Address | 3456 Coral Street |
---|---|
City | Greenbank |
State/Province | WA |
Postal Code | 98253 |
Country | USA |
Phone Number | 360-632-4129 |
E-mail Address | lisah@whidbey.com |
Website | www.fibreislearts.com |
First interest in hand papermaking process: 2003
First piece of handmade paper: 2003
First handmade paper artwork: 2006
Beginning of active practice: 2005
Click on an image for the full view.
Years teaching hand papermaking: 6
I am a fiber artist by training. I took a certification in advanced design and embroidery from City and Guilds of London, through Gail Harker, who is the only tutor to offer this certification in the United States. In one of my early classes, I was introduced to basic papermaking through the use of a blender and recycled junk mail. When I enrolled in my final course of classes, I learned that we would be working in embroidery on many non-traditional grounds, of which one was handmade paper. At that point, I bought Helen Hiebert's book, The Papermaker's Companion, and joined the online forum, Papermaking, hosted at YahooGroups. Through interaction on the forum, I joined the first Gathering of Western Papermakers, which was a small group from Oregon, Washington, and California that met for the first time in 2005 in Yachats, Oregon. Since then, we have met every year, with the location circulating among the members' homes. The gatherings were a huge influence on me, as the participants are of varying degrees of skill, and we would all bring whatever equipment, tools, and fibers we had locally, so I had a huge access to resources, methods and materials. The Gathering is always held in the spirit of sharing and collaboration, and the information exchange really helped me on my journey. For instance, one meeting was incredibly productive, with beating available from blenders, a ball mill, and various sizes of Mark Lander's hollander as well as by hand. There were 60 fibers ranging from local plants through kozo, and we have shared methods in various sheet-forming styles, with and without formation age, including enormous sheets. We also have shared a number of paper decoration techniques such as marbling, dyeing, printing, and painting. This group is probably the single most valuable influence on me. I use hand-made paper in a number of ways: ----cast paper shapes and flat sheets for use in my embroidered textiles ----sheets for bookbinding and print ----sheets over armatures for three-dimensional work ----casting for sculpture
null