Hand Papermaking as Collaborative Model

Practice 3
Studio Research from the Center for Book and Paper Arts
Material Assumptions: Paper as Dialogue
Starting in the Studios:
A New Model for Exhibitions
Abstract
In the summer of 2012, the Center for Book and Paper Arts mounted Material
Assumptions: Paper as Dialogue, which debuted newly commissioned artworks
in handmade paper by thirteen artists. Leading an independent study, Jessica
Cochran, curator, CBPA, and Melissa Potter, director, Book and Paper MFA
program, worked with three Interdisciplinary Arts students, Elizabeth IsaksonDado, Hannah King and C.J. Mace, to organize the exhibition. Uniquely,
this project bridged the Center offices, exhibition spaces, and papermaking
studios: not only did the student team assist with curating, installing and
marketing the exhibition, but also they produced handmade cotton and abaca
paper to the specifications of each artist; this paper was used to create a project
for the show.
Curatorial team:
Material Assumptions, June 15, 2012.
This report describes the background and outcomes of this multi-layered
exhibition project: what are the precedents for collaborative, commissiondriven exhibition making? What did the student curators learn about the
logistics and mechanics of paper production? How did the use of handmade
paper point artists in new directions?
Center for Book and Paper Arts
www.colum.edu/cbpa
February, 2013
Curatorial meeting (left to right): Trisha Martin, Hannah King, Jessica
Cochran, C.J. Mace, Elizabeth Isakson-Dado.
Columbia College Chicago’s Interdisciplinary
Arts Department was thrilled to collaborate with the
internationally-acclaimed New York-based fine art paper
studio Dieu Donné Papermill on our summer 2012
exhibition, Material Assumptions: Paper as Dialogue. To
create an interdisciplinary learning opportunity, curator
of exhibitions and programs for the Columbia College
Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, Jessica Cochran,
and I created a credit-bearing course for three current
Book and Paper MFA candidates: Hannah King, Elizabeth
Isakson-Dado, and C. J. Mace. They participated in all
aspects of the exhibition including curation, direction,
and hand papermaking production for exhibiting artists.
Book and Paper program MFA thesis candidate Trisha
Martin, generously donated her time and outstanding
papermaking skills to the project as well.
The project engaged the mission of the Interdisciplinary
Arts Department, which encourages students to
consider art in its relationship to practices, including
collaboration, discourse building, and education. In the
evolving contemporary art landscape, this approach
offers new ways to shape and define the book and paper
arts, and to consider their importance not only in cultural
production, but also in historical and social contexts.
Interdisciplinary Arts students produced handmade paper reflecting the aesthetic and conceptual concerns of
thirteen individual artists featured in the exhibition.
The projects ranged from large-scale translucent papers made from specialized fibers like abaca (a member
of the banana plant family), to laminated cotton sheets
with the thickness of chipboard. The work presented
hand papermaking collaboration as an artistic exercise
in and of itself, one in which the collaborator challenges
us to consider where, how, and at what moment art is
made through her ability to conceptualize and interpret
in this medium. This paper production also highlighted the possibilities of the Center’s beautiful and
well-equipped papermaking studio, one of just a few of
its kind in the world.
As part of student participation in the curatorial and
organizational aspects of the exhibition, students
created a blog and wrote curatorial essays featuring
their experiences with the process, as well as theoretical
and philosophical aspects related to the exhibition and
their own work in the medium. Their work deepens the
discourse in the field at large at a historical moment
in which the relevance of analog artistic practice is
considered in relation to digital media. It has been
remarkable to watch students explore paper
production, curation, and exhibition planning as
extensions of their interdisciplinary art practice.
A number of years before her untimely passing,
Center for Book and Paper Arts founder Marilyn
Sward worked with Dieu Donné founder, Sue Gosin
and me on a program called the Master Papermaking
Fellowship. It was a program intended to preserve
and promote the hand papermaking medium as an
art form through master and apprentice relationships
at flagship studios throughout the country including
both Dieu Donné and Columbia College Chicago.
This project extends Marilyn’s dream for the Center
and the field at large, and we were all tremendously
proud to carry on that legacy with this remarkable
exhibition opportunity.
