Passages in Papermaking

a chronicle of the people and places encountered on my journey through the world of handpapermaking.

[passagesinpapermaking]

Around this same time last year, I was preparing to travel to Timor-Leste to be the artist in residence with the Boneca de Ataúro in East Timor during the summer of 2016. I had absolutely no idea what fantastic adventures and wonderful new friends awaited me... In the spirit of recollection and appreciation, I would like to now share this collection of video clips from my time with the Boneca: 

* Returning from Makili via the mountain route * Playing with the camera at Manu Koko-Rek * St. Peter's Festival in Makili * Footage of "Estocástico" at Fundação Oriente * Two mermaids of Adara performing with Boneca de Ataúro at Fundação Oriente. Choreography by Jen Shyu. Footage by David Palazón. * Maun João making sheets of canna lilly paper * Rama and Lorosae (details) * Singing contemporary and traditional songs from Makili during farewell party

And please help ensure the future of the Boneca de Ataúro through their fundraising campaign here: https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/boneca-de-atauro--4 (Plus you’ll get to see the amazing, stop motion animation, short film by David Palazón!)

[passagesinpapermaking]

Here are some of the other exciting products we created during my final days of the residency with the Boneca de Ataúro in Timor-Leste this past summer. In addition to the handmade books from the previous post, we designed ornaments and a necklace and earrings. We also created our own paint from lime and egg yolk in the ancient Italian fashion of Bianco di San Giovanni that we used to stencil images on the paper and within the books.

We also found a new material to use for the screen of the papermaking molds: one evening while we were weaving katupas from coconut palm leaflets to hold the rice that would be our lunch for the Betel Festival the next day, I noticed that the long, straight, and cylindrical central woody veins we were removing from the individual leaflets of the coconut palm frond could serve as a replacement for the grass we were using to make the papermaking molds. This leftover of katupas is already used to make brooms, so the community is used to saving this material, making it exponentially easier and more practical to collect than the grass. I remembered all the katupas we ate during the Saturday market in Beloi and asked my friend, Mana Sherry - a Peace Corps volunteer living in Beloi - if she had access to a large quantity. She spread the word, and one day I was delighted to meet her at the high school between Vila and Beloi where she was coaching volleyball for her to give me a hefty bundle of them prepared by the mother of her host father! With this bundle in hand, Mana Katarina and I sorted through them, picking out the longest, most uniform sections, and made new papermaking molds to replace the grass ones. They worked fantastically!

I left Ataúro on August 10th, proud of all that we had accomplished and encouraged by the support of the cooperative and community for our Boneca de Ataúro handmade paper.

[passagesinpapermaking]

Toward the end of my residency with the Boneca de Ataúro, we made handmade books with our various papers. We made circular books - with our papers from the embroidery hoops - featuring inset stars, hearts, and collage lines and rectangular books incorporating stenciled images, watermarked designs, and sewing.

For the rectangular books we formulated a special blend of snake plant and kapok for the base sheet and used canna lily for the stenciled designs. The snake plant/kapok blend gives the right smoothness and resistance to warping and the canna lily has the right fineness to make nuanced stenciled images. Plus the two colors contrast well.

Manas Maturina and Katarina designed all the images and most of the page sequences, I taught the technical aspects of sewing the books and adding drawn accents to bring out some of the designs. We were all very proud of the results!

[passagesinpapermaking]

As I wrap up the current residency at Art Farm, Nebraska, I’m reminiscing about my last days in Timor... This post picks up where the last left off - after our day in Makili, we were able to catch a ride with a local fisherman back to Vila. The sea was like glass as we ate oranges and gratefully enjoyed our ride home.

The Boneca threw a wonderful goodbye party for me (I’ll be posting a montage video soon that includes us dancing and singing) and, when the day arrived for me to take my bags and a boat back to Dili, eight of my wonderful friends (last photo) packed into the tuc-tuc with me and accompanied me to the beach. We stood waving at each other until they completely disappeared from my site, and even then, a small yellow butterfly flitted above the waves, following me out to sea.

