Seven “Rules” for Artmaking from Resident Aimee Lee
Caitlin Etherton
It is late May. Summer is more here than not. The weeds, every minute of the day, are infringing on the crops we’ve planted on purpose. And I am hoping that soon our milkweed seedlings will finally be tucked into their rows in the garden. Safe beside my desk at home is a delicate wisp of handmade milkweed paper, no longer or wider than my hand. Bright white and lighter than even a fluff of milkweed seeds, the lean fibers bind around in gauzy swoops and circles, traveling just barely off the sheet’s edge. The way the paper gleams in the sunny window reminds me of my family’s beloved dog Millie, the way her long white coat softly shines just after she’s had a bath.
The sample of paper is wrapped in a smaller, mustard-colored, rectangle of paper and tied around with a very thin, green and white rope that was twisted from paper as well. The assemblage was a gift from artist, papermaker, writer, researcher, and teacher Aimee Lee during her summer residency here at OSGF last summer. Aimee harvested the milkweed from a front pasture alongside Rokeby Road. She steamed the stems, stripped, scraped and cooked them in an alkaline solution, beat them with a wooden mallet, added water and okra goo to the mash, agitated the mixture into a cloudy pulp, then expertly formed fresh sheets to be used for writing, for drawing, and for making books and art.
The past two summers we’ve enjoyed planning and executing fiber and natural dye gardens in the previous cut flower garden at OSGF’s Biocultural Conservation Farm (BCCF). During her residency last July, Aimee stayed in a cottage just down the hill from said fiber garden. A few weeks into her visit, she took a break from pulp pounding to join me for a walk around the property. We talked about papermaking, puddles, wasps, clouds, persimmons, and the misery of accidentally dropping food in very dirty places. And our discussion has left a lasting impression ever since.
As we get closer to hosting our first papermaking workshop here at the farm (tenderly taught by Appalachian papermaker Alyssa Sacora), we figured it might be a good time to share a few of Aimee’s insights.
Aimee’s intricate work and many resources are collected here. Our interview regarding her COVID artist response project can be found here.
And without further ado, here are seven takeaways on papermaking, art, and living from artist Aimee Lee.
1. Take only what you need.
Aimee sorting through milkweed in her studio last summer.
While harvesting wild native species—whether for food or medicine or art—take only what you need. Sometimes harvesting and foraging can help to proliferate and bolster the growth of the plant being harvested. Sometimes it can help to eradicate invasive species. And still other times it can put stress on the natural ecosystem. Do your research! When wild sweetgrass is harvested, the plants left behind are given more room to grow and to multiply. But when milkweed is harvested at the wrong time of year, it can result in lessening or eliminating a food source that is essential for moths, bugs, and the threatened monarch butterfly. When Aimee harvests milkweed for papermaking she cuts only a few plants from each milkweed patch she passes. She also strips the leaves from the plant and leaves them at the foot of the patch. Monarchs lay their eggs not on milkweed stems but on the underside of milkweed leaves, so this quick simple step ensures that all future caterpillars are left behind to become future butterflies.
2. Do your best for every step of the process.
A particularly lovely step of the process: marigolds make beautiful natural dye. Photo by Danielle Eady.
When I asked Aimee to pinpoint her favorite step of the papermaking process, her answer was quick and blunt: “It’s important to do every step well because, if not, the next step will be really bad.” While some art forms involve separate processes that are later combined, papermaking is a single process of steps that each build on one another. If you don’t properly steam your plant material it will be harder to clean. If you don’t properly clean your plant material, stems and unwanted plant parts can disrupt the integrity of the slurry, clog the equipment, and weaken the forming of the sheet. If you don’t beat the pulp well enough your paper slurry will be mottled and inconsistent. Instead, Aimee suggests, show up for “all of it.” The harvesting. The pulping. The washing of buckets and sweeping of floors. The soul-satisfying crackle of a new sheet ripped from its drying board. Every step is necessary and sustained attention will deliver better results.
3. Don’t throw anything away.
Paper scraps in Aimee’s studio. Photo by Caitlin Etherton.
We all have our off days. If the first few steps of the papermaking process don’t go well, don’t give up and throw it all out! The best thing you can do is march on and make the paper anyway. There are lessons to be learned from a subpar papermaking experience. “Bad” paper can also be “broken” when it is finished, a process where paper is returned to its liquid form to try-try-again. Upcycled paper pulp will always be softer and weaker than the first batch, but it can still result in a beautiful, useful product. Lee also never throws away material from previous exhibitions when she feels they are ready to come down. Instead she dismantles all the material she can and stashes them away for future projects. In her studio at Oak Spring, there was even a small colorful container of tiny paper scraps sitting dutifully on her desk, waiting for the perfect time and place to come in handy. It’s hoarding, she admitted, but “very organized hoarding.”
4. Throw things away.
Aimee Lee’s studio at OSGF. Photo by Caitlin Etherton.
“Hoard, hoard, purge!” says Aimee Lee. “Hoarding is like resting, like strengthening the bond so that when it goes away you don’t feel devastated.” Each material in Aimee’s arsenal takes so long to make, it almost seems as though each luminous leaf of paper and thin twist of rope becomes a child, or a home, or a dear friend. But too prolonged of an attachment can impede development of new ideas, or even simple space for new materials. Additionally, too precious of an attachment can impede freedom of expression. “If the stress load of ‘What Do I Do With This’ is so great,” Aimee explains, “you just tear the paper up and it’s a little less stressful. You’ve already done the destructive thing that people are told not to do with paper.” Torn and humbled, it’s as though a spell has broken and there’s finally the license to create.
