HAND PAPERMAKING

NEWSLETTER

NUMBER 153 JANUARY 2026

Newsletter Editor: Sophia Hotzler

Contributors: Andreas Fatouros, Daniel Heyman and Julie Pereira, Ken Ford, Olga Zaikina, Sid Berger.

Sponsors: Penland School of Craft

Hand Papermaking Newsletter is published quarterly.

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Hand Papermaking is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organi-zation. Staff: Rosa Chang, Executive Director; Mina Takahashi, Magazine Editor; Sophia Hotzler, Newsletter Editor/News & Social Media Manager; Karen Kopacz, Designer. Board of Directors: Steph Rue, Lynn Sures, Kazuko Hioki, Emily Duong, Gretchen Schermerhorn, Sanaz Haghani, Anne Q McKeown, Jerushia Graham, Veronica Pham, Andrea Sherrill Evans, Betsy Knabe Roe, Jenna Bonistalli, Jill Bramwell.

Co-founders: Amanda Degener and Michael Durgin.

Dear Readers,

A s another year begins, hand Papermaking Magazine enters its 4oth year, while our

Newsletter reaches its 38th. In a field so deeply rooted in history, it is energizing to look ahead-to the changes, experiments, and transtormations we will experience as papermak-ers and paper appreciators. Ken Ford introduces us to Aunty Joy Duncan's remarkable Storm Fish sculptures, born from storm debris and handmade paper. Sid Berger traces the textured histories of Lincrusta and Anaglypta wallpaper, while Olga Zaikina reviews Michele Brody's exhibition, Arboreal Ethereal: Capturing the Entropy of Nature, a culmination of her participation in the Artist Studio Program at the Bronx River Art Center. We also feature a thoughtful conversation between Daniel Heyman and Julie Pereira on Heyman's recent exhibition, Adrift, at Tremaine Gallery, reflecting on process, place, and movement across time. Andreas Fatouros introduces us to Triton & Shell, the first nonprofit space in Greece dedicated exclusively to the history and art of hand papermaking and bookbinding.

-Sophia Hotzler

MEET THE MAKER

Storm Fish of Aunty Joy Duncan: Consolidating the Sculptural Edge

In this recurring feature, Ken Ford introduces Aunty Joy Duncan's Storm Fish sculptures, merging handmade paper and memory to transform storm debris into powerful expressions of cultural continuity, resilience, and collaboration.

Auntie oy Duncan

Aunty Joy Duncan with Storm Fish 1. Approximately 4 foot 6 inches long. Found sticks and Euraba cotton paper.

When a group of ten women studying art at the local technical college felt uneasy about painting or

uropean handmade papers, they inquired of their teacher, Paul West, whether it was possible t

make their own paper. Euraba Artists & Papermakers was born.

Euraba Artists & Papermakers is located at Boggabilla, a small border town in North Eastern

NSW, Australia. Bogga is predominantly occupied by people of the
Goomeroi indigenous language group who experience all the suffering
one can come to expect in marginal or remote indigenous communities.
The nearest big town is Goondiwindi, 9 kilometres across the river and
the Queensland border but Boggabilla is part of the shire surrounding
the NSW town of Moree, about 1oo kilometres (6o miles) to the
Between 2008 through 2009, I was employed as manager, Euraba
was recognised for its high-quality handmade cotton-pulp paper up to
Ar size. Their speciality was coloured papers and paper-pulp paintings.
The major focus was commercial papermaking, but they aspired to
develop their skills as artists. My focus was to bring out the artist in all
the workers employed at Euraba at the time. It was not the beginning of
artmaking there by any means. A strong exhibition program had survived
the ever-changing management of the company, resulting in a stable of
galleries willing to show Euraba work. Mentors, advisors, agencies, and
funding bodies were all vying for positions to "be of assistance." What
the artists wanted was workshopping in idea development. My approach
was to work with the artists individually and facilitate the recognition of
strong points in their studio practice and paper skills.
Of the ten founding members, two remained as workers while
I was there: Auntie May Hinch and Auntie Joy Duncan. This story is
about the friendship I formed with Auntie Joy and the development of
her art practice. I wasn't the man to turn the business around and make
everyone in Boggabilla rich, but I was there to nurture and develop
ideas and skills around innovative creativity. Auntie Joy paints fish and
fish nets. For a long time the fish net was her major motif. Working on
Euraba handmade paper, the mediums Auntie Joy used included artist
acrylics, pastels, watercolour, pencils, pulp painting, and embossing.
These latter two mediums I identify as the signature techniques for
Euraba Artists.
A huge convergence of two powerful summer storm fronts flattened
most of the vegetation in Boggabilla in 2009. Workers spent weeks
cleaning up and repairing damage. At our first meeting after that, Auntie
Joy and I collected sticks from the storm litter around the Euraba shed.
We had been talking previously about going 3D with the "fish," so after
some guidance on how the structure could hold together, Auntie Joy
formed a fish shape that became the first of the Storm Fish series.
Storm Fish 1 is the largest in the series and the first completed. It is
a remarkable work. In Storm Fish 1, bigger than its maker, the melding
of storm-scattered sticks and Euraba cotton pulp signified new freedom
for Auntie Joy's creative direction. The previously molded pulp was now

being dribbled, pressed, and shaped by hand around a flimsy structure of storm debris. Ideas flourished, and a superb body of work soon accumulated

Storm Fish 1 was built with sticks that still had their bark intact.