[passagesinpapermaking]

Sadly, I left Timor about a two months ago; I’ve since been in Denmark, making a large site-specific work, Skin to Skin, for the Wadden Tide Festival 2016, Fire Island National Seashore, New York, as an Artist-in-Residence, and I am now writing from Art Farm, Nebraska, where I’ll be an Artist-in-Residence until the beginning of November. Finally, I’ll be catching up in the next few posts with some photos from my last couple incredible weeks in Ataúro...

This post offers a few more glimpses of Makili, bookending July 3rd, the Fishermens’ or St. Peter’s Festival and August 8th, a few days before I left Ataúro, when Manas Adina and Igitza invited me to Makili to see the hot springs and take family pictures. 

The Fishermen Festival in Makili begins with new boats being dragged down off the mountain (where they are made) to the sea, and the second half of the day is devoted to a mass and the celebration of St. Peter (patron saint of fishermen). Unfortunately, I missed the first half of the festival because, as I was making my way out of Vila in the morning (no doubt looking confused), a nun kindly asked if I was going to Makili; she advised that the Festival doesn’t begin until 2pm and that I could get a ride in the church truck. The option of getting a ride was very appealing, so I agreed and went back to Manu Koko-Rek to wait, but -doh!- the celebration of the boats was in the morning... Note: never trust a nun to point you toward the pagan half of a festival. (Please see excellent footage of the celebration of the boats included in this short film, ExperimentAtaúro, by David Palazón).

Nevertheless, the day turned out special and unique (as days in Timor do) despite my late arrival. It’s a long story, but I ended up walking over with Mana Erminya and friends and, since it was high tide, we took a new (to me) trail (literally) straight up and over the mountain providing exceptional views of the village of Makili down below.

Once we arrived in Makili, we had lunch in the home of Mana Adina (Mana Erminya’s cousin and my good friend from Manu Koko-Rek), then headed to the catholic festivities. A large stage was set up around the permanent statue of St. Peter that graces the village’s shore access (isn’t the scope of Rome astounding!?) Upon completion of the long ceremony, we jostled for space in the back of the military truck heading back to Vila. It was a hurried, abrasive ride on the rough roads as we raced the falling darkness, but the most violent bumps were met by laughter and eye contact through shared grimaces.

About a month and a half later, shortly before leaving the country, I returned to Makili, this time with Manas Katarina, Igitza, and Adina. Again, Mana Adina cooked lunch for all of us, we took photos with her family, and (because it was low tide) they showed me where some hot springs bubble through the rocks on shore. Some neighbors were collecting small sea snails, and my friends told me that they are cooked in the hot spring and eaten right there!

[passagesinpapermaking]

Making paper by hand involves many secrets, and one of the most surprising is... (promise not to tell...) OKRA!! You have to add the slimy stuff that seeps out of each juicy green fruit to the vat of water and fiber. This okra stuff makes the water “thicker” so that each little delicate fiber has more time to settle onto the surface of the papermaking mold, making a smooth and even sheet. I’m telling you, it doesn’t work without okra! Procuring okra, however, has proven to be a bit of a bottle neck in our papermaking on Ataúro: it is not grown here (yet) and can only be bought at the grocery store, Kmanek, in Dili (when they have it) and without full time refrigeration, the fresh okra goes real bad, real fast. 

But! We found a solution! If we slice open each okra fruit and dry them immediately, we can seep them in some freshly boiled water whenever we need, and they reconstitute and start oozing their gold. Then another hurdle arose: with the humidity and some days of solid cloud cover, we had a problem drying them before they started molding! Mana Katarina came to the rescue (again) with a(nother) brilliant idea to put them up on the tin roof over the kitchen that goes from 0 to baking with the slightest hint of sun. And so, one of our main bottlenecks has turned into more of a jar-mouth. 

