Paper Making Workshop

April 30 2018,

On April 22, 2018 - on Earth Day, I attended an outdoor paper making class hosted by Wellesley College. The paper making class was guided by an artist from Connecticut, Hong Hong. The class consisted of 10 people, 6 of which were delightful Wellesley College students, and four locals. Laura and I were one of the four who participated in this fabulous workshop.

You will notice that this paper making workshop is not on a small scale. It was on a large scale. Be impress! Be excited!

This is an S.A.T. word that I had to look up. The definition of "Ephemera" is " 1. something of no lasting significance - usually used in plural 2. ephemera plural: paper items (such as posters, broadsides and tickets) that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles." It is interested that the artist, Hong Hong does not intend to keep her work of art, but recycles them back into another form of artwork usually after 3 - 4 years.

So her title of "Everlasting Ephemera" would be an oxymoron wouldn't it?

I hope you will enjoy the pictures as I enjoyed the process of participating in making something.

Hong Hong's pieces at the Jewett Art Gallery at Wellesley College.

That's Hong Hong with the orange jacket. And that's Laura on the left.

Before we could start the actual fun, we had to bang mulberry bark. Imagine 10 people in a room with rubber hammer and mulberry bark banging away. We spent about an hour doing this. Bang bang bang bang. It was so loud that we used ear protectors.

This is the start of it. There was a lot of water being used and dyes and some concoction of gelatin which was mixed into the pulp which made it feel like snots.

The pink stuff here is construction paper blended to make fiber / pulp. Note that I am not a paper making expert, so I whatever I am saying may not be right.

Below is what it looked like when we left the paper to dry.

That's me taking pictures.

Pictured below are the final results. Picture courtesy of Katherine Ruffin, Book Studies and Book Arts Program Director at Wellesley College.

It was a wonderful workshop that not only involved art, but a workshop and socializing with Wellesley College participants.

Explore! Make Art!

Quilt & Bitch