Above: Sheet forming on a mould in the CBPA paper studio resulted in
papers that were specifically formulated for the exhibition’s artists.
—Melissa Potter, Assistant Professor,
Director of the Book and Paper MFA Program
Installation view, Material Assumptions: Paper as Dialogue.
Labor, Process, Dialogue:
Hand Papermaking as Collaborative Model
Collaboration, in its diffusion of individual authorship, places the
emphasis less on the who and more on the what. For us, working
together makes public a commitment to the process of exchange that
goes on whether it is an individual or group effort. Most important,
collaborating is more satisfying than working alone.
—Ann Hamilton and Kathryn Clark, View, 1991 1
Collaboration is an integral part of hand papermaking in a
studio environment, whether it is with master papermakers at a studio
like Dieu Donné, or in my experience as a graduate student learning the
craft as the basis for my own artwork. Many contemporary artists, like
Ann Hamilton and Kathryn Clark, consider the process of collaboration
increasingly important to a contemporary art practice because it fosters a
dialogue that aids to a deeper connection to concept as well as to craft. As
a way to focus more clearly on methodology behind the medium of paper,
my co-curators Jessica Cochran, Hannah King, C. J. Mace, and I decided to
work collaboratively, not only with each other, but also with the thirteen
artists we chose to exhibit in Material Assumptions. We created paper in our
studio that was directly tied to the concerns of each individual artwork,
and through that specific attention we could provide the artist with a
tailored raw material to serve as the impetus for their piece. This handmade
connection—creating the visual starting point—drew us further into each
artist’s intention; and as artists communicated their projects to us through
proposals and emails, we gained a deeper sense of what the commissioned
work would be, and how we would choose to arrange the work as curators
in the gallery.
Elizabeth Isakson-Dado at work in CBPA studios.
Each stage of our collaboration became a complex conversation: choosing
artists to participate in the show, finalizing the fibers to use in the handmade
paper, weighing the choices the artists would have in finished sheets, devising
a strategy to make samples so artists could easily understand the material,
negotiating the need of each artist based on his or her vision and proposal—
but, most of all, making all the various types and sizes of paper requested, by
hand. We approached and executed these tasks with mutual responsibility, and
the four of us quickly learned how to work together in a way that opened up the
possibilities for the exhibition.
It was a rare experience to work so closely with materials before the selected
artists have made the finished work. Hannah, C. J., and I carefully beat the
cotton and abaca fiber to the correct consistency, formed sheets of various
thicknesses and sizes and chose the best method to dry the paper according to
each artist’s proposal. The papermaking ritual became a collaborative model
for us, and strengthened our relationship to the material through the labor
of craft. My co-curators and I also engaged in a rigorous studio dialogue that
shaped the final outcome of the exhibition, beginning at the material level.
Each artist proposed working with paper in a different way, so our methods
in the studio had to be flexible enough to change with each individual artist’s
need. For example, we were acutely aware that the thin, translucent abaca we
made for paper engineer Matt Shlian would directly affect his intricately folded
origami forms. We chose to form Shlian’s paper in a large deckle box and then
cut the pieces down to size, so the final product could be as consistently thin
as possible. In my conversation with Ian Schneller, we discussed the specific
need for thick, absorbent sheets of cotton paper to allow him to easily mold the
paper into sculptural, audio horn speakers. We pulled Schneller’s paper by hand
with a mould and deckle from un-sized cotton and created several extra sheets,
An example of some of the paper pulp used to
create paper specifically for the exhibition’s
artists.
Susan Goethel Campbell working with the paper
made at CBPA.
their intention, and hopefully, their connection to the
work was deepened by our conversations with one another and our collaborative effort to supply our skilled
craft. As Ann Hamilton and Kathryn Clark proclaimed in
their artists’ statement for View, “In this, the work is both
the labor and the thing.” For us, the process of exchange
was the dialogue around making, and communicating
that process from hand papermaker to artist to
curator was integral to the success of the Material
Assumptions exhibition.