With the access to ample okra juice (hence forth “formation aid” to turn to papermaking speak) we learned pulp painting! We tried out base sheets made with a mix of kapok and snake plant (named “samodok” courtesy Mana Maturina, because we were tired of not having a name for it in Tetun and “samea” means snake in Tetun, so... samodok!) and pulp painted designs with finely beaten red canna lilly. We used a water bottle with a hole pierced in the top to squirt the canna lilly pulp mixed with lots of formation aid into stencils or simply onto the base sheets to make shadowy effects. Everyone was really happy with the results! We’ll be making books out of some of these new designs.

And I’m very proud to introduce a new member of the team; Maun João, has joined us this past week, working tirelessly decorticating snake plant, pineapple leaves, and canna lilly stems, beating kapok and snake plant fibers, and making lots of sheets of paper. His receptive, sensitive, hard-working nature is a great addition to the team! (I think we’ve also hooked another young person, Maun Cristobal, but he is still in high school, so the team will have to wait!)

[passagesinpapermaking]

Collection #1 of various moments recorded over the course of the residency at the Boneca de Ataúro, Timor-Leste, June-August, 2016.

Televised concert celebrating independence day in the home of Mana Maturina’s cousin; they generously hosted me when I arrived in Dili.

Manas Lydia and Katarina sewing grass papermaking molds at the Boneca de Ataúro; sound of treadle sewing machines in the background.

Manas Leocaldia, Bendita, Govita, and Anastasia in Manu Koko-Rek practicing a song in Hresuk, the language of Makili, for ARTAURO.

Mana Katarina making handmade paper beads.

Betel nut festival, Makadade.

Handmade paper ornament from palm fibers.

A cotton (kabas) spinner in Makadade.

[passagesinpapermaking]

Alas, this is my final week on the island of Ataúro, I can’t believe it... But I’m so happy with our dazzling collection of Boneca de Ataúro papers, all that we have learned, and the friendships formed; it will be with a very heavy heart that I eventually get on the boat to Dili next week. In the meantime, I will begin posting collections of photos looking back on moments and glimpses, as well as keeping up with our new handmade paper products as we polish the prototypes. 

[passagesinpapermaking]

About a week ago, I got to go with the Boneca de Ataúro to Adara, the beautiful seaside village on the other side of the island, famous for the Wawata Topu, or women divers (an excellent documentary by David Palazón can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/81265144). We went to meet with some friends to discuss and arrange for them to come to Vila to learn papermaking so that they could make paper in Adara. Due to limited time and staff, Boneca would outsource the papermaking to Adara, buy the paper from them in the Beloi market every Saturday, and make books, beads, ornaments, etc. back at the cooperative. 

This day did not involve the usual drive to your typical business meeting. What unfolded was a 2-4 hour walk (each way) first through extensive white eucalyptus forests, then enormous chinese banyan trees (Ficus microcarpa), regal lontar palms, and innumerable other species whose huge horizontal trunks or above ground tent-like roots or perfectly distributed, antennae-like branches boggled the mind. I was in heaven.

More photos can be seen here: https://web.facebook.com/bonecadeatauro52/photos/pcb.610903025757244/610900722424141/?type=3&theater

https://web.facebook.com/bonecadeatauro52/photos/pcb.610903025757244/610901745757372/?type=3&theater

https://web.facebook.com/bonecadeatauro52/photos/pcb.610903025757244/610902059090674/?type=3&theater

https://web.facebook.com/bonecadeatauro52/photos/pcb.610903025757244/610902645757282/?type=3&theater

https://web.facebook.com/bonecadeatauro52/photos/pcb.610903025757244/610903015757245/?type=3&theater

[passagesinpapermaking]

Just when you think your awe of a place has reached maximum capacity... along comes the betel nut festival of Makadade. One day a year, Ataúrians from all over the island gather in the mountain tops of Makadade to buy goods from the pop-up vendors plying their wares from tarps set up along the mountain trails, gamble on cock fights, dance, and enjoy betel nut (bua) and the incredible physical feat of the betel nut harvest. 

