i'm helping with
a collaboration: SLU's arts collaborative, the
sustainability semester, TAUNY (traditional arts in upstate ny)
we're making a poetry garden which
"makes paper from local plants as a way to celebrate the environment, engage community and teach traditional hand papermaking practices".
the sustainability semester folks have a nice big garden
and they planted
some flax and some milkweed
three of us showed up on the hottest saturday of the summer
only it was september
to process some
fiber.
flax
iris and daylily leaves
this little building i'd like to take home,
it's a storage/drying shed
sarah (the driving force behind this collaborative) and esthela
poets and slu faculty
showed up for the grunt work.
we three attempted to prep enough plant fibers
for saturday's plant papermaking class at st lawrence
we three
got a lot of plants chopped,
steamed,
scraped and
pulped
and the papers we make
will be substrate for poems
which will be planted
along with some bulbs and roots and rhizomes
for spring surprises
at the sustainability farm. (click for info)
~
oh, and that sustainability farmhouse
used to be the local cooperative extension office
where i worked
(and grew a fiber/papermaking garden)
for five years or so in the 90's.
i'm so glad to be making paper here again.