During the drying process, tannin leached into the white cotton pulp, giving it a beautiful patina of golden-brown edges. Due to concerns over acidity, Auntie Joy used sticks with the bark removed. Her technique was to lay out heavy builders' plastic on which to draw the fish shape with the debarked and washed sticks collected after the storm. She dribbled the pulp, quite wet, onto the places where the sticks touched until a good covering was achieved. Thicker applications of pulp followed until the shape was complete. Attention was paid to consolidating the edges during drying. She used a tomato-sauce bottle to draw in details with a contrasting coloured pulp slip. The coloured pulps were made by beating coloured rag off-cuts. The subsequent Storm Fish works were smaller, around 300-450 millimetres. For these smaller pieces, drying took about two days before the sculptures could be lifted from the plastic and turned over to keep flat and finish drying.

Storm Fish speaks to a number of issues for Auntie Joy Duncan. The fish and the fishing net have been her motifs of choice for all of her art practice. Fishing symbolises a history of teaching from generation to generation, "Showing the young ones what our grandparents taught us ... passing it on," explained Auntie Joy. Storm Fish has a message of moving on into a new collaborative and united existence, embracing all that is pure and just, for all people.

Fishing may well be the only surviving connection to spirit and Country that was allowed during the harsh mission days that Auntie Joy survived. Auntie Joy's mom travelled Ino kilometres of dirt road in a cart to give birth in Moree because the local hospital in Goondiwindi did not allow Aboriginal women. Language and culture were banned on the missions. Fishing went under the radar as a cultural event and survived as a way of carrying culture in secret. There is more to fishing than fish. Maybe the storm has blown away the net.

- Ken Ford

Ken Ford is a visual artist working across a wide range of mediums, including a five-decade practice in ceramics and printmaking, and three decades of papermaking. His work with indigenous communities in NSW and the Kimberley WA are highlights of a diverse

PAPER EXHIBITION REVIEW

Arboreal Ethereal: Capturing the Entropy of Nature

In this feature, Olga Zaikina reviews Michele Brody's most recent exhibi-ton, Arboreal Ethereal: Capturing the Entropy of Nature, which was on view from July 10 through August 16 at the Bronx River Art Center.

Paper has long preserved memory through writing and illustration.

In Michele Brody's art, paper itself becomes the storyteller, memorializing what is being lost-ecologically, in her case. Trained in fibers and material studies, Brody works through a laborious process of papermaking with site-specific vegetal matter to create delicate sculptures and installations shaped after vanishing plants and trees.

While reflecting on biodiversity changes, Brody's projects also weave in themes of cultural diversity, migration, history, and identity.

Her most recent exhibition, Arboreal Ethereal: Capturing the Entropy of Nature, the culmination of her participation in the Artist Studio Program at the Bronx River Art Center, was on view at the Center from July 10 to

Michele Brody, Fragment from a Lost Marshland, 2023. Paper pulp from invasive phragmites reeds cast in the form of the native cattails, pigmented cotton pulp, fixed with rabbit skin glue. Photo: Mark Shaw.

August I6. The exhibition brought together new and earlier works, all unified through the material poetics of paper. Brody plans to travel the show across the country. In two large paper reliefs, Fragments from a Lost Marshland, Brody cast impressions from native cattail reeds she collected during her expeditions in New York and Vermont. Across much of North America, cattails have been outcompeted by phragmites, a Eurasian species likely introduced unintentionally in the ballast of ships arriving from Europe in the late 17oos or early 18oos. Brody's delicate casts— refined with pigmentation and encaustic paint, and steeped in a quiet mourning for ecological loss—carry their own contradiction: the artist makes them from phragmites, the very reed that are displacing cattails, thus forcing a dialogue-and even collaboration-between what is native and what is categorized as nonnative. "Over time, nature recalibrates itself, returning to greater richness and variety," Brody reflects. Her understanding of the entropy of nature, referenced in the title of the show, is more hopeful than that of Robert Smithson who decried decomposing suburban environments along the Passaic River, choked by industrial production. When I walked along Smithson's "Monuments of Passaic" a couple of years ago, I was struck by the lush greenery of the riverbanks. Even though the industrial damage to the river remains beyond repair, nature seems to find every way to restore vitality.

Casting vanishing species has become one of Brody's signatures.

Objects from the Ghosted series inhabited the gallery with paper casts of tree trunks found across New York and Maine. Segmented and clipped together with rare-earth magnets over aluminum armatures, the milky, translucent trunks stood alone or leaned against deep green walls-half forest, half apparition. Their anthropomorphic bodies—at times lit from within—slid between uncanny companion, design object, and fragile effigy of what is vanishing. Among the trees cast are a few American chestnuts. Once the towering monarch of Eastern US forests, the species

was decimated by a blight fungus inadvertently introduced a century ago with imported Japanese chestnuts. In Brody's casts, this history surfaces through the blight stains naturally imprinted on the paper. The lesion-like patterns, ranging in burnt-sienna hues, attest to the individuality of each tree while registering the very disease that is ending the tree's life. Think death masks, but for trees: imprints pressed at the brink of disappearance, caught between presence and absence, authenticity and

Standing amid nine silver birch casts— thin, tall, pale, and infinitely fragile—I could not help, as someone raised in Russia, but think of a birch grove: that iconic, if somewhat kitschy, emblem of the Russian forest. Since the invasion of Ukraine, however, that image-like other once-familiar icons—has curdled into a symbol of aggression. My own identity, too, has hollowed out; I have felt like a death mask, a ghost of myself, present through absence.

