesh as a kind of radiance. These human rays of intended meaning reach out into space. Surrounded by a vapor of words, it’s this primal luminosity, this linking and reaching, that makes us human. I used the word “blood” because we have become prejudicial to it and afraid of it, as the carrier of numerous contagious and fatal diseases. We should remember that it is the liquid of the heart, that organ of vitality and optimism.  Radiance, blood, language — all are structurally similar, all are carriers of meaning.  Previous references: Summer 1994, Winter 2000.  Jennie Frederick  Cache with Three Red Stripes. Mulberry, wood, paint. 23” x 11.5” x 1.5”, 2000. Photograph by E. G. Schempf.  I have become interested in the use of symbols in Mesoamerican textiles; both cloth and fiber bark garments, as well as the use of bark paper in ritual. Research on the Lacandon use of bark paper and bloodletting symbolism became the focus for a personal project during the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in 2000. I am interested in the notion of textile as marker, using symbols, repetitive structure, and overall form to mark an event. By combining symbolic elements derived from these investigations with techniques adapted from observing the Otomi, together with personal content, the present synthesis has taken form. Previous references: Summer 2000.  John Gerard  Cyclone. Paper painting. 88 cm. x 66 cm., 1999. Foto Friese.  For many years, the element of water was one of the main thematic images in my work. I was fascinated with its movement, waves, the mythological Charybdis, the whirlpool. Cyclone is the direct result of drawing parallels with aqueous currents. My interest in the element of wind, its energy and destruction, has grown directly with my interest in the forces of nature. Cyclone is a dance of the wind. The choreography contains all of the components of destructive forces, of speed, of chaos.   Previous references: Winter 1986, Summer 1988, Winter 1988, Summer 1989, Winter 1999.  Douglass Morse Howell   Number Three. Colored linen fiber. 18” x 27”, 1950s.  More than a half century ago Douglass Howell broke ground for what would become a new visual art medium that now aspires to take its place as high art. Howell began making paper in the mid-forties and later that decade began experimenting with pulp painting. This work, Number Three, comes from a body of work known as Papetries. This first series of works were dependent on, as he often said, "the choreography of the hands." Made from colored linen pulp and water (no pigments), fifty years later the piece remains vibrant and retains its luminosity as if it were made yesterday. His skill at the beater and the vat are evident. [Statement from Elizabeth King, Howell’s daughter.]  Previous references: Spring 1986, Winter 1986, Summer 1988, Winter 1989, Summer 1991, Winter 1992, Summer 1994, Summer 1996, Summer 1997, Winter 2000.  Jeanne Jaffe  Veil of Forms - Spill of Memory. Paper. 96” x 120” x 10”, 1998.  My work functions as a bridge between early somatic memories and the symbolic order of language. This is accomplished by the creation of hybrid forms—fusions of animate and inanimate objects, familiar yet strange. These forms invite recognition while remaining enigmatic. They refer to visual, tactile, and auditory sensations and perceptions, felt before words could describe, and thereby distance, immediate experience. Longing, repulsion, fear, loss, curiosity, and discovery can all be located in a singular object or grouping. These early somatic experiences recall a form of cognition that corresponds to a pre-verbal state, where the distinction between things is not yet clear, and where boundaries between identities are still fluid. From this, an intuitive, ideographic language develops—a spill of memory and an open system of signs that is multivalent, mysterious, and open to a multitude of meanings and associations.  Previous references: Winter 1992, Summer 1994.   Mary Ann McKellar Schwarcz   Chicken Mask. Flax with kozo stitching, knit kozo, and shifu. 10” x 10” x 22”, 1998.  When I begin a piece, I initially want to find a way to use paper that will be easy and direct. With the image in mind, I whack away, piecing flax sheets together in an almost collage-like manner. I often need this immediate visual structure to carry me further. Once the main form is built, I become more relaxed about the monotonous hours ahead, creating patterns—both visual and tactile—that lend themselves to strengthening the piece. Once the sheets of kozo have been made, cut into strips, and spun, I begin stitching them into the flax structural sheets, knitting them, or weaving them into panels.  Previous references: Winter 1993.  