Aya Fiber Studio

Class Description:

Using common bio-waste found in your yard or your garden, along with Asian fibers, workshop participants will produce a portfolio of beautiful, high-quality papers, appropriate for book arts, collage, printmaking and other inventive, artful applications.

Starting with a thorough discussion of the many qualities handmade papers can carry, students will consider how different fibers and processing decisions influence the physical properties of the final sheet. A simple approach to Asian papermaking as well as ways of setting up a papermaking studio in your home or classroom capable of producing strong, well-considered papers without expensive equipment will be covered. Simple plans for building equipment as well and many samples of garden papers will be shared.

Students will leave with the information necessary to create pop-up guerrilla papermaking sites wherever they are, and a lovely portfolio of papers made during the week!

Participants will bring:

·        Plastic apron

·        Shoes that can get wet.

·        Rubber gloves (optional, we won’t be working with anything that stains or is poisonous).

·        Notebook and pen or pencil

·        If possible: several brown grocery bags stuffed with plant material such as: day

lily leaves, iris leaves, hosta leaves, (we are looking for the meaty leaves

and not flower petals). Feel welcome to email Mary Hark at hark@wisc.edu, if

you have access to a plant that might work but aren’t sure.)