New work from artist Andrea Peterson

Andrea Peterson completed this 40” x 72” pulp and print piece as part of an Indiana grant. One of the four works focusing on tree roots. The base sheet, made as one piece is kozo with the tree trunk drawn with pigmented cotton rag pulp. After the whole piece was dry she printed 2 wood blocks. This piece and others just came back from a gallery in Michigan. see all the images at hookpotterypaper.com

Student Spotlight on Dallas Price

Name: Dallas Price
Media area: Book Arts + Printmaking

Dallas Price’s senior project at Longwood University incorporates the fragility of handmade paper with untold stories of immigrants journeying into the United States. She works with Kozo to create casted water bottle forms that replicate the disposables found in the desert along these traveler’s paths. The bottle-like forms contain the personal story of an immigrant’s difficult trek and pursuit of the idealized American dream. Price navigates this heavy topic of immigration with great with sensitivity and respect, placing the emphasis on the individual rather than portraying immigration as a threat. Dallas Price presented this work at the 2015 FDH conference at eh Banff Center. She currently assists her professor, Kerri Cushman in papermaking.

Jennie Frederick ~ Kansas City, MO

Jennie Frederick Studio ~ Kansas City, MO
Above: Jennie Frederick beats a kozo drawing. Look for her new book "Black and White: Paper, Wax, & Kozo Constructions" to be published in April. For further info. contact her at jennie@jenniefrederick.com

“My current work utilizes techniques observed in the Mexican papermaking village of San Pablito (Puebla State), and the Lacandon Maya villages of Lacanhá and Nahá in Chiapas.

My work holds influences, committed to memory, from my observation and research during my travels to document indigenous fiber techniques. These include Otomi lace amate, Lacandon hu’un (Mayan bark cloth) with symbolic circular motifs, Ecuadorian Cuenca paños; observation of shigra making from pita fiber in the Amazon jungle, and Peruvian Chancay textiles, delicately woven and embroidered. All of these techniques use natural fibers in multiple element constructions.

I cook kozo (mulberry) fiber until pliable, then I create sub-structures which appear linear, delicate, light, and open. These sub-structures are lightly beaten with a lava stone and dried. Mulberry is tied onto this base along with other materials.

I am interested in the notion of textile structure as marker, using line, repetition, texture and symbol, particularly the circle, to document events in time. Light, delicate, open work structures become artifacts of time, events, people, actions, and places.”

Below: It is 10” x 10”. Materials: paper, encaustic wax, kozo, graphite and charcoal transfer. Charcoal transfer is accomplished by rubbing charcoal onto a piece of vellum paper. It is then turned charcoal down onto a waxed surface and a stylus tool is used to transfer it…you can get VERY deep black line quality this way…but it has to be done on a waxed surface.