Helen Hiebert's Blog, page 62

The Sunday Paper #50

Work of the Week: Modern Day Watermarking is my first artists’ book (actually it’s a hybrid how-to/artists’ book). The text describes a watermarking technique that utilizes buttercut, a thin rubber material. The book structure is a one-sheet fold which shows off the technique. View more images and acquire your own copy by clicking here.

Helen Hiebert Studio. They keep saying that paper will become obsolete, yet artists, craftspeople, designers and creatives are keeping it alive and well. A healthy number of people are even making paper by hand (in some cultures they are still using age-old traditions). How cool is that? The Sunday PAPER is a resource for ideas and inspiration, all having to do with this amazing material. Each Sunday, I bring you stories and examples of people doing exciting, innovative, and beautiful things with paper, as well as links to interesting paperfacts I’ve unearthed from around the globe. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this paper, Papier, papel, хартия, Papir,紙, Papper, פּאַפּיר… and don’t hesitate to click on the link to leave your comments and suggestions!

Handmade Paper Exchange

I recently participated in a paper exchange called Paper Experiments, and look what I received in exchange for sending in a set of paper swatches! This swap has taken place before (at least once) and the participants vary from year to year. This year 16 papermakers from six countries performed their magic. Julie Johnson and Jane Dolan from Portland, OR created everything that tied this collaboration together: the title page and colophon, which they letterpress printed, and the paper cover/wrapper. I was delighted that they used the wrapper design by Roberta Lavadour from my book Playing With Paper (the expanding file folder book). 

When I opened the package, I was struck by the paper that was created for the wrapper. Upon reading the description (thai kozo, flax, walnut dye, and beeswax) I was reminded of the diversity of handmade paper. If you and I took these same ingredients and made paper, its likely that they would look quite different. Adding beeswax to the cover (I assume that it was melted, brushed onto the paper and then heated so that the paper absorbed the wax) gives it a nice durable finish as well as a subtle translucency (which I love). This picture doesn’t do it justice.

And then opened the wrapper and had such fun looking at the paper samples. Wow!

Now, you needn’t follow along, but I’ve listed the types of paper from left to right as seen along the bottom row above (just to give you a sense of the variety and diversity): a watermarked cotton paper, paper made with chestnut skins, a pigmented hosta stem/kozo/ginkgo paper, kozo paper with procion dye and joomchi techniques, hemp parchment, flax fiber skin, kozo with elm seeds, kozo/tulip stem/cat tail seeds, ginger leaf/flax, hops/hemp, agave paper, 80 year old hemp yarn, pulp marbled cotton, pigmented gampi/abaca, pulp printing, copper patina on abaca/cotton, hanji/cotton/recycled, stcncil print on cotton/kraft, wet woven kozo,

I’m curious, for those of you who make paper (or collect it), do you keep samples? What is your system? And if you make paper, do you keep records/recipes of how you made them?

The Sunday Paper #49

Work of the Week: This is a new idea, to show a work each week. This is a piece from my 100 x 100 Paper Weavings Project (and it is for sale :). I picked it because has an egg on it, and do you see that the egg is venturing toward freedom? Happy Easter and Happy Passover!

Weaving #57, 2013, 10″ x 8″, van dyke brown on handmade abaca woven with a lace paper, $100

I met Yevgeniya Yeretskaya at the Movable Book Society Conference last fall. She’s a remarkable paper engineer. Check out this sweet video that shows off her pop-up book, Easter Numbers: An Interactive Counting Book.

And for Passover, I found a Haggadah collection. The late Irwin Alterman of West Bloomfield, Mich., spent decades building an extensive and widely varied collection of Haggadahs. He was joined later in that endeavor by his wife, Marilyn McCall Alterman, who recently donated the collection of some 1,800 Haggadahs to the University of Michigan’s Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.

Check out these striking paper-stack prints by Aleksandra Domanovic. These are currently in the show States of Uncertainty at the Haggerty Museum, Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I love this work by Jaq Belcher at Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, Tennessee. Hidden Light features works that are founded in a contemplative process of reduction and repetition. Each unique work begins with an unblemished sheet of white paper, a pencil, and countless x-acto blades. Belcher then proceeds to rupture the surface of the paper slicing thousands of “seeds,” a pointed oval shape based on the intersection of two spheres, commonly known as a vesica piscis.  The cuts are often in the tens of thousands and counted prior to the forms being raised. The play of light and shadow create geometric and dynamic compositions in a singular medium, the paper itself. Watch the slideshow at the link. The work is breathtaking!

