In this 2 day workshop we will learn the process of making paper from harvesting plant fibers, cooking, beating, blending, sheet-forming, and drying; but we will focus our time on creative sheet-forming, pulp painting and layering. We will explore distinctive fibers’ textures, colors and weights, we will create expressive papers with inclusions, patterns and a variety of translucency. These unique papers can be used in infinite diversity, bound only by your imagination.

 

• It is not necessary, but if you have fibers, threads, yarn, Queen Anne’s Lace blooms or other items you’d like to experiment with, please bring them. Purely optional.
• A hand towel to dry your hands.
• Your lunch.
• If you have a drawing pad or some cardboard to cart your papers home in, the papers we make on the 2nd day will still be wet, so bring an old sheet, or a pad of paper or a cookie sheet for transporting flat.
• You might want to bring a waterproof apron, a pair of scissors, shoes that can get wet, a hat for the sun, an open mind and a playful spirit.

Sheryl Jaffe has been exhibiting her artwork throughout New York and New England for over 30 years. She works with organic materials, handmade paper from local and exotic plant fibers, and found objects to create 2 and 3 dimensional works that are reminiscent of the human body and the strength and frailty of skin. Her work includes installations, sculpture, artist books and prints and are evocative offerings for viewers to move through, make discoveries, and be drawn in to contemplation. She studied traditional hand papermaking in Japan and China and has taught papermaking at home and abroad with students age 4 to 84. Jaffe was a resident artist at The Barn, Edward Albee Foundation and at Yellowstone National Park, where she explored fibers found locally.

Some of my best friends are plants, and like plants and most other living things I need water, air and soil to thrive. I collaborate with materials that were once alive and continue to “breathe”:  fibers absorb moisture from the air, the paper “remembers” the process it went through in becoming paper. I think of viewers as participants in the work, I’d like them to be inspired to question, to think about and see something new in a previously unseen way. I am endlessly fascinated by how fibers connect and reconnect, intertwining in new ways, transforming the old into something new.

When not in her art studio, you can find Sheryl swimming in salt or freshwater or walking in the woods with friends.

Please visit sheryljaffe.com or sherylannjaffe in instagram