Our day began by hitching a ride in the flatbed of the military truck and heading up the disintegrating road, limbs and flip-flops all packed in and tangled around each other. We arrived in Makadade by mid-morning and walked along the market-lined jungle paths admiring the local tais vendors selling their palm leaf cloth and other artisans offering coconut ladles, spoons and bowls as well as metal work, including machetes and the traditional spears used in the marriage contracts of Makili; such a spear and a specified number of palm tais must be passed from the husband to the wife’s family to seal the marriage.  

The day progressed to include cockfights (eerily silent except for the sudden eruption of cheers and calls, assumedly as the victor landed his blows) and the betel nut ceremony. From the three regions of Ataúro - a geographical distinction connected to the creation myth of the island, wherein three brothers each shot one flaming arrow into the sea in three directions, present day Ataúro emerged from those flames -, representatives brought offerings of dried fish and palm wine (tua mutin) and ceremoniously shook hands to express a commitment towards cooperation and sharing of resources across the island. 

And then, before I knew it, without further ado, suddenly, men, young and old, where weightlessly defying gravity and common sense physics, shimmying up the most shivering and tall of trees to harvest the bunches of betel nut waiting to be seized by those who dare reach their heights. These areca palms (bua-hun) are towering and impossibly slender, straight from the pages of Dr. Suess. Men were rising as fast as they were returning to earth. This up and down rhythm was periodically broken by gasps and cries that would emerge from the crowd as a harvester met his mark on a wavering and bowing (AH!!! will the top snap off and come crashing down?!?!) bua-hun. Relief comes as the stubborn explosion of palm leaves bounces back to vertical as he begins his descent. Then, just as quickly as this race along the y-axis had started, it finished; all the betel nut was earth-bound and brought to the ceremonial center to be divided amongst administrators, military, and communities. 

Because Makadade has a starkly different climate from Makili and Villa - much cooler and moist - we took advantage of the opportunity to gather some yellow flowering canna lilly, or contas mutin (white canna lilly in Tetun). The canna lilly that we had gathered in Vila to make paper several weeks ago was a red flowering canna lilly (contas mean, red canna lilly). The paper of these two Canna indica varieties came out completely different: as you may be able to guess, the paper from the red canna lilly came out, well, reddish, and the paper from the white canna lilly came out... white. Both batches of paper from the red and white canna lilies where each made from decorticated leaf stems. We made a third batch using the white canna lily and tested how the paper would turn out without decorticating, skipping that step to simply cook the dark, dry leaf stems. The paper thusly made came out a gorgeous, deep, chocolatey brown, lusciously translucent and as massive as a whisper. We are very excited about our new contas family! 

[passagesinpapermaking]

As part of ARTAÚRO, we got to show our handmade paper work at the Fundação Oriente in Dili. I would like to send a big thank you to Graça Viegas of the Fundação Oriente in Dili for generously giving us the space to show our work, and to Ester Piera Zuercher-Camponovo, Madalena Salvação Barreto, Jen Shyu, and David Palazón for dreaming up ARTAÚRO and making this all happen! And a very special “obrigada barack” to the Manas of the Boneca de Ataúro for all of their hard work and for making me feel completely at home; especially to Manas Katarina, Maturina, and Lydia for their patience and trust in learning and experimenting right along with me. 

I titled the show, Estocástico, or Stochasticity, meaning to have “a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely” (Mac Dictionary).

To showcase our developments in handmade paper, Mana Katarina and I collaborated on three large wall pieces. A sewing machine was brought out to our work area, and Mana Maturina helped sew the pieces of paper together. We then accentuated colors and contrasts with delicate layers of subtle pastel pencil.

We also included a sample of each paper with it’s corresponding leaf and a wall of photos explaining our papermaking process.