With the demand for washi (Japanese) paper declining, the people of Kochi Prefecture came up with a product catering to a niche market while honoring the ethos of the time-honored craft: premium toilet paper rolls with traditional watermark patterns. How clever!

The Sunday Paper #48

In the Studio: I’ve started using the handwritten words so many of you sent me for one of several new projects relating to mothers/motherhood. My Mormor (which means mother’s mother in Dutch as I’ve recently learned) had a tablecloth that she had relatives autograph when they visited (she’d bring it out at family reunions, etc). The names were signed in a spiral, and between reunions, my grandmother embroidered each name in a different color. I’m crocheting your words on this linen skirt. I took it to my daughter’s gymastics meet this morning and crocheted one whole word! 

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It looks like they rigged a scaffolding to suspend the 10,000 sheets of paper that create this incredible ‘Boat’ by Zhu Jinshi, an intricate 15×3.5×4.2 metre installation crafted from 10,000 sheets of Xuan paper which was on display at Art Basel Hong Kong. It must feel awesome to be inside of that tube! Make sure you click view the slide show where you’ll see a detail shot of the suspended paper. 

This paper airplane video is just too good to miss! Be sure to watch all the way to the end – it will bring a smile to your face. I love the song, too!

Here’s another paperfact that will bring a smile to your face. This ranks among my Top Ten in paper advertising. Life insurance provider Beagle Street released hundreds of origami dogs made from £10 notes on the streets of London. Can you imagine stumbling across one of these sweet pups? 

Check out these carved paper books by Seattle-based artist Isobelle Ouzman, whose love of paper art manifests in her “Altered Books,” a project in which she tries to give otherwise neglected books a new life as one-of-a-kind art pieces.

Thanks to Rich Gray for sharing this video with me. It is long, B&W and not very high quality due to its age, but very interesting!  The Medical Service of the Finnish Armed Forces in Winter: The Utilization of Paper in the Care of Casualties appears to have been shot as a silent film in Finland in the late 1930s or early 1940s, probably by a Finnish military or medical agency. It shows Finnish troops on skis, demonstrating unusual techniques of emergency battlefield first aid. Soldiers use rolls of strong, reusable paper to make bandages, slings, even a stretcher. The film uses the terms crepe paper and kraft paper, and notes that, besides its durability as bandage material, the paper can withstand weights of up to 440 pounds when used to form the bed of a stretcher.

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About The Sunday Paper: The Sunday Paper is published by Helen Hiebert Studio. They keep saying that paper will become obsolete, yet artists, craftspeople, designers and creatives are keeping it alive and well. A healthy number of people are even making paper by hand (in some cultures they are still using age-old traditions). How cool is that? The Sunday PAPER is a resource for ideas and inspiration, all having to do with this amazing material. Each Sunday, I bring you stories and examples of people doing exciting, innovative, and beautiful things with paper, as well as links to interesting paperfacts I’ve unearthed from around the globe. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this paper, Papier, papel, хартия, Papir,紙, Papper, פּאַפּיר… and don’t hesitate to click on the link to leave your comments and suggestions!

How do you Press?

I was in Salt Lake City this past weekend, teaching an Experimental Papermaking workshop at the University of Utah. They had this really cool press! You could raise and lower that top bar to accommodate varying post sizes. And check out that cute little jack. This press worked really well for our 8″ x 10″ sheets of paper. 

Often when I’m teaching, the question arises about how to press papers in a home studio. Here’s a bit about pressing (with some added bits) excerpted from my book, The Papermaker’s Companion. Illustrations in this post are by Alison Kolesar from the book.

Pressing removes water from the sheets of paper and compacts the fibers tightly together as they bond. After pressing, the sheets will still be damp and will need to be dried. All kinds of systems have been rigged for pressing, ranging from piling heavy books or rocks onto the post to using a garbage bucket filled with water (the more water, the more weight) and using a hydraulic jack to create pressure. The first presses in Europe were wooden screw presses, which took the strength of many men to tighten. Similar presses were used in the Far East. 

In some countries, papermakers developed systems of drying sheets of paper directly on the moulds, eliminating the need for a press. Other systems involved drying sheets on boards or walls. Some of the techniques described here are centuries old, while others are recent innovations, developed by contemporary papermakers who have designed systems to meet their needs. Several papermaking suppliers sell presses.

