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are artists with ideas. A major portion of the activity has been conducted in the exciting and somewhat freewheeling domain of the handmade-paper print.
The term "handmade-paper print" offers a convenient starting point. "Paper making is really different from printmaking," note leading papermaker Kathryn Clark, who has also worked as a professional fine-art printer. Any confusion between the two is quickly cleared up by a trip to see how paper is made at any one of a select group of sheetmaking mills, many of which began to spring up in the 1970s to revive the craft of papermaking and to fulfill the custom-paper needs of artists and publishers. Twinrocker, Inc., the oldest of the group, was founded in San Francisco in 1971 by Clark, her husband Howard, her twin sister Peggy Prentice and Peggy's husband. In 1972 the operation was moved to a family farm in Brookston, Indiana, where is now occupies four buildings and includes living space for visiting artists. At the other extreme is the functional, spare, space-conscious facility of Dieu Donne Press & Paper Inc., founded by Susan Gosin in 1976 in a loft building in New York's SoHo district.
At Dieu Donne, paper is made the old-fashioned way. The process starts with cotton rags, which are cut up and tossed into the water-filled tub of a specially modified Hollander beater-so called because this essential and traditional piece of equipment was invented by Dutch printmakers in the late 17th century. As the beaten cotton rags break down, the water-swollen fibers become pulp. The pulp then goes into a vat to which more water can be added, depending on the desired thickness of the sheets, and dry pigments are introduced which adhere to the pulp because of its highly bondable nature. A sheet is formed by dipping a mold, which usually consists of a wooden frame with a metal-wire screen stretched across it, into the vat. A deckle or additional wooden frame placed around the mold creates the edges of the sheet. After excess water drains through the screen, the still-wet pulp is transferred by a smooth movement from the mold to a bed of damp felt. A pile of these wet-pulp surfaces-each one separated from the next by a piece of felt - are then pressed to remove water and bond them into individual sheets. At Dieu Donne a vacuum table is sometimes used to suck out excess water.
The current handmade-paper movement continues the pioneering efforts of Dard Hunter, an early 20th-century American papermaker and historian who kept interest in the old paper mills alive through his numerous writings, and papermaker Douglass Howell. The latter's exquisite handiwork for artists such as Anne Ryan, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in the 1950s and later for Tatyana Grosman's Universal Limited Art Editions demonstrated to others that, as papermaker Clark has put it, "art could begin in the page itself." This message was carried by Hunter and Howell to their students and their students' students and eventually to the top crop of papermakers, who are mostly in their 30s and early 40s, through lectures, workshops and apprentice programs. The current expansive status of papermaking is perhaps most tellingly demonstrated by its spectacular growth on college and university campuses both in the United States and abroad. In 1975 it was unusual to find papermaking offered in a university art department, but in 1976 orders for beaters and other equipment began coming into Twinrocker Equipment, according to Clark. Andrew Ginzel, an artist who works as an installer of papermaking facilities and who recently equipped the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, estimates that "a good 30 to 40 percent of all colleges in the United States now have papermaking in one form or another."
While maintaining a healthy respect for tradition, today's papermakers are involved in experimental technology and are at their best putting their skills at the service of innovative esthetic ideas. Sculptor Wong, who is also production supervisor at Dieu Donne Press, says, "You just figure out what works." This attitude seems to sum up the adventurous and inventive spirit found throughout the field, and to be responsible, ultimately, for the startling variety of handmade-paper prints.

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Robert Kushner enjoys "laying in large areas of color" with paper pulp and then heightening the effects with printing. Here, he squeezes colored pulp onto a template at Solo Press. RIGHT Rhonda, 1983, paper pulp and lithography. 37 1/4 by 27 1/2 inches.

80 ART NEWS