It was really a dream come true to create a collaborative show dedicated to handmade paper completely from scratch. And I had no idea that Mana Katarina and I subconsciously created a piece that when we pose before it for a picture, our heads exactly lined up with two of the paper “arms” so that it appears that our thoughts are meeting and mixing, effectively illustrating the collaboration that wrought the very work! : ) 

[passagesinpapermaking]

Wow! what an incredible two weeks it’s been! Between putting together and installing the show, Estocástico - an exhibit of our collaborative handmade paper wall pieces at the Fundação Oriente in Dili (more info and photos coming in the next post) - making brand new, beautiful kapok paper (explained in this post), traveling around the island enjoying the festivities of ARTAURO - including inspiring performances by Jen Shyu and singers from the Boneca de Ataúro and the film, Searching for the Lost Love, by David Palazón -, and learning to weave katupas, I’m overwhelmed with island love! 

In making our last batches of paper before getting ready for the show, we practiced setting up and working at two stations, with two different fibers and played with partially dipping the mold into the vats to get half corn leaf and half pacific sword grass sheets, producing a beautiful fading of color from yellow to green, respectively. We work with the vats inclined at an angle to conserve water.

Since we’d been making paper for almost two months at that point, more and more family members and friends were growing curious and wanting to try a hand at it. Mana Katarina and Mana Lydia got to practice teaching others what they had learned. 

We also made paper from kapok (ailele). The Boneca de Ataúro uses kapok to stuff the dolls and other plush toys. At first we were skeptical if it would work: following the usual papermaking protocol, we tried to soak the kapok fibers the night before cooking, but they resisted water so well, that we could not get them wet! We would push them down into the water and they would just float back up to the surface, perfectly dry!! So we stuck them straight into the boiling lime water the next morning and that worked. After cooking, the fibers were a rich brown, and formed cream colored, translucent, smooth sheets. We all fell in love immediately.

The Boneca de Ataúro has launched a crucial fundraising campaign. They have a pressing need for funds to buy their own land and free themselves from the precarious situation of working in a building on loan from the government. Please click on this Boneca de Atauro link to donate and to see the incredibly hilarious and imaginative film inspired by the Boneca, Searching for the Lost Love, by David Palazón.

[passagesinpapermaking]

Papermaking at the Boneca de Ataúro is progressing in exciting new directions! 

In regard to equipment, we now have 10cm and 20cm diameter grass molds (the 10cm one is adorable), and we found that sewing white tulle over the top of the mold works really well. Thanks for finding that for us at the fabric shop in Dili, mana Madalena! 

And, completely independently of me, mana Maturina, mana Lydia, and mana Katarina designed a sort of beating trough for us to beat the fibers. Commissioned from mana Lydia’s son, a wood carver, our new nesun is made of eucalyptus alba (aiburbur) and works wonderfully! 

We have now added the following papers to our collection: more heavily beaten banana leaves (hudi), canna lily (contas), snake plant, corn leaves (batar), pacific sword grass (soko), and I’ll present our beautiful new kapok (ailele) paper in the next post. 

[passagesinpapermaking]

Our papermaking activities at the Boneca de Atauro are continuing in full force! Everyday we experiment with a different fiber, and I’ll share our up-to-date collection in the next post.

For now, I’d like to highlight the second paper we made, this one with banana fiber. It came out COMPLETELY different from the pineapple paper, full of lovely texture which everyone was really excited about.

We also introduced a new technique - one afternoon, they happened to be doing some electrical work at the restaurant and were throwing away a bunch of wire, and it dawned on me, watermarking! So we stripped the wire, and mana Maturina, mana Katarina, and mana Lydia each made their own designs that we first sewed to the molds I brought with me. After getting the idea, we sewed them to our grass molds as well. More results to come soon!

[passagesinpapermaking]

With great pleasure and excitement, I present to you our first handmade paper of the Boneca de Ataúro! This first batch is from pineapple, and the color is such a mysterious golden-flecked, yellow-green, and the texture so smooth, I keep reaching over and touching it where it’s stacked on my desk to make sure I didn’t dream it up. We are all so happy!