Sponge Press

A low-tech method of pressing is using a sponge — use a clean sponge, so that you do not contaminate your paper. To do so, press your sheets individually as you make them and then hang them on a line or place them in a rack. I recommend that you couch onto pellon when you press with a sponge, because it is less absorbent and will require less sponging. Take one sheet of paper with its pellon and place it onto a dry felt or newspaper (something that will absorb some of the water). Then place a dry pellon on top of the sheet to protect the sheet’s surface, and gently but firmly sponge water out of the sheet. Repeatedly wring out your sponge and continue pressing the rest of the sheet. Be careful not to damage the sheet by pressing too hard; still, remove as much water from the sheet as you can. It is also important to press the sheet evenly, so that all of it will dry at the same rate. Your sheet is now ready to be dried (see my blog post about drying). Continue pressing the remaining sheets.

➤Instead of a sponge, you can use a rolling pin or an ink brayer to remove moisture from your sheets. Since these tools do not suck up moisture like the sponge, you will need to place your sheet in between something absorbent, like newspaper, towels, or felts, so that the moisture is transferred to the absorbent material as it is rolled out. Press gently at first — if you press too hard, you will distort your sheet.

Found or Adapted Presses

You might adapt or use a press that was designed for another use, such as a flower press, cider press, or book press. Just make sure you can fit a stack of paper into it (many printing presses press only one sheet at a time), and watch out for presses with metal parts that will rust. The staff of the Dieu Donné Papermill, a hand papermill in New York City, for instance, needed an electrically powered hydraulic machine that could press up to 100 sheets of paper. They found the perfect machine, a farm implement originally designed to bale hay. It can press over 100 sheets at a time.

Pressing Multiple Sheets

Note: If you are pressing different types or sizes of papers together, you might want to put a barrier of wood, metal, or firm plastic between the layers, so that they are in effect pressed separately. For example, if you are pressing plain white sheets together with pigmented sheets of paper, they should be separated by a barrier so that the color does not bleed into the white sheets. In this particular case, the white sheets should be on top of the barrier to ensure that no color drips down onto them. 

Hydraulic Presses

Many papermakers have built presses that uses a car jack for pressure. I have seen many variations of this press at facilities around the country, each constructed to meet the pressing needs of a particular studio.

Arnold Grummer has a nice portable press for use in the classroom. 

Making Your Own Simple Press

A step up from the sponge press is a simple plywood press. Your post of paper can be placed between two polyurethaned boards (or two plastic cutting boards), and C-clamps can be attached to each of the four corners and tightened. Pressing will release a fair amount of water, so you might want to work over a tub or tray, or work outside.

A similar plywood press is easy to build, and I’ll post instructions for building the press pictured below soon.

Vacuum Table Press

During the 1970s, papermaking made a resurgence as an art medium in America. Artists began “pushing the medium,” developing innovative ways to work with paper and pulp. One such innovation is the vacuum table: a tabletop with small holes in its surface, a holding tank underneath, and a connection for a strong wet-dry vacuum. Plastic is draped over sheets of paper lying on the table surface, and when the vacuum is attached and turned on, it sucks the plastic down onto the sheet, drawing water out. This system can press very large sheets of paper — which would be difficult, if not impossible, to fit into a hydraulic press (not to mention lifting them into it) — as well as high- and low-relief sheets and sculptures. Instructions for building one such vacuum system can be found in Volume Six, Number One of Hand Papermaking magazine. Some papermaking suppliers also carry them.

Vacuum table at Longwood University

Using a Hydraulic Press

Many papermakers use hydraulic jacks to supply the force in their press. When you’re using any type of hydraulic press (press with a hydraulic jack), load your post of paper into the open press, then bring the press to full pressure. In some cases — for example, if your paper is very thick — you might need to press the paper gradually. This is very important, because if you press too quickly, the water will explode out and damage the wet paper. When the press has been brought to full pressure, leave it for 15 minutes to an hour, depending on your press and the particular post of paper. You want to make sure that water is removed from the entire sheet. With most presses, the pressure hits the center of the sheet first, and allowing it to sit gives the water time to move from the center and seep out of the edges. Release the tension and remove the post when you are done. If the sheets still seem very wet, you can press them again. The sheets are now damp and ready for drying. Although it is not necessary, fitting a hydraulic press with a gauge that measures the pressure can be handy, enabling you to record the amount of pressure you use for different techniques. In general, you can press papers to full pressure, but if you are board or loft drying, you will need to adjust the amount of pressure you apply.