Brody's birches, of course, have nothing to do with Russia. Instead,

they point to the species common in North America-though not truly native here either. What they stage is relation itself. Their sheer verticality and their play with authenticity and individuality push them beyond ecology into questions of identity and mortality. Standing among them recalls the charge of Barnett Newman's vertical "zips" —those pulsating stripes that split and unify vast fields of color into the space of the sublime. Yet here the sublime takes on a contemporary cast. Where Newman sought transcendence in pure color, Brody summons the ecological sublime-beauty and fragility as one-reminding us that the vanishing world is not a matter of spirit alone but of interdependence.

At the gallery's center, Brody's Monarch Migrations flares up: a cloud of origami butterflies made from handmade milkweed paper conjures the collapse of Monarch migrations as their only host plant— milkweed-disappears under ecological and human assault. Each butterfly carries a handwritten story of displacement from Brody's community workshops-folded, partly hidden, they balance privacy and publicity, individual and collective. Projected footage from Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve further extends their fragile flight into human histories of migration, pressing particularly against today's reinforced US immigration policies-mostly chaotic and often terrifying.

By weaving local flora, community voices, and ecological knowledge, Brody collapses the divide between invasive and indigenous, spotlighting biodiversity and cultural diversity alike. Migration here is framed not through exclusion but through an ethic of care, relationality, and survival.

In the Blue & Red series, begun in 2019, Brody transforms presidential electoral maps into living paper works made of cotton pulp, recycled blue jeans, and sprouting wheatgrass seeds. With each election, she "planted" seeds along state borders, interstate highways, or party lines, creating maps in which fragile growth attempts to stitch together a nation divided by politics. Nature becomes both metaphor and medium: roots binding social fractures, politics woven back into the earth. In a striking and bitter twist, the seeds in red states failed to sprout in her most recent map of the 2024 election— an ironic visualization of collapse. If Wendell Berry-American novelist and longtime ecological activist—warned of the ecological and communal wreckage wrought by industrial agriculture, Brody restages that warning in miniature. Her quadrennial agricultural mini-labs reveal politics itself as an exhausted soil, where growth either falters or takes hold. In present-day America, where politics works to tear apart social, cultural, and ecological threads, Brody's art resonates deeply-the delicate ecosystems she cultivates remind us that witnessing fragility is also an invitation to plant the seeds of care and connection.

— Olga Zaikina

Olga Zaikina is a curator, researcher, and archivist with a PhD in art history. She specializes in modern and contemporary art, exploring intersections of materiality, performativity, and everyday life. She has published in peer-reviewed journals as well as leading art platforms. Her curatorial experience includes conceptual art exhibitions and performative art re-enactments.

DECORATED PAPERS

Wallpapers

Longtime newsletter contributor Sid Berger continues his documentation of decorated papers. In this feature Sid highlights wallpaper, with a special focus on a line of coverings; Lincrusta and Anaglypta.

William Morris Wallpaper, The Strawberry Thief, 1883.

' everal years ago, I wrote columns for this newsletter about wall-

›papers.' The subject returns here because it is fascinating and tremendously broad, as one might expect given the seemingly endless number of such papers available, the many means of decorating them, and the great number of companies purveying them. The last of these categories, companies, is the subject of the present column, along with a focus on one particular kind of wall covering that is startling and beautiful, a wallpaper that some might not call "paper." I have chosen the company Wallpaperdirect for a few reasons, not the least of which is that they sell one particular kind of decorated wall covering that I will get to below. Another reason is that the range of their offerings is remarkable.

Founded in 1999, Wallpaperdirect has been in business for a quarter

of a century, and over the years they have concentrated on high-end, beautiful products from many manufacturers. Their online site (www. wallpaperdirect.com) will give you a hint of the extent and the beauty of the wall coverings they carry. Of particular note is that they carry a line of William Morris papers, many of which seem to be in the public domain.

The pattern called The Strawberry Thief is one of the most recognizable.

The company is a clearinghouse for the papers of many wallpaper and wall-covering companies. One of the features of some of the papers is that they are not two dimensional: their patterns stand out in relief, as with those from a line of coverings called Lincrusta.

From the Renaissance on, colorful wall panels were made from carved leather. They adorned the walls of civic buildings and the homes of the wealthy. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, with huge

Lincrusta pattern No. 153, Romanesque, Catalogue of Designs of Lincrusta-Walton, p. 45.

amounts of pollutants spewed into the air, and with windows often left open in un-air-conditioned homes letting in deleterious fumes, the leather deteriorated. Lacking living craftspeople to replace the panels, those wishing to find substitutes went to the brilliant papermakers of Japan, who devised kinkarakawakami (also called kinkarakami): three-dimensional panels of lovely, colorful papers. But the presence of three-dimensional panels as wall coverings-signs of wealth—led to the development of Lincrusta, which was invented in 1877 by Frederick Walton.

The material is used for wall coverings, including dado panels (at the lower parts of walls) and borders (at ceiling level). The Lincrusta website says that Walton "had pioneered the development of linoleum floor coverings during the 186os. Lincrusta was an instant success, replacing painstaking artisan plasterwork and appealing to Victorian England's tastes because of its beauty, practicality, durability, and sanitary properties. Lincrusta designs quickly found their way into notable buildings throughout the world." (https://lincrusta.com/about-us/;

accessed 12 October 2025) It was made with gelled linseed oil and wood flour, spread over a base of paper.

