Today I delivered eight new canvases of my handmade paper artwork to my Fennville photographer, Rob Soltysiak. This work is being photographed for my website as well as a new on-line site that is in the works. This represents my entire fall and winter output.

Artist friends who know that I have photographed people and landscapes for almost 40 years often ask me if I take photographs of artwork? I always tell them no - this is a highly specialized practice requiring special equipment and lighting. (And quite a large financial investment as well.)

When you are searching for a “photography partner” of your artwork be sure to look for a photographer who has;

1) The proper equipment for the task at hand. (It takes special lenses, lighting and a set up with a variety of  backdrops to photograph artwork.)
2) An understanding of the specific lighting needed to show off your work to its fullest capacity (This type of photography needs at least 2 bounce lights and a backdrop.)
3) An understanding of what editors and publications, and photo judges and juries, expect in backdrop colors, lighting and final image quality. (You artwork will also be judged (and accepted or denied) on the quality of the photography as well as your artwork.)
4) A willingness to prepare your final images in the formet you need for the specific way you will be using them. Will your images be used on a website or will they be used in publication and for art juries?

Plan to spend around $400.00 to $600.00 for every 10 or so pieces photographed.

“What will you live for? What you look like to others or what you feel like to your yourself? Appearances or experiences?” Tama Kieves: This Time I Dance

Garden-Grown Paper

Ann goes for “green” papermaking with Michigan artist.

By Ann Kaiser
Editor

“Making paper is really kitchen chemistry,” says my hostess, artist Donna Allgaier-Lamberti. She has simmered a big canning kettle full of daylily stems, and we’re beating them to a pulp.

With a vengeance, I pound the mushy brown pieces with a meat tenderizing mallet to break down the fibers. Smelly brown liquid spews all over the table—and me! From her gardens and wooded acreage in Pullman, Michigan, Donna gathers iris, hosta, ferns, rhubarb, sunflowers and such to add texture and character to her beautiful handmade papers.

I’m learning her “recipe” for turning flowers and foliage into textured sheets that reflect her love of nature…

8 a.m.» Donna’s studio is an outbuilding on the 5-acre spread she and husband Gene bought in 2000. An amateur blacksmith, he does ironwork in a barn on the property.

Walls in the studio display Donna’s signature pieces—collages of her handmade papers layered on stretched canvases. Some feature leaves, ferns or twigs. Others are printed with scenic photos she takes.

I admire these along with her stock of sheets in various hues. They’re used to make custom invitations, paper bookmarks, boxes, vases and bowls.

Explains Donna, “I was looking for handmade paper to transfer my photographic images and couldn’t find what I wanted. So a few years ago, I tried making some of my own, using an age-old technique.”

Start in the Garden

8:30 a.m.» We’ll get back to the studio “pulp pit” later. But first, we head outdoors with straw baskets and an old coaster wagon to find ingredients. “Spirit,” the Allgaier-Lambertis’ loyal chocolate retriever, bounds at our heels as we gather rich orange mums, bright little black-eyed

Susans and other perennials. Butterflies flit through sprawling beds defined by stones the couple hauled from beaches and farm fields.

“The first step in my papermaking process is gathering plant material in late summer and fall, when the plants start drying down,” Donna says. “I spread the plants to air-dry outdoors, then sort and cut them into smaller pieces to process the fiber.

Clockwise from top: They pound slow-cooked daylily stems to break down the fibers. To make a sheet of paper, Ann dips a mold into a vat of pulp that includes fiber from at least four different plants. It comes up covered with fiber. Ann flops the mold over onto a screen, where the sheets dry.

9 a.m.» Donna enlists my help for the next step. We drain and rinse a kettle of daylily stems she’d cooked in water with soda ash—a sodium salt of carbonic acid that begins to break down the fibers. We continue the process by vigorously beating the stems with a mallet for about 10 minutes.

“As you see,” Donna says, “this is messy, time-consuming and best done outside. If I want a vat full of hosta pulp, for example, I have to collect, dry and process several large boxes full. While my equipment is out and at hand, I process fibers for 2 weeks at a stretch. I might use the plant leaf, the stem, the bark or the flower—either fresh or dried. It all depends on what I want my final sheet to look like.”

