#watermarkworkshop

While we were in Chico, in addition to our sewing circles at the Turner Museum, we also offered a Watermark workshop to students and Chico community members.

Above, Michelle discusses hydrogen bonding to the crowd of workshop participants.

Above, workshop participants cut their watermark stencils out of vinyl. Since we didn’t have enough molds for everyone in the class to attach their watermark to, we used nylon window screening that was laid over the molds while pulling they pulled their sheets. This also enabled participants to carry their watermarks home easily.

We prepared yellow and blue rag pulp for the class, and had two vats of each color going, as well as a rinse vat for whenever anyone wanted to change colors.

Below, some watermarks from the workshop:

But our favorite watermark from the class had to be this one:

Salina Art Center’s mission is to create exchanges among art, artists, and audiences that reveal life. In June, during our visit to Salina, we were ever so fortunate to have been welcomed into this community and will carry that mission on with us in our future travels. We wrap up our series of posts from our Salina visit with photos from our super fun watermark workshop in The Art Center’s enormous warehouse and papermaking studio.  

Pre-workshop, the calm before the storm, the wonderful Gretchen Boyum, The Art Center’s Director of Education and Programming, and our tour guide and food and transportation provider, begins setting up for the workshop in the Salina Art Center’s Warehouse. Look at that space!

Michelle instructs workshop participants on the best strategies for designing & cutting their watermarks using buttercut stencil material (also known as sandblast vinyl). Below is one of our samples that we made beforehand along with the sketch on which it’s based. 

Stencil cutting close up, Executive Director Bill North’s children & friend hard at work. For optimal results, we recommend keeping your buttercut stencil lines and shapes to 1/4″ or smaller. 

To the vats! Michelle walks participants through the sheet forming & couching process. 

And for the finale, we load the dry box, constructed for The Art Center by Drew Matott of the Peace Paper Project. Participants remove their fragile, freshly pressed paper from the wet felts and carefully transfer the sheets to dry felts that will be sandwiched between sheets of plastic mesh, weighted, wrapped with plastic sheeting and backed with a fan to dry under restraint. 

A final tremendous thank you to Bill North, Gretchen Boyum, and everyone at the Salina Art Center, for inviting us into your world of revealing life, and to all the residents of Salina who shared their time and voices with us!