5. Learn from other cultures but do not appropriate.
A great way to avoid cultural appropriation is to focus instead on cultural appreciation. There are many ways to learn, understand, and even practice the traditions of another culture without disrespectfully taking advantage. A recent example:
Beautiful goo.
Last summer, we were fortunate here at OSGF to observe the separate papermaking processes of Aimee Lee and Alyssa Sacora, who both utilize the mucilage from okra as an emulsification agent in their paper slurries. Okra stems and okra pods sit over a few days until their slime is extracted into the surrounding water. The plant pieces are strained out and a thick, clear, gloppy extraction is left behind. Used primarily as a formation aid, this goo is called dak pul, or “mulberry glue,” in traditional Korean hanji papermaking. In Japan it is called neri and is made from the tororo-aoi, or sunset muskmallow. Stirred into prepared paper pulp and water, the viscosity of the slick goo helps the mixture to suspend evenly in the vat. This process, of adding the goo from a mallow plant, has been popular throughout Asia for centuries. Aimee explained that in traditional Japanese papermaking they say that you know you have the right consistency of this material when it looks and feels like “cow drool.” (See Aimee’s videos of the process here.) Perhaps the reason for this specific comparison is because the original papermakers in Asia were farmers, monks, and prisoners—people who were familiar with hard labor. Ready to clear their fields at the end of the season, farmers in particular were quick to utilize their slow winters and remaining crop residue to make paper for supplemental off-season income.
Inspired by this beautiful lesson, this year’s paper garden at the BCCF is brimming with a variety of mallows and other goo-producing plants so that future papermakers at Oak Spring can experiment with the processes and viscosities of different botanical sources of “cow drool.” Hibiscus plants, used by Japanese and Korean papermakers, will help us to continue to share Aimee’s story and lesson. Aimee experimented with hollyhock last year, but still found that okra makes the best goo. In this year’s paper garden we are growing marshmallow, Thai red roselle, Malabar spinach, hibiscus, cotton, Palestinian molokhia (also known as okra leaf or jute mallow), and okra. The okra we grow at OSGF, “Shelton’s Giant,” is a variety of okra shared with us by the Shelton family who’ve saved Appalachian seed for generations. At the BCCF, Shelton’s Giant okra is harvested for food, grown in our seed saving garden, and grown in our fiber garden, where an unusually tight six-inch plant spacing results in thinner stems that are easier to process for papermaking.
Kathleen Gemmer and her daughter, Kat, look at the Giant Okra grown from the seeds they gave to the BCCF. Photo by Caitlin Etherton.
You can read more about papermaking with mallows in Aimee’s book Hanji Unfurled, and by reading her many wonderful articles, including this one recounting her time at Jang Ji Bang papermill in Gapyeong, Korea in 2009.
6. Papermaking and dyeing with natural dyes can draw the maker closer to the natural rhythms of the season.
Some of Aimee’s completed pieces. Photo by Danielle Eady.
Lovely alkanet growing in the BCCF’s fiber and dye garden. Photo by Caitlin Etherton.
On our walk, Aimee and I passed by a beautiful American persimmon tree growing along the road that leads to the formal garden. As we admired the tree’s growing fruit, Aimee described a traditional Korean technique where green persimmon fruit is mashed and strained into a natural dye. Water-resistant, sweat-wicking, and insect-repelling, clothes dyed in persimmon are traditionally worn by Korean farmers, and they are dyed again every year to renew their helpful properties. Because of the fruit’s natural tannins, no mordant is needed to make the dye (technically a coating) adhere to fabric fibers in the dye bath. The fruit serendipitously reaches a ready state for dyeing right at the time of year when farmers need it most. Once they are finished being woven, Lee likes to coat her Hanji paper ducks with this same green persimmon dye in order to harden, shine, and slightly waterproof her finished work.
7. Don’t make paper out of paper wasp nests.
Best admired from a distance (source: Wikimedia Commons)
Aka: don’t reinvent the wheel! Paper wasps are the OG paper makers. Thousands of years ago, humans learned how to create paper from plants by observing the way paper wasps and bees chew fibers into a raw, buildable pulp for making nests. Mulberry has been the prized papermaking plant in Asia for eons. While few plants rival the refinement and smoothness imparted by mulberry or milkweed pulp, there are many other perfectly adequate options. Paper can be made from iris leaves, flax, tree bast, hemp, and even several species that are invasive in the U.S. like Japanese knotweed, arundo, and kudzu. It’s good to experiment! But just because bad batches of paper can be upcycled into a new slurry doesn’t mean paper wasp nests will upcycle nicely into sheets of paper. It’s not impossible, but it will never be as cohesive as when the nest was first made. Wasp nests are best left for admiration and observation. “They’re much nicer just the way they are,” Aimee says, “They are the perfect paper makers.”
The Oak Spring Garden Foundation is currently accepting applications for a range of residencies and fellowships designed to support artists, as well as writers, scholars, scientists, and other individuals whose work is inspired by the natural world. Visit www.osgf.org/residencies and www.osgf.org/fellowships to learn more and apply - the deadline for all applications is July 15!
Banner photograph of Aimee Lee’s fiber art by Caitlin Etherton.