For some fibers, hand-beating like this is enough. For others, Donna uses an electric beater made especially for papermakers. Then she refrigerates or freezes processed fibers to use later.

Pulp Prep

10 a.m.» In the pulp pit, we roll up our sleeves. I tear up cotton linter that’s been soaked in water—it feels like wet baby diapers—and process it with water in a kitchen blender for several minutes until it looks like suspended lint. Donna buys this base fiber on large rolls. We add about 1 gallon of plant materials to a washtub vat containing about 5 gallons of water.

In another vat, we stir up pulp with a base of abaca, a fiber made from banana leaves. It gives the paper a translucency and slightly creamy color, I learn. The blender whirs again and again as I pulverize soggy brownish processed iris leaves, daylily stems, flax and seaweed for the vats.

“By adding different fibers in varying amounts, I can produce a variety of whites, earth tones and colors for my papers,” says Donna. “I like to have four or more plants in each sheet of paper for beauty and variety. I usually experiment, mixing in a little of this and a little of that—it’s a lot like cooking. But when I’m making more than one batch of paper for a special order like wedding invitations, I must keep track of what I put in so it has the same look.”

Fresh flower petals, leaves and other elements are used as colorful inclusions in Donna’s papers. We pluck petals from fresh mums we’d cut earlier and snip raffia into tiny irregular pieces that I stir into the pulp—it’s the consistency of thin applesauce.

Pulling Sheets

10:30 a.m.» Finally, we’re ready to couch (pronounced “kooch”) sheets by pulling a mold through the pulp. The mold is a wooden frame with fine polyester screen stretched over to capture the fibers.

“Lower it slowly, down and up again through the pulp in one continuous motion,” directs Donna, who teaches papermaking classes each summer.

Swoosh! I submerge the frame, pull it through the milky mixture and hope for the best. My mold comes up only partly covered with an uneven layer of fibers. But with a little practice, I get the hang of it. I’m excited when Donna says, “Good! Give it one more quick dip to fill the corners and you’re set.”

Pretty golden or brown fibers show up in the ivory sheet. Mum petals and bits of raffia are interesting accents! It’s amazing that the fibers hold together to form a sheet. Donna says it’s due to ionization, part of the “kitchen chemistry.”

I flop the mold over on a 3- by 5-foot drying screen to drain. “Stir the vat to distribute the pulp before you pull another sheet,” Donna says.

Wet Vac Duty

Some sheets take shape as a large decorative bowl.

When the drying screen is covered with about 10 dripping sheets, Donna turns on a shop vac. “Run the nozzle under the sheets on the drying screen to suck out water,” she coaches. Awkwardly, I turn the vacuum nozzle upside down to squeegee water from below.

“Now, press one finger on one edge of the mold and gently lift the opposite side, leaving the sheet of paper on the drying screen.” The paper’s irregular deckle edge is part of its charm.

11:30 a.m.» We carry the screen full of fresh sheets outside to air-dry overnight. By tomorrow, the paper will peel off easily, as do already dried sheets that we remove from another screen. Now, the fairly thick, highly textured paper is ready for Donna to use for her photos or creative collages.

2 p.m.» We keep at it after lunch, making a batch of darker paper that will contrast nicely with the ivory sheets that we made earlier.

3 p.m.» As we wrap up, I ask Donna if she would create a collage for me, using some of the paper I made today.

A week or so later, she sent pictures of two canvases, and asked which piece I might want.

Both were lovely—I couldn’t decide! So I bought them both to hang in my office. They’re a wonderful remembrance of this workday and the many hours of labor and love that Donna’s handmade paper reflects!

Editor’s Note: Visit Donna’s Web site by visiting our links page.

If you’d like to put me to work, send an invitation with details to Ann@countrywomanmagazine.com or write to Ann Kaiser, Country Woman, 5400 S. 60th St., Greendale WI 53129.

Photography By Tom Taverna