The demand for inexpensive substitutes for costly materials made

Lincrusta immediately popular, for in its three-dimensionality and its ability to be further enhanced with paint, it looked like the leather panels that had been the property of the wealthy. It could also be painted any color, to match whatever interior it was destined for. Additionally, it came in a huge number of patterns, as we can see from the circa 1878 Catalogue of Designs of Lincrusta-Walton, Manufactured by Fr. Beck & Co. (New York: Fr. Beck, n.d.). This 209-page catalog shows more than a thousand available patterns. The popularity and affordability of these wall coverings have kept them in production for more than a century, and Wallpaperdirect offers a large number of these elegant patterns.

The Lincrusta website points out that these papers were used in six staterooms on the Titanic and in the United States White House, among hundreds of other locations.

One of their strong selling points, as already mentioned, is that they

come in white or off-white and can thus be painted any color the buyer wants. The Lincrusta site says: "Supplied in its natural nude colour, Lincrusta provides a textural blank canvas onto which you can project your own style, to create a truly unique look. The unrivalled depth of these embossed wallcoverings allows them to be decorated using a variety of different paint effects and colour combinations. You could choose a flat, neutral scheme or opt for a contrasting metallic colour to add a luminous edge."

And of course, when a product becomes popular, it engenders

rivals. A cheaper version, called Anaglypta, followed in 1887, invented by Thomas Palmer. His version was made from wood pulp and paper. One of the virtues of these thick three-dimensional papers is that they can cover defects in walls. One can cover cracks, indentations, or scrapes rather than spending the time and money to repair them.

The modern version sold by Wallpaperdirect seems to be made not from paper but from some flexible, plasticized material that looks indestructible and will hold its shape under the pressure of rollers or brushes for painting. I would categorize this a "proto-paper"" a paper-like substitute that functions the way paper does, but is not made from macerated, matted fibers. This category includes papyrus, amate, tapa, and modern materials like Yupo and this new type of wallcovering.

Wallpaperdirect has substantial holdings of both of these lines of wall coverings. As I have said many times in my columns, the world of decorated paper is endless. With Lincrusta and Anaglypta, we see new techniques and materials of manufacture creating papers of infinite variety, high quality, and great beauty. Wallpaperdirect brings large numbers of them to us all in one place.

I Hand Papermaking Newsletter, April 2014, Issue 106; April 2019, Issue 116; and October 2020, Issue 132.

2 Akiko Bush, "An Introduction to Modern Textiles: The Wrong Impression," Dwelling 1o, No. 5 (2010):122.

— Sid Berger

Sidney Berger is Director Emeritus of the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, and a professor on the faculty of the library schools at Simmons University and the University of I-linois at Urbana- Champaign. He and his wife Michèle Cloonan put together the Berger-Cloonan Collection of Decorated Paper (about 22,000 pieces), now in the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University.

COMMUNITY AND CULTURE

Triton & Shell, From Collection to Creative Space

In this feature, Andreas Fatouros shares the story behind Triton & Shell, Greece's first nonprofit hub dedicated to handmade paper, book arts, and con-servation, exploring its archive, exhibitions, and community impact.

A view of the Triton & Shell Archive.

tall began in 2008. I was twenty years old and in my second year

of studies in art conservation. That was when I met Professor Konstantinos Choulis, a specialist in paper conservation whose teaching sparked in me a deep passion for both the preservation and the nature of paper itself. His influence was decisive, the starting point of a journey I could not have foreseen.

I began collecting worn documents and damaged books just to restore them. At the same time, I already had the collector's instinct: my earlier collections included Olympic memorabilia and old Greek music scores. It was the materiality of paper that first drew me in; its texture, its fragility, and the traces of time and human presence left on its surface. My undergraduate thesis was dedicated entirely to the classification and documentation of paper deterioration. I studied every kind of damage on paper.

Over time I came to approach paper not only as a conservator but also as an artist, a researcher, and, finally, a collector. My curiosity about its material qualities expanded into a desire to understand its history and cultural legacy.

It began as a couple of books on a shelf and gradually grew into a unique collection of objects related to papermaking. Two important milestones marked this transformation: in 2013, I acquired a copy of Dard Hunter's Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (1943 edition), and in 2015, my first historic papermaking mould

(1923), made by E. Amies & Son, Maidstone, once used at the Hayle Mill paper mill in England.

As the years passed, my collection grew along with my fascination for the history and art of paper. In the beginning, my studio was no more than a small table in the hallway of my home, surrounded by bookshelves. Later, when I moved in with my partner, I was able to dedicate an entire room to my workspace and growing archive. There, I could better organize my books, tools, and materials while also expanding my artistic practice.

Eventually, however, the room could no longer contain the expanding

collection. The simple idea of a private studio began to evolve into something more ambitious: a space that would not only house my work and collection but also host temporary exhibitions and workshops on papermaking and bookbinding.

The search for a location began in 2021. I first came across the current space in 2022, but it took a full year before it officially became mine. At the time, it was in poor condition and required a complete renovation. The work was extensive and time-consuming. Finally, in May 2025, the doors of the new space opened to the public.

The culmination of this long journey is Triton & Shell-Paper Art

Hub, the first nonprofit space in Greece dedicated exclusively to the history and art of hand papermaking and bookbinding. Conceived as a multifunctional environment, it operates simultaneously as an archive, an exhibition venue, and a fully equipped conservation and papermaking workshop.

At the heart of Triton & Shell is an archive dedicated to the global history of handmade and industrial paper, bookbinding, and the allied arts. Built over many years, the collection now comprises more than 3,000 items: rare books, tools, papermaking moulds, ephemera, and handmade objects.