John Risseeuw  Eco Songs. Letterpress and photopolymer relief on papers handmade from plant fibers from around the world. 5.5” x 7.25” (closed), 42” x 7” (open), 2000. Multimedia artists’ book with audio compact disk of song cycle by Macedonian composer Dimitrije Buzarovski, performed by Nan Hughes, soprano. Designed and printed with Dan Mayer at the Pyracantha Press. Includes poems and text by Chief Dan George, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Stevie Smith, Alfonsina Storni, Li Po, and the Book of Job. Photograph by the artist.  In 1992, a Hand Papermaking article by Gordon Fluke described the “symbolic paper” used in making our Bill of Rights commemorative bicentennial broadside; rag paper made from cotton American flags and blue jeans. In 1996, I created a piece about the world arms trade for the Hand Papermaking portfolio Transparency & Opacity: Letterpress Printing on Handmade Paper, printed on paper made from the paper currency of the top ten arms exporting nations, mixed with clothing from victims of armed conflict. Also in 1996, I created with Margaret Prentice the collaborative artists’ book, Spirit Land, printed on papers made from Arizona and Oregon plant fibers. This “content-specific” approach to handmade papers has now turned into one of the focuses of my creative research. Although I do not use the principle every time I make paper for a book or print, I do seek out opportunities for effective combinations of concept, image content, text content, and paper content. When they connect, the art becomes a conceptual whole that is very satisfying and rewarding.  Previous references: Summer 1992, Winter 1999.  Michelle Samour  Cutting Through, Moving Past. Acrylic on pigmented gampi. 44” x 44” x 3”, 2001. Photograph by Robert Schoen.  I am interested in making work that offers a passage into contemplation (the empty space). Scientists refer to this space as a vacuum; philosophers refer to it as nothingness. The imagery in my work is only a vehicle for asking questions and entering into that space. Lao-tzu, the founder of Daoism, compares the Dao to the empty space within a pot, without which the clay would have no function. In my work, paper is the field for discovery, at once earth and sky. The images that emerge from or float on the surface reference fossils, stars, atoms, and micro-organisms. These images talk about beginnings without end. When I work, I think about digging away the earth, opening a rock to reveal a fossil. I think about looking through a microscope and seeing the seemingly inanimate move. I think about gazing up at a night sky, waiting for my eyes to adjust enough to find a star. From dark to light, from finite in infinite, my work is a meditation on the power of the unknown.  Previous references: Summer 2000.  Robbin Silverberg  From Dreams to Ashes. Matches, Dobbin Mill cotton, mugwort, and abaca papers; computer-generated and Liquid Light photographs. 12” x 5” x 8, 1999. Published by Dobbin Books in an edition of 4.  I have recently found in my dream life a new and fantastic source of material for artist books. In From Dreams to Ashes the text in the larger of the two books is a poem about an actual nightmare. It is written on unburned matches embedded into paper made from mugwort, a common weed that was once used to stuff pillows in the belief that it brought vivid and prophetic dreams. The mugwort and matches combination is a cohesive element of the work, simultaneously offering the reader dreams and destruction. In contrast, the interspersed photographs of young boys on translucent papers add a bitter-sweetness to the tale. Its compendium, Taking Hold of the Night, is printed on translucent abaca papers so that the prose, reflecting a month of actual dreaming, overlaps and blends with the stark photo imagery. The case holding the two books is covered by a cotton rag paper with photo silk screen watermarks. Thus, all the papers made for this two-part bookwork enhance its meaning and the visual and tactile experience of reading.  Previous references: Winter 1998, Winter 1999.   Karen Stahlecker   Between Eden and Armageddon. Kozo, mitsumata, and abaca handmade paper, pigments, and wood. 22 ft. x 28 ft. x 68 ft., 1989. Photograph by Al Sanders.  Between about 1980 and 1994, my handmade paper works explored aspects of nature. I enjoyed finding ways to communicate spiritual facets of the natural world. Living in Alaska from 1986 to 1994 (during which time the Exxon Valdez wrecked in Prince William Sound) and observing the destruction and loss of habitat and other ecological problems added a new, cautionary tone to my work.  