Hand Papermaking is excited to announce the imminent publication of the fourteenth edition of our celebrated handmade paper portfolio: The Language of Color. This will be a stunning collection of paper works based on a complex and weighty theme: What does color mean? In the hands of a skilled papermaker, color has a range of aesthetic qualities from deep translucency, earthy softness, rich opacity, to a blush, ethereal tone. In a wider sense, however, how we read and connect with color reflects reinforced cultural meanings, where we come from, even where we are emotionally at a given time and place. Through color one can examine relationships of belonging and otherness and investigate nuances of emotion, spirit, place, and culture. Color in paper communicates in ways that we cannot through words, opening us up to connecting with others and transforming our understanding of the material and our community.
Included in the portfolio are 18 artists from Europe, Africa, and all corners of the United States whose 16 works were chosen by curator Hong Hong. To represent the “language of color” in paper, some artists built their works with an emotive and compelling pastiche of colored pulps. Other artists delved inward into their own psychic understanding of what color means to them and to others. Still others made works inspired by external sources: The natural world, ecological systems, science, cosmology, literature, and personal histories. The final result is a portfolio that is rich in color, meaning, and import.
The 18 artists who contributed 16 works to The Language of Color are: Rebecca Alm & Amanda Degener, Tom Balbo, Kerri Cushman, Katharine Delamater & Colleen Lawrence, Sue Carrie Drummond, Gina Fowler, Leah Frankel, Susan Gosin, Viviane Colautti Ivanova, Genevieve Lapp, Henry Obeng, Anela Oh, Ingrid Schindall, Megan Singleton, Maria Amalia Wood, and Derick Wycherly.
A custom-made clamshell box houses the work, each in a protective folder imprinted with the artists’ names. A hand-bound booklet, with letterpress-printed cover, contains statements from the artists, details about each piece, and commissioned essays by Hong Hong and writer Bridget Donlon.
The portfolio was edited by Mina Takahashi and designed by Steve Miller. Booklet covers were letterpress printed by Steve Miller, and the clamshell boxes were made by Colin Urbina of Low Mountain Bindery.
The edition is limited to 125. All proceeds benefit Hand Papermaking, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the traditions and contemporary development of handmade paper and paper art.
The price for this unique, limited-edition collection of one-of-a-kind papers is $650, plus postage. But if you pre-order your portfolio now before December 20, 2022, you can take advantage of the special pre-publication price of $450.
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