It is structured into three main categories:

Books & Periodicals: approximately 1,500 titles in more than twelve languages, including historical and technical manuals, artist books, exhibition catalogues, and publications on papermaking, conservation, and book arts.

Ephemera & Documents: more than 1,000 prints, photographs, letters,

sample books, stamps, and other materials documenting paper-related practices.

Three-Dimensional Objects: more than 6oo items, such as papermaking moulds, dandy-roll parts, watermarks, bookbinding tools, ink-stick moulds, and handcrafted paper artifacts.

I am especially proud that the person who first inspired me is now my partner in this endeavor. Dr. Konstantinos Choulis, once my professor, now a collaborator and mentor, is part of the founding team of Triton & Shell. I am equally grateful to share this journey with calligrapher and visual artist Maria Genitsariou, as well as with my partner in life and in this project, writer and editor Evgenia Manda. Their trust, insight, and presence have been fundamental to turning this vision into a living space for paper.

I would also like to thank all the artists and paper lovers who donated

and entrusted their books, documents, and tools to us, helping the collection grow and allowing us to reconstruct one more piece of paper history with each contribution.

Triton & Shell is still in its early days, but it already feels like a home, not only for my collection but for a growing community of artists, conservators, and researchers who share a love for paper. I hope this space continues to nurture fruitful dialogue, experimentation, and care for a material that has shaped so much of our cultural memory, and which still has so much to say.

If you are in Athens or planning to visit and you love paper, we warmly invite you to experience our first exhibition. Handmade Paper:

From Asia to Europe opened alongside the launch of Triton & Shell in May 2025. It presents historical tools, materials, and artifacts from the archive and will remain open through February 28, 2026. Admission is free. The exhibition is open Wednesdays, 10:00-14:00, and Fridays,

17:00-20:00.

— Andreas Fatouros

Andreas Fatouros is a conservator, artist, and collector based in Athens, Greece. He specializes in the conservation of paper-based materials and in the interpretation of cultural heritage through artistic and technological approaches. In 2025, he founded Triton & Shell-Paper Art Hub, the first non-profit center in Greece dedicated to handmade paper and the book arts. His work combines archival preservation, research, and experimental bookmaking (using unconventional materials), with a focus on building a living connection to the global history of paper.

A PAPER CONVERSATION

Daniel Heyman on Pulp Painting and

Papermaking

In this feature, Julie Pereira and Daniel Heyman have a conversation inspired by Heyman's most recent exhibition, Adrift, at the Hotchkiss School, which was on view September 5 through October 11, 2025.

n the fall of 2025, Daniel Heyman presented twenty-seven pulp

• painting works in a solo show at the Hotchkiss School. Impressed by the range and scope of the exhibition, Julie Pereira, an artist with a studio nearby in Torrington, Connecticut, reached out to Heyman with her thoughts on the work and contacted Hand Papermaking Newsletter to share a conversation about his process and practice with regard to paper.

Julie Pereira (JP): Daniel, Congratulations on Adrift, your show at Tremaine Gallery! I loved seeing this collection of work all together.

Particularly the variation in mark making with the fibers: the bold, thick, chunky kozo parts like the impasto of the pulp world, contrasting with the delicate water splashes and the layered skies. It was wonderful to see the fully crafted folding screens and the suspended works displayed so beautifully in the space.

The portraits show a depth of expression, capturing a feeling of quiet contemplation as well as moments of humor and desperation. It is inspiring to see this work and the directions you are going with it. I loved all of the multipanel pieces and your inclusion of the colored pencil work as well. The sail piece with the silver leaf had so much drama and really came alive as I walked up to it and around it.

Tell me more about the processes and ideas that you're doing here.

How did this work develop over time?

Daniel Heyman (DH): Julie, first I want to thank you for coming up from Torrington to see the show. I know that northwest Connecticut is a bit remote for most people, so I really appreciate your taking the time to

8. HAND PAPERMAKING NEWSLETTER

come and take a serious look.

I started working with paper fiber while I was leading RISD grads and undergrads to Japan for their January winter sessions from about 2010 until 2020. Each year we would spend eight to ten days in residence at the Awagami Paper Factory, where the students would learn traditional Japanese papermaking, starting with cutting their own kozo trees down on a mountain hillside field. It was a wonderful way to teach, as the factory is in a small remote village, and the students were exposed to a way of life as well as the "how-to" of papermaking.

Over the years I became more and more interested in using dyed pulps to paint with, relying on my background as a painter. The material felt good in my hands, and I quickly learned to use unbeaten cooked bark-both dyed and natural-as a drawing material along with beaten pulp to layer color. Eventually I asked if I could return to the factory after the students left at the end of the term to work on my own, which Fujimori Yoichi generously allowed me to do. One thing led to another, and I started spending weeks and even a month at a time at Awagami,

working in a corner of the factory building and learning a great deal from the master papermakers there.

Mr. Fujimori has always been very interested in supporting contemporary artists who use Japanese papermaking materials and techniques to make contemporary art, and I guess they were impressed enough with what I was doing to invite me back several times. Without access to this incredible studio and the knowledge of Fujimori and the other staff, I could not have moved forward.

JP: What artists, materials, or events inspired your direction?

DH: That is a large question, and I'll start with materials. From the first time I felt cooked kozo, I was in love with its soft, silky texture. I love the way it slips through your fingers, and how you can pull it apart or spread the fibers wide open without tearing the string of fiber. I love the luster of a sheet made from fresh kozo, as well as its humbleness. It is, after all,

"just a sheet of paper." I fell in love with mitsumata fiber in the same way, first through the magic of pulling the fiber off a steamed bush.

