Global Papermaking: Techniques & Play
with Megan Diddie & Aya Nakamura
$100 Lab Fee | June 28–July 4 | Exploratory
This course will focus on Eastern and Western papermaking techniques. We will work with cotton and abaca fiber and use molds and deckles to explore watermarks, embedding, and pigments, and we will also process Kozo fiber from start to finish in order to make washi, or Japanese paper. Participants will practice the steps of papermaking while discussing the mechanics and science behind them. By the end of the course, students will be able to play with the techniques and materials the class provides and ideally forge their own individual paths to paper. We will discuss paper's historical roots and contemporary uses in art; readings will include Dard Hunter’s The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft and Anish Kapoor’s “Silence and Transition,” and a mid-class lecture will introduce the work of contemporary papermakers and artists like Hong Hong, Zarina Hashmi, and Yoonshin Park, among others. We will briefly advise students on how to set up a simple home studio, so that they can expand on what they have learned beyond the classroom. We would like to emphasize that papermaking is a communal endeavor, and that collaborating with fellow classmates will be helpful when troubleshooting or executing assignments. Along with completing each day's tasks, including clean up, students will be asked to produce a final project. While these projects need not be completely finished, students will present their ideas and the steps they have made towards creating these pieces to the class.
SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code FIBER 635 001.
Megan Diddie (she/her) embraces the process of making as a way to tap into deeper, calmer states of mind. Her work describes relationships between human bodies, plants, landscapes, and built environments. Drawing is at the heart of her practice, serving as a language to work through ideas, anxieties, and the unconscious. Her video and animation serve as an extension of her drawings, allowing her to complicate and refine stories. Diddie co-founded Switch Grass Paper alongside collaborator Aya Nakamura. This mobile papermaking studio explores local fibers and the role they can play in artmaking while also bringing papermaking to the Chicago public. She received a postbaccalaureate degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Aya Nakamura (she/her; b. Japan) is a visual artist invested in craft, drawing in time, and abstraction as a relational medium. She has shown at venues in the United States and abroad, with recent shows at Western Exhibitions and Secrist | Beach, both in Chicago. Other venues include The Hangar and Dawawine, Beirut, Lebanon; Supa Salon, Istanbul, Turkey; Mana Decentralized, Jersey City, NJ; MPSTN, Fox River Grove, IL; Heaven Gallery, Chicago; the Research House for Asian Art, Chicago; and the Merwin Gallery at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington. She is a recipient of the DCASE Individual Artists Program grant from the City of Chicago, 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 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, Chicago.