The Sunday Paper #47

Out and About: I’m in Salt Lake City this weekend, where I just finished teaching a workshop on Experimental Abaca. I like the call this fiber the incredible shrinking material, because it is. It is such a delight to show students a few possibilities and to see how they run with it. Wow!

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Shortly after I met my husband, he started working at The New Yorker Magazine. He was a fact checker, and they did everything by hand… no computers (although they transitioned to them during his tenure there). Well, they’ve got all things computer down now! Check out this digital cover – click here to watch it in motion.

These books turned into paper sculpture by South African artist Barbara Wildenboer are simply exquisite and offer another take on the altered book.  

I’m not sure whether any of these fashions by Junya Watanabe are made of paper, but they are certainly striking and some of them surely must have at least been designed in paper. My jaw would have hit the floor if I were watching these on the runway at Paris Fashion Week. Be sure to click through to see more!

See how the natural curves of paper are being used to develop a prototype for a new racing bike design. Pei Wuyang is working out the details of paper ergonomics.

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Here’s a very cool Edward Gorey tunnel book.

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About The Sunday Paper: The Sunday Paper is published by Helen Hiebert Studio. They keep saying that paper will become obsolete, yet artists, craftspeople, designers and creatives are keeping it alive and well. A healthy number of people are even making paper by hand (in some cultures they are still using age-old traditions). How cool is that? The Sunday PAPER is a resource for ideas and inspiration, all having to do with this amazing material. Each Sunday, I bring you stories and examples of people doing exciting, innovative, and beautiful things with paper, as well as links to interesting paperfacts I’ve unearthed from around the globe. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this paper, Papier, papel, хартия, Papir,紙, Papper, פּאַפּיר… and don’t hesitate to click on the link to leave your comments and suggestions!

Making Interluceo

Making an artists’ book is a long and involved process, and I find it helpful to review once a project is complete. Here’s the story of my latest book, Interluceo.

The box that houses Interluceo (binding and box by Claudia Cohen). Notice the blind embossed title on the spine.

I started reading about sacred geometry about five years ago and discovered a wonderful book quite by accident at my local library a year or so ago. I think I typed “how to draw a circle” into the on-line card catalog and found the book: How the World Is Made: The Story of Creation According to Sacred Geometry, by John Mitchell with Allan Brown. I was drawn to this particular phrase, which I found in the preface of the book:

“There is great value in drawing by hand, and good reason to resist the temptation to resort to a computer. We lose something when we use computers to draw geometry. However beguiling their mechanical precision, they lack ”heart”: in some subtle way we become observers rather than participants”.

This became a guiding principle for Interluceo. Aside from using the computer to generate the imagery for the polymer plates used to letterpress print the book, the entire book is made by hand. 

All of the watermarks (seven geometric designs and the title for the cover) were cut by hand.

What came first? The paper of course: 700 sheets of it! I don’t think I’ve ever made more than 100 sheets of paper for any one project, so this was a huge feat. Had I paused to consider that I’d be making so many sheets, I may never have begun.

For years, I’ve wanted to incorporate watermarks into a book, and I’ve experimented with many ways to create these lovely images that are integral to a sheet of paper. The pulp I’ve most commonly used is a finely beaten cotton linter. The resulting sheet produces a lovely watermark, but the strength of the paper is compromised. I experimented and came up with a 25%abaca/75% cotton linter pulp that shows off the watermarks nicely, but with added strength from the abaca. This is an important consideration for a book whose pages will be handled and turned. 

#2 is the line, and a series of curved lines forms a half circle, or a rainbow

The watermarks for the book are hand cut from buttercut, a thin rubber material with an adhesive on the back, which makes it easy to affix to the papermaking mould.

I decided to focus on the numbers 1-7 (there are seven days of the week, seven colors in the rainbow, seven notes in the musical scale, …) and in this book you find a progression of (the first) seven shapes: the point (circle), a line, triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, and septagon, which are represented in the watermarks.

#4 is the square, or in three dimensions the cube

The book pages are square, measuring 9″ x 9″. I made the watermarked sheets thin enough, so that you could see the images subtly even without backlight, and I decided to place colored sheets behind the watermarks, so that when you come to a watermarked page, you see a bit of the color showing through. And as you turn the page, the watermark becomes fully illuminated with natural light.