—Elizabeth Isakson Dado
1. Ann Hamilton and Kathryn Clark, View (Washington, D.C.:
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution,
1991). In Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, A Sourcebook of
Artists’ Writings, compiled by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkley:
University of California Press, 1996), 625–26.
Above: Matt Shlian holding one of his origami creations.
in case he needed more room for trial and error with the
new material.
To accommodate proposals for large installations,
including Susan Goethel Campbell’s matrix of detailed
relief prints and Anna Tsantir’s wall of overlapping sheets
of abaca, we had to dedicate an entire day in the studio to
each artist and keep in constant communication about
our progress. For Campbell’s piece, which required thirty
20” x 24” sheets, four of us worked at our own deckle box
station to form cotton sheets identical in texture, with
a fifth papermaker checking for the quality and consistency of the sheets. Tsantir’s proposal called for a large
quantity as well as a custom size, so we built custom
moulds that allowed us to form two sheets at once in an
oversized deckle box, a process that took three of us to
execute correctly each time, but greatly eased the total
work load. Ultimately, the planning, consideration, and
implementation of each artist’s request resulted in more
than one hundred sheets of handmade paper, formed
from 50 pounds of pulp, over the course of just five days.
For me, Material Assumptions was an educational
exercise and a dialogue through making that informed
the final exhibition. As artists, Hannah, C. J., and I
know that a connection to material is fundamental to
the outcome of an artwork. Making paper for the
participating artists brought us closer to understanding
Above: Ian Schneller sculpting with the thick absorbent
sheets created at CBPA expressly for his artistic process.
Above: Elizabeth Isakson-Dado and C.J. Mace making artists’ paper for Material Assumptions.
Above: Hannah King (left) prepares a mould and deckle; Beating another batch of pulp to make sheets for the exhibition’s artists.
Installation view with works from the collection of Dieu Donné, New York (from left) by Polly Apfelbaum, Glenn Ligon, and Ian Cooper.
Installation view with works by Susan Goethel Campbell (left) and Matthew Shlian (right).
Installation view: From left, commissioned works by Deborah Boardman and Julie Schenkelberg alongside works by Jessica Stockholder and Chuck Close
from the Dieu Donné Collection.
Curating as Pedagogy, Paper as Dialogue
The Center for Book and Paper Arts is perfectly situated within
the Interdisciplinary Arts Department—our studios, classrooms, gallery,
and offices steadily hum with graduate student and faculty activity; it is an
energizing atmosphere, and we are happy to harness not only the students’
enthusiasm, but also their ideas and growing expertise.
In January, 2012, Assistant Professor Melissa Potter and I initiated an
independent study opportunity, for which graduate students could receive three
credits for assisting me in the organization of our summer exhibition. From
curatorial concept to marketing and installation, each student was granted
creative agency in every stage of the process. I curated Material Assumptions:
Paper as Dialogue with assistance from Elizabeth Isakson-Dado (MFA 2013),
C. J. Mace (MFA 2012), and Hannah King (MFA 2013).
Consulting with each artist, the curatorial assistants not only produced the
paper, but also worked one-on-one with artists to determine the types, sizes,
and fibers best suited to each project. In this model, knowledge flows both ways:
our students are uniquely poised to share their sophisticated understanding
of paper with contemporary artists; in turn they glean from each artist yet
a new way the practice of hand papermaking can translate provocatively and
meaningfully into ever-wider realms of art production and discourse.
Artists have long immersed themselves in the practice of exhibition making
through the creation of artist-run spaces. Increasingly, however, artists are
feeling comfortable adapting more explicitly curatorial roles, within both
an aesthetic and a professional dimension, hence the common use of the term,
“artist as curator.”
To that end, the impetus for adding a pedagogical layer to our exhibitions at
the Center for Book and Paper Arts is as much about professional development
for our graduate students as it is about artistic growth: professionally,
I wanted to respond
intuitively to the
idosynchratic qualities of
the paper fabricated for
me by Hannah King. The
cotton and abaca fibers
hold gouache paint very
differently, and I was
challenged to remain
nimble in my encounter
with each sheet.
