Experimenting
with pulp
I began working full-time at the Experimental Printmaking workshop in 1975. Making paper had become the dominant medium in the shop. I concentrated the pulp and worked it into a sheet, like making a clay slab. I called this technique free-casting, where I could push the pulp into various shapes without a mold. Other artists working there used paper pulp in different ways. Chuck Hilgar made large white manipulated sheets from vat molded pulp, Karen Laubhan buried fibers in the pulp and exposed them in grids, and Garner pushed and pressed the pulp into plaster molds.
Many invited artists were coming through to work at the Experimental Printmaking workshop, and we assisted them. Manual Neri, John Battenburg, Jules Heller, Nathan Olivera, Joe Zirker, Sam Francis, Claire Falkenstein, Fletcher Benton, Ken Noland, and Dan Glavin, to name a few. It was an exciting place to work. Information about hand papermaking was still hard to come by. We struggled with problems of warping, shrinking, and bleeding and gradually learned about the material. Somehow, I was introduced to Don Farnsworth, a master printer from San Francisco. He was extremely generous. He knew how paper worked and shared everything he knew about paper chemistry, including using retention aid, which allowed me to expand into colored pulps that didn't bleed. We were primarily working with cotton linter prepared in a 1 1/2lb. Valley Beater.
Paper Beginnings
A Journey Into Papermaking
After my initial experimentation with making small sheets of paper in my print studio in 1973, I began commuting to Santa Cruz, California, working at the school Garner Tullis had started, The International Institute of Experimental Printmaking. There was an etching press, an old platen press, but Garner's favorite was a 300-ton hydraulic press, which I used to create deep embossments on French etching paper and sheets of lead for outdoor prints.
Along with the presses, the shop had a Hollander beater for making rags into paper pulp, and Garner wanted me and several others to see what we could do with paper pulp. Still, nobody knew much about papermaking, but all of us working at the institute started working with cotton pulp in our unique ways.
PRINT STUDIO TO PAPER STUDIO
I returned to Santa Maria in 1976 and continued exhibiting and making paperwork using my free-cast paper technique. My print studio became a paper studio. I built molds, deckles, vats, my Maytag mixer, and large resin tables to work on. For the next few years, my artwork was still dominated by an emotional response to the wet viscous fiber, which I treated more like clay than liquid. I also began using more pigment in the pulp to achieve a more saturated color.
Elaine Koretsky introduced me to abaca fiber in 1979-80. I was awestruck by the way cotton and abaca reacted to light so differently, and I began to play them off with each other in my work. The interaction between fibers has continued to reflect in my work through the present.
I began teaching papermaking in 1977, giving nationwide workshops for schools and colleges. I continue to lecture and give workshops and demonstrations on specific techniques.