Papermaking week........

Having been given a week off from work I have decieded be very productive.....

Monday
Cooked up some Daylily that I harvested from my Minneapolis front garden, after the snow melt, back in 2008! Had packaged it up and sent it to myself a couple of years ago!!

Daylily (Hermerocallis): Stella D'oro

Then I finished making an A3 mould and deckle........adding a backing of plastic behind the nylon screening..........tomorrow it's of to Hackney Wick and the London Centre for Book Arts!

Carnations

carnations.......to keep my self sane during the retail insanity .... preping for a papermaking session!

these come from a couple of bunches of flowers, one of which was given to me on my birthday........

as we papermakers know.........after cooking the petals will loose their lovely colours but I will reintroduce them by pigmenting the gampi and kozo fibres.

ok......back to papermaking.........

Clean up the vats day! Small amounts of pigmented gampi, abaca and text pulps needed to be used up so I can start a-fresh. Sometimes the best stuff comes out of these sessions cause I'm not trying/thinking too much!

Workshops continued.......

The second two session workshop I was invited to teach was at The University of the Creative Arts, Farnham.......... Originally I was going to teach papermaking to the MA Book students but it was changed to a book making workshop - 'hard bound books'.......having taught it at Central St Martins under the tutelage of Douglas Bevins ..... I had the knowledge/samples/images necessary to put together a session that would enable the students to complete a couple of easy samples....that would lead them to create work pertaining to their own ideas in the following week.... a very enthusiastic pair of students - great to work with!

'Serendipitous Circles' by Tess

'French Coffee' by Alex - text will be added to the insides of the filter pages 

using coffee grounds

Workshops

Over the last two months I had the opportunity to work with 

two groups of MA students. 

The first was at the Colchester Institute on the MA Art Design and the Book. This was the third time David Jury has asked me to run this workshop. Last time we were only able to offer a one day class but this time we held a two day workshop. This means that during the second session the students could really work on their own practice using the papermaking techniques learnt in the first session. I thoroughly enjoy working with David's students and it was great to talk to them regarding their work especially the second year students because I had worked with them back in March.  

The Institute is located in the Minories Art Gallery which is an amazing building...had to take some photos.....

Gladioli Rag.........

Gladioli Rag

 A handmade paper response to the music of Scott Joplin's 'Gladioli Rag'......

Included pulp from the leaves and flowers of the gladioli plant onto which I added a layer of manipulated gampi fibers.