Papermaking in Time & Place
with Megan Diddie & Aya Nakamura
PAPER 631 001 | 1.5 credits | $100 Lab Fee
August 4 - 10, 2024
This class will explore paper’s origins and invite artists to consider the source of paper fiber, explore the ways techniques have evolved over centuries, and negotiate their own relationship to this ancient art form. Reviewing the methods that cultures throughout time have utilized to make paper, students will identify, responsibly harvest, and process prairie plants for various paper projects. We will utilize the Sugeta to explore Japanese papermaking, molds and deckles for Western papermaking, and freestanding molds for Nepalese papermaking. We will consider the work of other papermakers including Hong Hong, Zarina Hashmi, and Yoonshin Park and readings will include Dard Hunter’s The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft and Anish Kapoor’s “Silence and Transition”. Assignments will invite students to harvest natural materials, including bark, and explore the possibilities for turning what they forage into paper. In addition to demonstrations and assignments, students will have time to design and complete their own paper project. The artist's relationship to material, ritual, and history should be considered for the portfolio completed in class.
Megan Diddie is a Chicago-based artist working with drawing, animation, video, and paper-making. Her work explores relationships between human bodies, plants, landscapes, and built environments. Drawing is at the heart of her practice. For Diddie, drawing is a language used to work through ideas, curiosities, and messages from the unconscious. Her work with video and animation elaborates upon the drawings and is a tool for complicating ideas and refining stories. Material exploration of paper has been a huge part of her practice. She is currently creating a paper-making studio with artist and collaborator Aya Nakamura called Switch Grass Paper. This studio aims to explore local fibers and the roll they can play in art making. Diddie is received a post baccalaureate degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a MFA from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Aya Nakamura is a Chicago-based visual artist. Nakamura was born in Japan and educated in France and the US. She holds a BA in Fine Arts and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Nakamura is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago. She has shown at venues in the United States and abroad, including The Hangar and Dawawine in Beirut, Lebanon; Supa Salon in Istanbul, Turkey; Mana Decentralized in Jersey City, New Jersey; MPSTN in Fox River Grove, Illinois; and Western Exhibitions in Chicago. She is the recipient of the DCASE Individual Artist Program, the Rex Abandon Fund from Chop Wood, Carry Water, the Denbo Fellowship from Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, and the George and Ann Siegel Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the co-founder of Switch Grass Paper, a paper making studio based in Chicago.
Megan Diddie, headspace, 2023, gouache on paper, 25 x 22 in.
Aya Nakamura, Heart (V), 2023, colored pencil on handmade paper, 77 x 41 in.