It all comes off at once, and you are left holding a bush turned inside out. As a finished sheet of paper, mitsumata is so warm compared to kozo; it recedes where kozo is bold and forward. I fell in love with gampi through seeing it as paper first, and since I have never seen a gampi plant or prepared the fibers myself, I unfortunately have not experienced those stages.

I have always loved color, which I consider a material, and I love running my hands through neri, or formation aid. I am a very tactile person (I love to cook).

I have a long list of artists I love, and my answer to what artists inspired me will be incomplete. But I can say that when I was nineteen or twenty, I was undone by the work of Claude Monet, and I still am, if I remember to look at his work. When I started to build up colored fibers by pouring bowls of colored fiber one atop another, images of Monet's landscapes came rushing back, so I will hold him out as a major influence particular to my paper work.

More recently, and perhaps more to the point, I love Japanese paintings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I love the boldness of their designs, the drama that seems held in suspense. Last summer, while I was working on many of the pieces in this show, I was able to visit Chishaku-in Temple in Kyoto and see wonderful paintings by Hasegawa Tohaku.

Lastly, in the last year or so I discovered two different artists (one actually a husband-and-wife pair) who lived half a globe apart and about fifty years apart in time, whose work has stayed with me in a very strong way. In July 2024 in Venice I came across Berlinde De Bruyckere's massive sculptural installation, City of Refuge III, at the Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore. De Bruyckere built her sculptures out of rawhide and wax, creating majestic, otherworldly angels like none I have ever seen before. Then last summer, outside Tokyo in the village of Saitama, I saw Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi's series of massive ink paintings, The Hiroshima Panels. These ink-on-paper panels were the most explicit and direct confrontation of the bombing of Hiroshima I have ever seen, without ever being maudlin or obvious.

I know it may seem strange to connect these very different works, but their sheer scale and ambition stick in my mind like a glove thrown in challenge to the ground, inspiring me to go for broke while at

JP: I understand that in conjunction with showing the work at Hotchkiss, you spent some time in residence at the school. How did this show and exchange come about, and how did the students engage with your work and process? What surprised you, or them, during this time?

DH: The show came about through an old friend who introduced me

Gampi kozo sample.

to Terri Moore, a Hotchkiss teacher who is also the gallery director.

Terri looked at my work and invited me to have a show and a teaching residency. I enjoy teaching, and as I am on sabbatical this year, I had the time. I worked directly with several classes, mostly juniors and seniors, on woodblock-printing projects, and at some point we visited my exhibition together. Students have such incredible insight, maybe because, as young people, they are exposed to so many new ideas one after another and are trying to make sense of it all. Out of the blue, one of the students asked if the red and black strings of bark hanging down under the clouds in Swimming Against the Storm, which for me had always been rain and lightning in a bad storm, were a reference to the black rain that fell on Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. I was shocked that she was making that connection. I hadn't thought of it as a reference, even though I have visited Hiroshima several times.

JP: What's next? Is there a discovery or pathway you're excited to investigate further? Will you be going back to Awagami soon? Any plans to offer workshops?

DH: I plan to go back to Awagami for three weeks in January if I can swing it. It has always been my dream to create a full room's worth of paper panels or shoji, maybe ten sheets in both depth and width that tell a story across the space of a room. That means forty panels, which I think I could do. In 2023 I created an installation of thirty hanging pulp-painted banners that encouraged viewers to move through a particular path, with each succeeding group of images visible only after the preceding set had been taken in. I like the interaction of a visual story and a specific space, something very much embedded in Japanese visual culture. As for workshops, I will be teaching a class on simple Japanese bookbinding in Truro on Cape Cod in November, and after that I'll be back to teaching at Princeton in the spring of 2026.

— Daniel Heyman and Julie Pereira

Daniel Heyman makes paintings, prints, and drawings and works directly with paper fiber to make paper-pulp paintings. His work addresses a variety of subjects including the landscape, human rights, and the climate-change crisis. Heyman, (Dartmouth AB 1985; UPenn MFA 1991), is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010) and Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2009). He has been artist in residence at Dartmouth College, Mac Dowell, Yaddo, Fine Arts Work Center, and several times at the Awagami Paper Factory in Japan, where he works on pulp paintings using kozo, gampi, and mitsumata fibers. Daniel Heyman was born in New York and lives with his husband in Rhode Island.

LISTINGS

Hand Papermaking Newsletter's Listings now focus only on the most cur-rent, most relevent news, events, and opportunities. For a more complete list of organizations, studios, and institutions that make paper, educate people about handmade paper, or present programming or exhibitions related to handmade paper visit our website at www.handpapermaking.org/news-resources/ listings

PUBLICATIONS

As Good As Our Tools, Equipment and Tool Makers for Hand Papermak-ing by Aimee Lee. For over two millennia, humans have made paper by inventing, improving, and adapting a range of tools and equip. ment to effectively create the best product. In the zoth century, Euro-pean-style hand papermaking experienced a revival made possible by specialized studios and tools. This field of creative hand papermaking is small but robust, enabled by a key group of people: the toolmakers.