— Deborah Boardman
(see above and pg. 9)
exhibitions are an important public vehicle for display,
communication, and education, as we work to position
hand papermaking within the field of interdisciplinary
arts discourse. But for an artist working today, how can
the collaborative act of curating someone else’s project
translate into a more nuanced consideration of the way
one’s own work exists in the white cube—and then in the
world beyond it?
Because we have placed handmade paper into the
hands of visual artists for whom paper (much less
handmade paper) may not be a primary material, the
exhibition asks us to consider that handmadeness points
not to a certain visual or aesthetic trope, but to realms
of possibility.
Generative exhibitions like this one, those that result
in the production of new works, are essentially rooted in
an open and curious approach meant to provide artists
with support and resources to explore new ideas. At the
same time, they leave ample room for chance, and in the
process they complicate the role of the curators. Ranging
from the most practical of potential issues to the more
philosophical ones, we inevitably find ourselves asking—
will each artist feel satisfied with her contribution? Will
the resulting projects work cohesively within the space?
What if the finished works feel unresolved, or unfinished?
The same space, however, that allows for small
failures and insecurity on the side of both curator
and artist, also provides room for the extraordinary.
The Center for Book and Paper Arts, like countless
small alternative spaces, community arts centers and
research-driven academic galleries, is a center that exists
at a margin. We promote and teach complex practices
that are often difficult to classify, and are non marketdriven and thus underrecognized by the art world. As
such, it is our responsibility to create and offer models
for exhibitions that foster experimental and horizontal
flows of knowledge. In this case, from curator to student,
student to artist, and artist back to student, we realized
a productive dynamic in which, no matter how successful
the final exhibition, the process is the outcome.
Installation view: Works by Niall McClelland (left) and Annica Cuppetelli, and Cristobal Mendoza (right).
Kate McQuillen, Skirt, 2012
Deborah Boardman, Untitled, gouache on abaca paper, 2012
For years I have I have been making my horn speakers from recycled newsprint, baking soda
and dryer lint …by contrast, the handmade paper horns are pristine, stripped down to lines,
and completely naked. Only hand-pulled paper can come close to this organic purity.
—Ian Schneller (see below and pg. 9)
Ian Schneller, White Hornlet with Abaca Paper, 2012
Dan Devening, Untitled, mixed media on cotton paper, 2012
Participants
Melissa Potter
Director, Assistant Professor
Book and Paper Program, Interdisciplinary
Arts Department
Jessica Cochran
Curator of Exhibitions and Programs
Center for Book and Paper Arts
Elizabeth Isakson-Dado
Candidate, Columbia College Chicago
Interdisciplinary MFA in Book and Paper
Hannah King
Candidate, Columbia College Chicago
Interdisciplinary MFA in Book and Paper
C.J. Mace, MFA, 2012
Columbia College Chicago
Interdisciplinary MFA in Book and Paper
Material Assumptions: Paper as
Dialogue exhibition support
Kathleen Flynn and Lauren Shaw
Dieu Donné, New York
Trisha Martin and Boo Guilder
Columbia College Chicago
Material Assumptions featured new
works by the following artists:
Deborah Boardman, Annica Cuppetelli &
Cristobal Mendoza, Dan Devening, Susan
Goethel Campbell, Daniel Luedtke, Niall McClelland, Kate McQuillen, Zoe Nelson, Julie
Schenkelberg, Ian Schneller, Matthew Shlian,
Anna Tsantir
Additional works on view, courtesy
Dieu Donné, New York, by:
Polly Apfelbaum, Sonya Blesofsky, Mel
Bochner, Nina Bovasso, Beth Campbell, Chuck
Close, Ian Cooper, Matt Keegan, William
Kentridge, Glenn Ligon, Jessica Stockholder,
Richard Tuttle
Visit the exhibition blog at
materialassumptions.wordpress.com
Practice 3 was edited by Jessica Cochran and Steve Woodall;
template design by Clifton Meador; production design by
Kathi Beste. Photography by John Boehm, Ahmed Hamad,
Jeremy Jennings, and C.J. Mace.
Practice 3 is available for download at
www.colum.edu/bookandpaper
Full-length exhibition catalog is available for sale or download at
www.colum.edu/bookandpaper