We started processing this pineapple fiber by decorticating the bright green leaves. We then cooked the fiber in a stainless steel pot with lime, ahu, over a fire (all local cooking is done over a fire) for about 5 hours and left the fiber in the lime water over night. All fiber for papermaking has to be cooked in an alkaline solution to free the cellulose from the lignin and other non-archival plant substances. I chose to use lime as the alkali, because, as it is widely used to chew betel nut, it is readily available and already familiar. Also, cooking with lime produces residual calcium carbonate in the fiber contributing to its archival quality. 

We then washed the fiber of all dissolved non-archival plant substances and beat it with wooden mallets on a wooden board. Once the fiber was properly beaten, it was time to make sheets using our grass molds. It took some trial and error to sew the grass screen to the embroidery hoop frame with the right tension to produce and even sheet, but we got it and were all so excited when the first sheets came off the mold!

That same afternoon, a teacher from Australia brought over two current pupils who were so eager to learn about papermaking. Everyone got a kick out of their observant questions and enthusiasm. After all of our work, their gasps of wonder upon successfully forming their own sheets was our perfect reward.

[passagesinpapermaking]

Concurrently with decorticating and preparing our fiber plants, we were also figuring out how to make our own papermaking molds. A papermaking mold is essentially a sieve that is dipped into the vat of fiber and water and pulled up and out; the water drains leaving the fresh sheet of paper on the surface of the mold. The miscanthus floridus grass that I had collected for testing was working well, so one Friday morning I went out with the help of mana Lydia, mana Maturina, and maun Frans (who is a tuk tuk driver and also mana Lydia’s younger brother) to gather as much as we could. The challenge is finding enough grass of the same diameter, with sufficient strength and length. We collected a tuk tuk full of plant material, but after sorting through it all it wasn’t enough to complete both molds; we would have to gather more grass next week. That afternoon, with the additional, much appreciated, enthusiastic, hilarious, help of Tayu, a visiting Japanese ex-pat living in Indonesia, we were able to cut all of the extra grass leaves that we collected to use later as fiber.

Later, the following week - this time knowing exactly what part of the plant to gather - mana Lydia and I went out again, and, with the help of another kind tuk tuk driver, working together, hamutuk, we did it! After sorting all the grass according to size and discarding the ones that were too weak, we laid them out over two templates and had enough to make two circle molds of 15 and 24 cm diameters. I decided to use wooden embroidery hoops, like those used in the Boneca on a daily basis, as the stiff upper and lower frames of the mold (the upper, removable frame is called the deckle). These embroidery hoops are easily bought in Dili and will produce a unique round paper that connects back to the activities of the Boneca. 

To begin sewing the grass together, we practiced and adapted the chain stitch using bunches of four to five pieces of grass. Once we felt comfortable, we moved to sewing the circle molds. With all of the trial and error, (including me having to leave for a couple days to renew my visa in Dili) it took a little over a week to gather and sort the grass and to sew the molds. 

In the meantime, my neighbor tokay gecko, whom I had only heard up to this point, decided that it was time to just start hanging out in my room. As I’d shoo him out before closing up my windows for the night, he would startle and turn a dark brown with stark rings of blue-gray spots. Incredible.

[passagesinpapermaking]

Makili, Part II

We took the mountain path out of Makili because the tide was too high to walk back along the shore. The journey was long, rocky, and stunning. My friends pointed out the homes of different women from the Boneca as we passed. I was astonished by how far they walk everyday. As we skirted the peak of Manukoko, we passed a new school, a small kiosk where we bought banana juice and cassava chips, and the spring to which the residents of Makili climb to collect water to bring back to their homes. We also stopped for a break around a turn of the trail with an incredible view of Ataúro extending northward and the island of Liran, Indonesia, in the distance.