And here we are.

old dishes that belonged to my mom

I'm well. Are you well?
I'm not really okay, though. I suppose you're not either.

I have candy dishes now. And I walk by and eat a piece 10 million times a day.
I hope my teeth don't fall out. How are your teeth?

French peach cake from Joy of Cooking

I bake things. I could bake ten million things and eat them all.

New shelf/bench in my dining room

This is my addition to my dining room. I frequently have 10 million guests at my 10 million dinner parties. So now there's extra seating.

This is orizomegami--the Japanese art of dying paper.

I have 10 million sheets of paper in this condo--handmade, dyed, marbled--suminagshi and Turkish. I think in another life I was a wasp and made my house out of paper.

What were you in your other life?

Leaving Coronaville/Day 7

We all live in Coronaville. 

And we can't leave. 

View from my desk.

Our governor, Tim Walz, was quoted in this morning's paper as saying that Minnesotans need to view this pandemic not as a blizzard, but as a winter. If it doesn't snow where you are, insert your own weather metaphor. Not as a wildfire, but as hell. Not as a hurricane, but as ....I dunno. A washing machine stuck in the spin cycle...for months?

I went to my paper making internship (because I work alone in a huge space) yesterday and spent seven hours dipping handmade paper into a vat of indigo. When I wasn't doing that I was spraying down handmade ochre paper for flattening. Ochre and indigo are two excellent colors to spend time with during a pandemic, I think. 

And my boss gave me an old scanner which I hope will function with my vintage macbook air. That would be swell. 

I've been calling friends. Have a date to FaceTime with more friends tonight. Gonna keep doing that.

The teaching myself to draw is crazy. After a couple of days, I realized I couldn't figure this out without help. I bought "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." And I'm very excited. What the author has to say about drawing is stupendously good. I just thought it was innate talent--that I don't have. You just need the skill set, she says. I hope she's right and I'm wrong. It's like learning to read, she says. 

The first assignment is to make three pre-instruction drawings. OMG.

How are you? What are you doing? How do you feel? Tell me.

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.