These skilled makers build the equipment and tools essential to making paper by hand but receive little attention. This survey of fifteen makers across four continents gives center stage to these remarkable people, illuminating their personal paths towards these niche prac-tices. Unfortunately, only a few are training successors while they age into retirement, even as interest in hand papermaking booms, but their stories inspire renewed commitment to learning how to make things - and, more importantly - how to make things work. Here, we listen to their voices, bring sustained attention to their vital contribu-tions, and encourage a new generation of builders and tinkerers to advance hand papermaking. With 390 illustrations. Available here to purchase https://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/I42012

WORKSHOPS

The Japanese Paper Place will be hosting a Gel Plate Monoprints on Washi workshop on February 7th, loam to 4pm EST. Add your personal flair and energy to your gel-plate monoprints through the creation and use of custom stencils and masks. Custom stencils (and masks) are a great way to personalize and energize your work, and they don't have be complicated to be effective — they can be either quite simple or as intricate as you wish to make them! Have all the creative fun and effects you get with store-bought stencils, by devising and using (and re-using) your own as part of your process! In this one-day workshop we will work with different creative approaches to making our stencils and masks, followed by printing onto a selection of beautiful washi papers. We'll also touch on materials and organization for your stencils as well as composing with them. Visit https:// www.japanesepaperplace.com/workshops/ to learn more.

An exciting workshop is happing at the Penland School of Craft.

During the Papermaking in Layers workshop with Nicholas Cladis, students will develop expertise in how to process fibers into sheets of handmade paper and learn a range of decorative processes. We will also think about how hand papermaking can respond to place, community, and ecology. With lots of experimentation, students will make stacks of handmade paper and original works of art with handmade paper as the primary medium. Work will culminate in the creation of site-responsive paper art installations around Penland's campus, enabling students to respond physically and spiritually to these locations while learning practical skills for translating handmade paper into a three-dimensional space. In addition to making work from layers of paper and pulp, we will approach papermaking itself as a layered discipline with strata of people, processes, and traditions that embody fluidity and time. Visit https://penland. org/workshop-search/Pitems=15&season=spring to learn more and explore other upcoming workshops!

An exciting workshop on Inclusions will be hosted at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center by Zofia Chamera. This workshop will be on February 22, 10:30 am - 4:30 pm. This one-day workshop is designed for artists working in collage and those interested in exploring handmade paper as a dynamic art medium. Participants will learn the double couching method and experiment with both opaque and translucent pulp fibers. Through hands-on instruction, you'll create unique paper-based collages by embedding materials, exploring scale, unconventional shapes, and unexpected inclusions. Come ready to push the boundaries of the collage as an art medium and discover new possibilities within handmade paper. For more information, visit https://pyramidatlanticartcenter.org/event/inclusions-feb2026/

Layers in Pulp: A Stenciled Approach to Papermaking with Jaime Capps at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts is happening February 28, 10:00 AM 4:00 PM. Get ready to play with pulp! In this relaxed, hands-on studio workshop, dive into the colorful world of stenciling with pigmented pulp on freshly formed sheets of handmade paper We'll kick things off with a quick intro to pulp prep-covering the basics of beating, sheet forming, and mixing up colors for pulp paint.

Then, the real fun begins as we explore how to use stencils to build layered, vibrant images. You'll use mylar to cut your stencils—scis-sors and X-Actos at the ready! Feel free to bring stencils you may already have and your ideas. For more information on this workshop, visit https://mnbookarts.org/events/layers-in-pulp-a-stenciled-ap-

proach-to-papermaking-february-2026

Paper Making with Natural Fibers at the Paper Making with Natural Fibers. March 28 - 29, II-00 am - 3:00 pm. Explore the art of paper making in this two-day workshop with Judi Tentor! Explore the infinite possibilities of embedding, coloring, and lamination in this hands-on introduction to the basic techniques of western paper making! Students will engage in paper making practices as they learn how to form sheets with moulds and deckles, pulp painting/ pouring, and embedding materials such as flower petals, leaves, and fibers. Over the course of two days (II-3 on first day, II-2 on second day), students will work with various plant fibers suitable for paper making, including cotton, hemp, and abaca as well as recycled ma-trias, are wolks audi indee diskir one intonation, visit

https://allevents.in/carson/paper-making-with-natural-fibers-mar-

28-and-29-2026/100001971484322680

EVENTS

Enjoy the Papermaking Open House: Rag Preparation, February 20, 2:00 - 4:00pm at Common Press at the University of Pennsylvania.

See how rags from our community cloth collection are processed in preparation for papermaking. Stop by the Common Press to participate in removing buttons, tags, and zippers and cutting the fabric into tiny pieces.

The Newport Paper & Book Arts Festival

XXIX is happening April 23, 24, and 25. This fesitval celebrates papermaking and manipu-lation, surface design, book arts, collage, nature printing, mixed media, and more.

Our 2026 festival will take place in Newport, Oregon and the surrounding communities.

For more information, visit https://coastarts. org/newport-paper-book-arts-festival/

screenprinting, darkroom photography, or ceramics (tacilities reopen 2026). For more formation, visit https://wsworkshop.or sidencies/studio-workspace-residenc

EXHIBITIONS

An exciting exhibiton will be closing soon at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Paper-making January 30. Legacies in Paper: Nancy Cohen, Sara Garden Armstrong, & Helen Hiebert, What does it mean for an artist to spend years exploring a material? How deep an understanding and visual vocabulary can be created with time and an extensive investigation. The three artists featured in the inaugural triennial series Legacies in Paper have spent a lifetime exploring the boundless qualities of handmade paper. The Paper Museum celebrates the endless vast possibilities of hand papermaking and the dedication to the creation of meaningful excellent art by Nancy Cohen, Sara Garden Armstrong, & Helen Hiebert. Follow this link for other upcoming exhibitions https:// paper.gatech.edu/upcoming-exhibits

Call for Artists: Paper as Politic. Application Deadline: February 1. The Paper as Politic exhibition invites artists working with paper-materially, conceptually, and politically— to submit work for inclusion in an exhibition presented during the 2026 Paper as Politic symposium at George Mason University.