When designing the colored pages, I considered laminating them to the back of the watermarked sheets. I made did some tests, but they weren’t quite right, and then I thought of the cut paper work of Béatrice Coron, whom I’ve known since we were both beginning our careers in NYC.

Wouldn’t paper cuts go nicely with the watermarks? But how to design the pages to show off both features adequately? After a bit of thinking, testing and paper engineering, I came up with the solution: folded colored abaca folios would allow for a solid colored sheet behind the watermark, followed by a page behind that to feature a cut paper illustration. I made seven colored abaca papers in the colors of the rainbow. 

210 sheets (30 each of seven colors) of abaca paper, ready to ship to Béatrice Coron

Béatrice and I had a few conversations about the illustrations. The only directions that I gave her were to use the shape for each page as the outline of her cut and to hide the corresponding number within each paper cut (be sure to look for those when you view the pages of the book – there’s a link at the bottom of this post). She came up with seven lovely illustrations which portray the mysteries of life.

#1 (the baby in the womb) on the work table. Béatrice cut through five sheets at a time; these were all cut by hand.

Now that the paper and the illustrations were in the works, it was time to figure out the text and the printing. I happened to be traveling to Santa Fe late last fall where I visited a paper colleague and letterpress printer Tom Leech, who runs the Palace of the Governors Press. I showed him the mock-up for the book and asked him if he knew someone who might print the book. I hadn’t found a local letterpress printer since I moved from Oregon to Colorado two years ago, and I thought that Tom, who had lived in Colorado before, might have a suggestion for me. And he did! He said that he wanted to print the book.

I chose to keep the text simple, with just the number, the latin word for the shape, and the shape printed on the cotton/abaca page adjacent to each watermark. 

silver ink on the polymer plate for page #3

Tom recommended silver ink, to complement the luminosity of the watermarks, and I hand watercolored the shapes after printing. 

The book opens with a quote by Galileo: “The grand book of the universe… was written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is impossible to understand a single word of it.” And it ends with a page of reflections by yours truly and a shaped text colophon.

My final considerations were the title page, which has a hand cut window backed with a sheet of colored abaca, 

and the cover, which is made with a pulp stenciling technique similar to watermarking.

The title came at the 11th hour. I’d considered a LOT of titles and then an artist friend suggested looking at latin words. I found some words, consulted with others, and then sent a short list to my friend. She did a quick search and found Interluceo (and a few other words). When I read the meaning of Interluceo, it was perfect!

Interluceo means to shine or gleam between; to be transparent; to let light through gaps.

I hope you will take a few more moments to click on this link where you can view a slide show of the entire book, page by page. 

And here’s a link to my web page, where you can see and read a bit more about this limited edition of 25 books. A few of the copies are already spoken for (they are at the binder as I type). Please contact me if you are interested in acquiring a copy of Interluceo.

The Sunday Paper #46

In the Studio: I’m making some headway with all of the mother words I’ve received. Stay tuned for more details soon. In the meantime, I’m busy working out the details for upcoming workshops in Seattle (June 27/28), Portland (July 10-12) and New York City (September 26/27). Feel free to send me an e-mail if you’d like to be on the notification list when registration for these workshops begins! I’m also available for private consultations when I’m in these cities – let me know if you’re interested.

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This folded paper donut shows off the amazing capabilities of origami – notice that the donut hole stays the same size when the paper is compressed, so that any number of objects can be protected in the hole (think packaging).

Shawn Sheehy may be the first (and only) artist to combine his love of handmade paper and pop-ups in a trade book. His brand new book, Welcome to the Neighborhood, has just been published by Candlewick Press. Shawn created unique handmade papers that were scanned and reproduced in the book. I can’t wait to handle it!

Have you seen these cool chairs that were featured in the NY Times T Magazine a couple of weeks ago? Patricia Urquiola’s crinoline collection is made from abaca fibers (my favorite papermaking fiber!) and colored polyethylene string by artisans in the Philippines. The fiber is stretched over painted and powder-coated aluminum frames.

 Okay, I usually post only one video per week, but I couldn’t resist this one … you’ll get a good laugh!

And while we’re on the theme of TP (did you watch the video above?) here’s an interesting article about the genesis of this paper that will surely never go out of fashion.

