Edited by Tamara Valdez
The panel discussion, “Dieu Donné on Virginia Jaramillo with Susan Gosin and Paul Wong, moderated by Erin Dziedzic at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,” originally took place virtually on July 13, 2023, as part of the programming for Virginia Jaramillo’s first retrospective exhibition, Principle of Equivalence. What follows is an edited and condensed transcript. Hand Papermaking extends its gratitude to Susan Gosin, Erin Dziedzic, and Paul Wong for allowing us to publish excerpts from this insightful discussion.
The full panel discussion is available to watch on the Kemper Museum YouTube Channel.
Paul Wong (PW): In ’79, [Virginia Jaramillo] came to the studio because she was interested in watermarking, or looking at a watermark on a sheet, just a plain sheet of paper. I, obviously, showed her the process of forming a sheet, and couching it, and pressing it, and the equipment that we use [at Dieu Donné]. At the time, we were using smaller moulds that were more traditional. They were called laid moulds, which means that the screen surface is a series of wires that are laid down and then sewn onto the ribs, the wooden ribs of the frame that supports the screen…. The wire pattern that is inherent on the papermaking mould spoke to Virginia and she really in a way had to work with it for one thing, but she also wanted to make these images with a watermark device.
We had been playing around with using other kinds of materials to make watermarks. We even used masking tape and other kinds of materials that we could actually just attach to the surface of the screen. So, she decided she wanted to use contact paper that she would cut up into all these pieces and then assemble them onto the papermaking mould to create her image…. Sometimes we would form a single pull of pulp and then couch it down. And, then, we’d take the mould and dip it into another colored vat and then, couch that on top of the sheet that we had already couched. These two layers fuse together when it’s pressed and dried and becomes a single sheet of paper. You can see the different layerings, the different thicknesses of the pulp that are superimposing on themselves in certain pieces [of Virginia’s paperworks]. Subsequently, we started playing around with the different colored vats. Sometimes we would dip the watermark into one vat and let it drain as much as we could. And, then we’d immediately dip it into a different colored vat. And, sometimes what happens is that that second dip almost washes the pulp away from the watermarked–the blacked out–areas and replaces it with this secondary color. So, in some of these pieces, you can see almost a blending of the two colors.
Susan Gosin (SG): At that time, we [Dieu Donné] were grinding our own artist-quality pigments that you would use for an oil paint or any other kind of paint, rather than aqueous-dispersed pigments…. If you use the raw pigments, the physical quality of the pigment actually kind of...follows the lines of the watermark and leaves a deposit. You actually end up drawing, or creating drawn lines. Virginia used that quality of the physical pigment to make images, geometric images in the process that Paul was just describing.
Erin Dziedzic (ED): The series of paintings right before these are called the Stained Paintings. And, it’s a point in her practice where she really starts to introduce a lot more of this kind of aqueous, liquidy sense. And, they are paintings that are on raw canvases and they look like there’s veils of paint kind of coming through. Then, she moves into handmade papermaking which involves water, primarily. So, I love that kind of interest in that material without even knowing it. It’s almost like she sort of carried her painting practice right over into handmade papermaking…. Then, later on, you start to see works that are very dense and they have iridescence in them and they almost look like sheets of metal. Sometimes, the colors—like you were talking about Susan—deposit so specifically in certain areas that they start to read as almost like graphite drawings.
PW: Actually, even the Visual Theorems pieces were dried on metal because it would have been very difficult to lift them wet off of the felts because you have to separate the sheets from the felts after it’s pressed to be able to dry the sheets of paper. But these pieces are so delicate that you can’t really pick them up while they’re wet…it’s a very tedious kind of task.
ED: Virginia had always worked alone in the studio. She preferred to. She’s been known to say she even preferred working in the evening when it was quiet. She could be by herself. And, that’s not what happens [at Dieu Donné]. [laughter] I think what I find really interesting is that she challenged herself by shifting her practice into a collaborative one.
PW: While we were working, it was really a joy. [laughter] The work was very difficult to do, physically and mentally. You’re constantly thinking on your feet for the next combination, especially with the larger later pieces…. She would be throwing very thin buckets of color, different colored pulps, back and forth, from one end of the mould to the other to build up actually a thin layer of almost like a painted kind of couch…, each stage would determine for her what colors that she would use next. It was a really intense thinking process, and physically to actually do all of the stuff on a 40 x 60-inch mould was really challenging for us, as well.
By the end of the day, we were all, really, almost exhausted, [laughter] but we would just break out laughing, because the work was so exciting as each piece would finish…it would still be wet, but you could see the finished piece. [laughter]
SG: When Virginia came to use watermarking, she wasn’t doing something like identifying her name or whatever in watermark. She was using this process of blocking out, but not blocking out completely as you might with the stencil, but actually using the blocking process to create these veils…. It’s actually quite different than using stencils, for example. It was really interesting that Virginia was really thinking about this process and what it would offer her approach to making geometric shapes and veils of color. It was very distinctive.
We acted as translators from usually one medium to another, because most of the artists who came to Dieu Donné, and still that’s the case, they have not worked in handmade paper. So, we have to educate, and we have to translate. And, there’s that wonderful chemistry of interaction between the artist with their vision and our knowledge of the medium and finding new ways to help them create that vision manifest in paper pulp.
PW: In working with Virginia to develop these larger pieces, she wanted to throw the colored pulp all the way across the screen. And, the only way to do that was to use what is called a formation aid. And, this is coming out of Japanese papermaking. This material is very thick when it’s added to the pulp. It makes it much more viscous and it slows down the draining of the pulp…. It enabled her to take a bucket and actually literally throw the bucket of pulp all the way across the screen, which she would do repeatedly, running back and forth from end to end with different buckets to create one layer, but some of these pieces actually have five or six layers of different colored pulps. She’s constantly editing and deciding if something’s finished or if it needs more work…. It is pretty much like painting in her studio, but using a different material.
SG: Paul, I remember with the early ones, at least, that sometimes the thin, thin areas would dry sooner, that always happens, than the thicker areas. Sometimes you had to be really careful, you had to watch it as it was drying because parts would pop off [from the metal] before other parts…Those little, tiny bits of fiber on the edges of the deckled edge were so wonderful and Virginia so wanted to keep them. You have to very carefully put a razor blade or something like that underneath them, like, really carefully–so you can save all that beautiful material.
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