Top reasons for a writer to love paper making and paper marbling

It's not just black and white.

You get to use fun tools like eyedroppers and whisks made out of broom straws.

 A tray of water with paint floating on the surface is more fun than a laptop.

You do it while standing up and moving around.

Even the flawed pieces are great.

You can turn out a lot of pieces in an afternoon.

The above photos are from a Turkish marbling or "ebru" workshop at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Below is some of the paper I recently worked on at Cave Paper. While I didn't form the sheets, I did apply all the walnut crackle onto the sheets. This paper is spectacularly beautiful in person. It would make a gorgeous journal cover for....writing.

I just want to make things

My stress levels have been ratcheting upwards this week. Instead of sleep there's tossing, turning, and heart thumping. Maria Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill are living inside my TV and my brain. I try to write and there are 10 million ideas or no ideas. Either way the screen stays blank. I just want to make things. Why not make paper? Maybe I need more blank pages to sort out my thoughts.

At my internship, I made paper from old t-shirts.

I formed the sheets in the workshop and brought them home still damp.

They match my desk. I'm not sure what I'll do with them. Journal pages? Book covers? Collage?

Last night when I couldn't sleep I was googling portable paper beaters at midnight. 

And I googled Gordon Sondland's watch which let to some rich attorney flashbacks. Which lead to divorce flashbacks.

Both of these google forays were bad ideas. I don't need a portable paper beater (and I certainly don't need a $50,000 watch) because I have THIS PLACE blocks away and a paper making internship with a papermaker who is a genius. (Cave Paper will be part of an exhibition in 2022 at the MET in NYC called Paper Legacy.) 

I feel like an idiot on many days and yet life leads me to amazing people.

The Papermaker's Apprentice

A few weeks ago, I began an apprenticeship with a renowned papermaker.

The first thing I made was seed paper. I just learned a tiny bit of the involved process of paper making.

I spent all day at it. This paper has the seeds of native plants in it. Here is how it will be used by a  Native American artist.

The sculptures this artist makes will be left in the landscape, reseeding it to native plants.

I became smitten with the book arts after moving to Minneapolis. I've been learning some basic book construction.

Today I practiced the art of Japanese paper marbling.

I'm still writing. It's National Adoption Awareness Month, and I have resolved to write several pieces on Medium. com this month. Here's the free link to the latest one: https://medium.com/@demanuelclemen/top-secret-my-sons-name-2189f230b6b6?source=friends_link&sk=88543939d1a03e10c52b9c751bcf2f77

And here's where I'm interning: Cave Paper  Check out Amanda's artwork using her handmade paper.