Completed during the spring of the oil spill, the site-specific Between Eden and Armageddon required a year of planning and fabrication. The installation explored three relationships humans have with the natural world. Eden, at the entrance, refers to nature in her untamed mode. The Spirit Center celebrates a healthy balance and unity between humans and their environment. The final work, Armageddon, depicts nature overwhelmed by humans: flattened, rigidly structured, and in the throes of destruction. Recently many of my works have been reduced to reliquaries, which preserve bits of nature. Since returning to live in the Midwest, in 1998, I have discovered opportunities to create and restore natural habitat in my community.  Previous references: Winter 1990, Summer 1991, Winter 1994, Winter 1999.  Lynn Sures   White Sands #14. Cast paper. 48” x 67” x 3”, 1999. Photograph by Chan Chao.  White Sands #14 came at the beginning of my discovery of painting in three dimensions. In this work I sculpted an armature with wire and imbedded a heavy base of pulp, then layered colored pulp to lift my painting into bas-relief. Always on my quest to relive powerful landscapes, for two years I had surrounded myself with two-dimensional pulp paintings, encaustics, and intaglio works of this gypsum desert in southern New Mexico. Then, in mid-1998, I began to form wire into a simple abstraction of the sand-ridge patterns. The wire sculpture brought the sand into a physical presence, and the addition of pulp created the ridge rhythms that compelled me so much. New technical problems (the natural accompaniment to a paper artist) engaged me. I coaxed the colored pulp, in three dimensions, into the transitions of light that I sought. The abaca and flax dried hard and tough, with a sense of soft light and frailty on the surface.  Previous References: Summer 1996, Winter 2000.  Claire Van Vliet   East Haven 22. Muslin pulp from Twinrocker, overbeaten muslin pigmented pulp prepared by Katie MacGregor. 22” x 28”, 2000. Photograph by John Somers.  This pulp painting is one of an ongoing series on the mountain I see from my studio; the sun rises behind it in winter and the sunset reflects off it all year. It is maple covered and, during the eight leafless months, mysteriously many shades of red and purple. Ideally, pulp paintings are completed in the papermaking process, as was this one. However, I have also painted and printed lithographs and intaglios on some of them. Twenty-two by twenty-eight is the largest paper I can comfortably make in the studio at Janus Press. I make the pulp paintings in a deckle box made for me by Bernie Vinzani.  Previous references: Summer 1987, Winter 1989, Summer 1992, Summer 1993, Summer 1999.  Marcia Widenor   October Quilt, deconstructed. Bleached abaca, flax, cloth, hand-spun flax string, cherry wood, steel, and ceramic beads. 42” x 32” x 3”, 2000. Photograph by Ani Revera.  A sheet of handmade paper is as valid a sculptural form as a sheet of welded steel or hammered lead. Before I made paper, I collaged and printed with worn cloth, old household linens rescued from family trunks. The edges and hems of these old sheets bore traces of the hands that made them, just as a sheet of handmade paper does. Natural flax has the same range of wonderful neutral, colorless color I found in old linens. Flax pulp, beaten for many hours, poured thin on a vacuum table, and dried under pressure, becomes smooth, tough, and translucent. Pulp, full of water gleams, disappears under blotters and boards to dry in secret. Tended carefully, the paper emerges as a transformed material, crisp and beautifully deckled.  After making a series of flat paper quilts, I decided to break the quilt down into a few elements, move them out into space, and create some shadows.  Previous references: Winter 1995, Winter 1999.  Therese Zemlin   Untitled installation of small works. Artist-made pigmented papers, Japanese papers, laser prints, inkjet transfers, paint, wood, and reed. Various sizes (58” x 12” x 6” for piece on left), 1999. Photograph by Bill Burger.  I’m inspecting trees through binoculars, looking for something unusual:  Left brain, right brain; Head brain, heart brain.Nerve endings, root balls; Brain stems, plant stems.Mostly, we rearrange categories. Form is reinvented and edited to convey a sense or a tendency. Do natural selection, artificial selection (meaning selection by us, as if we are not natural), and Manifest Destiny all have something in common? Where does reinterpretation start and reinvention stop? Perhaps they are the same thing. I’ve heard that our hearts have brains. Perhaps we have two brains and one of them has a heart. Silent yearnings become tentative attempts to flourish. We want poetry to flow out of us but, instead, it’s spit and olive pits. Is that so bad?  Previous references: Summer 1991, Summer 1997.