Member Spotlight: Helen Hiebert

Helen Hiebert has released a podcast interview with Hedi Kyle and Ulla Warchol about their new book, The Art of the Fold: http://helenhiebertstudio.com/products/podcast/hedi-kyle-ulla-warchol/ This is part of her series of podcast interviews about papermakers and paper artists. Listen to the conversation about Hedi’s childhood in postwar Germany, when she made paper dolls and paper chains, among other things and how she ended up in the US after her studies in Germany. Ulla is Hedi’s daughter and grew up in and around Hedi’s studios in the Bay Area and New York City, where she went to the Cooper Union to study architecture. They talk about how this book came about, the process of creating the book – Ulla rendered the illustrations from Hedi’s hand drawn diagrams; her husband Paul Warchol did the photography; and there was a lot of discussion about the belly band! Hedi talks about a paper made in the Netherlands from the sails of old windmills, and discusses the storage system she uses for all of her models. And they talk about some of the clever inventions that are found within the pages of the book.

Each year Helen produces a how-to book and calendar called the Twelve Months of Paper. The 2019 calendar includes 12 new projects featuring origami, pop-ups, paper cutting, weaving, quilling, and folding; 4 guest artists: Trinity Adams, Béatrice Coron, Ann Martin and Shawn Sheehy; and this year she's donating $5 from each calendar sale to Paper For Water (you can find out more about them in her last podcast episode). Calendars are available here: https://helenhiebertstudio.com/shop/2019-twelve-months-of-paper-calendar/ 

Helen also recently wrote a guest post for Artsy called A Crash Course in Basic Papermaking. Check it out, and feel free to share it: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-crash-course-basic-papermaking