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About The Sunday Paper: The Sunday Paper is published by Helen Hiebert Studio. They keep saying that paper will become obsolete, yet artists, craftspeople, designers and creatives are keeping it alive and well. A healthy number of people are even making paper by hand (in some cultures they are still using age-old traditions). How cool is that? The Sunday PAPER is a resource for ideas and inspiration, all having to do with this amazing material. Each Sunday, I bring you stories and examples of people doing exciting, innovative, and beautiful things with paper, as well as links to interesting paperfacts I’ve unearthed from around the globe. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this paper, Papier, papel, хартия, Papir,紙, Papper, פּאַפּיר… and don’t hesitate to click on the link to leave your comments and suggestions!

Sneak Peak: My New Book

Here’s the cover of my newest book, Playing With Pop-Ups, which is being printed, bound and will be ready to read in early May! It is a colorful book (on the inside too) which I’m really liking. Here you see artwork by David Carter, a project by Shawn Sheehy, artwork by Peter Dahmen and a project by Carol Barton.

This book is a bit different for me, in that I’m more of an editor/curator than the artist. In Paper Illuminated, I created all of the projects; in Playing With Paper, I designed about two thirds of the projects (and guest artists came up with the rest); and in Playing With Pop-Ups, I designed just one of the projects. 

Pop-ups were my foray into the world of paper art over twenty years ago, but then I discovered hand papermaking. When this book opportunity presented itself, I felt it would be best to have the experts show off their work in the field. And as it so happened, I had just attended the annual meeting of the Movable Book Society where I met some of them (and learned about others). Thankfully, about 15 paper engineers agreed to contribute projects and show off their artwork in the gallery section of the book. You’re in for a treat!

I am having fun exploring pop-ups again (isn’t it wonderful how things circle around in life). I’m working on a pop-up alphabet which will make its debut along with Playing With Pop-Ups. These are working models, based on a two-dimensional rendering of a 3D font that I discovered in a book of fonts back in the 1980′s.

I’d love to know about your favorite pop-up projects, books and artists. I’ll be featuring some of the artists in the book here in the months to come, but please feel free to add your comments below. 

 

In the Studio

I have been going to my studio every Monday/Wednesday/Friday (for the most part) since September when we bought a second car. Thank goodness the road to Red Cliff is a major thoroughfare, because it is a windy mountain road and I’d be frightened to death if it weren’t plowed. It has been snowing a lot lately, and I got my lesson in parking today (I got stuck getting out and had to shovel the snow out from under my front tires). 

But that is neither here nor there. I spent today working on a model for The Wish. The drawing above was created almost two years ago when I decided to make my vision of this project a reality. It came in handy when I had a meeting with the powers-that-be at Anythink Huron Street, a library in Thornton, Colorado that has commissioned The Wish as a permanent installation in the library.

This isn’t just any library. Anythink Huron Street is located in Adams County, which was the poorest library system in the state for 40 years. In 2006, the community voted to increase funding and they now have 7 thriving libraries where people can come to dream and create. Watch this inspirational TedX Mile High talk by the director of Anythink Libraries Pam Sandlian Smith (one of the women I’m working with) and listen to her comments about the role of libraries in the 21st century. 

I love that she talks about how libraries are adapting to meet community needs and how she describes them as the cornerstones of democracy. I’m delighted to be working with this library.

I learned early on when writing a grant proposal to produce my film Water Paper Time, that having visual reference material can be really helpful. Imagine the panelists reading my proposal stating that I was going to make a film showing paper drying. Needless to say, I did not get funding the first time around, but the second time I submitted an animated video showing the paper drying and was awarded a grant. 

I think that the drawing and the web page that I put together helped the librarians better understand The Wish project. 

I’m at the point now where I will show the library this model, along with the parts & pieces of the 6-1/2′ diameter dandelion that will be installed in the space in late April/early May. We’ll discuss things like how high to hang the dandelion (I’m pretty sure it will hang up above peoples heads, because this is a public space that gets used, not to mention the fact that helping oneself to a dandelion seed could be tempting). 

As part of the project, I’ll do a workshop with members of the community and they will help me make some of the 300 paper seeds. They will also contribute wishes, which will hopefully become a sound component of the project.

What is your wish? You too can participate in the project. I’m collecting wishes from around the world on my website and hope that you have either contributed one already or that you’ll click here to leave your wish. Many thanks!