Papermaking Workshop at the DCCA

Art works with Handmade Papers:
A workshop at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary art

This workshop at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary arts was one of the highlights of our year! The kids had the opportunity to create beautiful art works from paper they made themselves during this six week workshop under the direction of Artist in Residence, Yukie Kobayashi.



Teddy, Billie Rose and 11 other homeschooling students learned ancient papermaking techniques from Tibet, Korea, Africa and other regions of North and South Asia as well as a more contemporary western style of handmade papermaking.







The students created sheets of handmade papers using papyrus pulp as well as pulp and fibers from Asian Mulberry bushes.


They pounded raw materials into the proper consistency, mixed with formation agents and then poured their mixtures onto screens and into paper forms. They were asked to visualize ancient people, using simple tools and materials, pounding pulp on rocks, and allowing rainfall to texture and sculpt the final products.


One of their favorite projects involved Japanese style paper marbling as well as other ways of staining paper using bamboo brushes or dipping paper into dye and dripping pigment or dyed pulp onto the paper. The results were very gratifying. The marbling kits they used are available at Dick Blicks. These kits also happened to be included in our curriculum materials from Oak Meadow. It was wonderful for me to have seen this process in action, when we tackle the paper marbling project at home we will feel like old pros!


















Each student kept a journal throughout the course of the workshop in books they were given that were bound in beautiful sheets of handmade paper made by Yukie.

Yukie relinquished her opportunity to have her own work displayed at the DCCA in order to allow the kids in the workshop to exhibit their work in her place. Yukie was very creative about coming up with ways for the students to show off their works on paper. For the final exhibit the handcrafted papers were transformed into objects of art and utility or framed. The work was incorporated into floating frames and paperweights. The most dramatic of the final pieces were lamps shaded by sculptural sheets of paper, made in a Tibetan style of paper making. The thick paper sheets were bent around glass lamps transforming them into three dimensional glowing works of art.




















In the end the experience and the work was quite spiritual and really reflected the best of what involvement in the arts can be. We are very grateful to Yukie for giving so much of herself and her art and her craft to us all. And we are very grateful to Holly Bennet, education director at the DCCA for offering us homeschoolers this wonderful opportunity.