This exhibition centers paper as a charged site: a surface of labor, memory, and resis-tance. For more information, visit https:// https://www.masonexhibitions.org/events/

call-for-artists-paper-as-politic/utm_source=

We want to promote your projects!

I you have any news, upcomin vents, or open opportunities le us know at newsletter @hand-

papermaking.org

PENLAND CRAFT

SCHOOLOF | PENLAND.ORG

Paper Made II is on view at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art until February 1. Developed by Fiber Art Now magazine (est. 20I1), Paper Made II is an international, juried exhibition of contemporary art created from paper, paper product, or using a papermaking process. Coming to FWMoA for its second iteration, this exhibition features 22 of the 40 juried artists whose works range from compelling two-dimensional works to large-scale, sculptural installations. These artists continue to show us what can be done creatively with paper, transforming this humble material into the realm of fine art.

OPPORTUNITIES

Applications for the Studio Workspace

Residency at Women's Studio Workshop open February 15. The Studio Workspace Residency is an opportunity for artists to create new work and fully immerse themselves in WSW's supportive environment.

We invite applications from artists at any stage of their careers. This residency gives artists the necessity of time and space, an uninterrupted period to live and work away from the stresses of daily life. Artists may choose to work in any one or more of our studios: intaglio, letterpress, papermaking,

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR DONORS

Hand Papermaking acknowledges recent contributors to our nonprofit programs. All donations are greatly appreciated and tax deductible. Our tax ID number is 52-1436849. Call or write for information on annual giving levels, automatic monthly gifts, and other ways to support us.

BENEFACTORS: Mark Tomasko, Beck Whitehead

PATRONS: Tom Balbo, Lisa Cirando, Sid Berger & Michèle Cloonan, Sue Gosin, Darin Murphy, Erik Saarmaa, Michelle Samour, Kenneth Tyler UNDERWRITERS: Yousef Ahmed, John Cirando, Vijay Dhawan, Lois & Gordon James, Ingrid Rose

SPONSORS: Eric Avery, Tom & Lore Burger, Kerri Cushman, Susan Mackin Dolan, Devie Dragone, Michael Durgin, Michael Fallon, Jane Farmer, Kim Grummer, Helen Hiebert, Robyn Johnson & Peter Newland, Debora Mayer, Marcia Morse, Robert Specker, H. Paul Sullivan, Mina Takahashi, Aviva Weiner, Kathy Wosika

DONORS: May Babcock, Alisa Banks, Tom Bannister, Sarah Louise Brayer, Ann Cicale, Amanda Degener, John Dietel, Karla & Jim Elling, David Engle, Jerry Exline, Helen Frederick, Lori Goodman, Richard Haynes, Margaret Heineman, Shireen Holman, Kyoko Ibe, Jamie Kamph, Enid Keyser, June Linowitz, Julie McLaughlin, Sharon Morris, Jeannine Mulan, Anela Oh, Elaine Nishizu, Nancy Pike, Alta Price, Joy Purcell, Renee Rogers, Annabelle Shrieve, Thomas Siciliano, Kathleen Stevenson, Bernie Vinzani, April Vollmer, Paul Wong

SUPPORTERS: Marlene Adler, John Babcock, Timothy Barrett, Kathryn Clark, Nancy Cohen, Marian Dirda, Iris Dozer, Tatiana Ginsberg, Mabel Grummer, Guild of Papermakers, Lisa Haque, Robert Hauser, Viviane Ivanova, Kristin Kavanagh, Susan Kanowith-Klein, David Kimball, Steve Kostell, Lea Basile-Lazarus, Aimee Lee, Winifred Lutz, MP Marion, Edwin Martin, Lynne Mattot, Ann McKeown, Tim Moore & Pati Scobey, Catherine Nash, Nancy Pobanz, Melissa Potter, Brian Queen, Dianne Reeves, Carolyn Riley, Michele Rothenberger,

Pamela Wood

FRIENDS: Jack Becker, Anne Beckett, Lee Cooper, Elizabeth Curren, Dorothy Field, Lucia Harrison, Margaret Miller, Deborah Sternberg-Service,

Don Widmer

IN-KIND DONATIONS: Janet De Boer, John Gerard, Dard Hunter III, Microsoft Corporate Citizen-ship, Steve Miller

CONTRIBUTORS TO OUR 2025 AUCTION FUNDRAISING EVENT: Amanda Degener, Frances JJ, James Ojascastro, Lesley Dill, Dieu Donné, Round Top Paper, Ilze Dilane, Heike Berl, Kyoko Ibe, Amy Richard, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Paper Circle, The Befuddled Press, Tom Balbo, Arnold Grummer's Papermaking, Sophia Hotzler, Susan Mackin Dolan, Red Hot Fibre, Carriage House Paper, Janus Press, Cave Paper, Tasniya Tarmin, Lynn Sures, Darin Murphy, Hook Pottery Paper, Aimee Lee, Botanical Colors, Washi Arts, Lois James, Helen Hiebert.

AND THANKS TOO TO OUR SPONSORS

Arnold Grummer's, the Papertrail Handmade Paper & Book Arts, Penland School of Craft, The Robert C. Williams Papermaking Museum, Carriage House Papers and Dieu Donné.

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