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Below are some previously showcased works using Japanese paper we are pleased to be able to share with you. Roll your mouse over each image to
see it enlarged.
Inuit prints from the Cape Dorset Printmaking Co-op, Nunavut, Canada
The first catalogued collection of graphic
art was produced in the Cape Dorset print
studio in 1959 and the practice of producing
an annual collection of prints continues
to this day. In the 60's, any
Inuit still lived in camps and would make
drawings there in their traditional environment.
During the next visit to the trading post,
the artists would present their finished
work for sale in the hope of having one or
more made into limited edition stonecuts,
stencils, or engravings.
Today, most artists work in their homes in Cape Dorset and more recent printing techniques also include lithographs, etchings and aquatints. Although many of the early artists are now deceased, a new generation has emerged, also expressing their unique vision in strong compositions and compelling images.
Washi has been used from the very beginning
in Cape Dorset for both stencil prints and
the stonecuts, often mixing the two techniques
in the same print.
 In
2003, The Japanese Paper Place arranged
for a family of 3 Japanese papermaking
generations to visit Cape Dorset, to introduce
them to the printmakers who were using their
paper. The highlight was the presentation
by the Co-op of one of Kenojouak's "Golden
Bird" stonecut
to the Osaki family, a magnificent glowing
print on fine seichosen kozo.
In addition to being aesthetically appealing, Inuit works on paper offer invaluable documentation and insights into a culture that endured largely untouched until the middle of the 20th century.
If you would like to read more about this fascinating piece of Canadian art history, check out the new book release by Leslie Boyd called Cape Dorset Prints: a Retrospective or to purchase a print visit www.dorsetfinearts.com.
Rebecca Cowan
"As printmakers, we are drawn increasingly to beautiful paper and so I discovered what Japanese papers would do for my work. Images that looked quite ordinary on ordinary paper seemed to glow on fine thin Japanese paper.
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| Detail of Green-Eyed Dreamer translucence - click on image to enlarge |
"This series of little etched accordion books, "Small Stories of Big Ideas" was inspired by an etching class which I was teaching in which I used a long skinny plate to demonstrate a number of techniques. The result appeared to fall readily into this book form and I did the first of a series of 5 books as a result. They were so little that I could spring for very good quality paper which absorbs the ink completely.
"It is the combination of the strength and yet the seeming fragility and translucence of the paper that I really like. I like the idea of art which is so small you can take it wherever you go and when you have a bad day, you can open it up and be transported somewhere else. There may be more in the series..."
Kingston, Ontario printmaker Rebecca Cowan can be reached at bjwan@sympatico.ca.
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| Trust |
Think Big |
Green-Eyed Dreamer |
Shadows |
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Brian Kelley
"An artist can start out with an idea that he or she forces on the world or they can let the world slip something in, but what's produced by this interaction is always going to have surprises. It's not like you can get an idea and go "click" it's manifested. You deal with what's involved with working out that idea and you get new things happening, unexpected things hopefully, that play with you, that irritate and even imitate you."
- Brian Kelley
Having first discovered washi as a substrate for woodblock prints during his studies with Toshi Yoshida in Japan in 1980, he has been endlessly exploring its other possibilities for drawing, pastel, watercolour, etching, chine collé, and pochoir (stencil prints) since then.
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Cape Dorset, woodcut |
River, woodcut |
Brandywind Falls, woodcut |
Sky is the limit, woodcut and pochoir |
Webster Falls, woodcut and pochoir |
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Game, woodcut |
Forest Floor, pochoir |
Woodcut book |
Apricots and Rose, pochoir |
Peaches as Plums, pochoir |
Drawing and Painting
Japanese papers, especially 100% kozo or gampi, can add depth and richness to painting. Using water-based paints, especially gouache, inks and fabric paints, the effects of the special union of paper and paint can be explored. By adding drawing mediums over the paint, a wide variety of effect can be expressed on a single piece of washi. Here are some examples.
| Lorraine Pritchard |
Susan Low-Beer |
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| Paths 1 |
Paths 2 |
detail, Tools for Daily Living |
closeup, Tools for Daily Living |
| Drawing with graphite, coloured pencil and ink on kozo cards |
Mixed drawing and painting media on various washi |
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| Susan Wood |
Mary Jane Varro |
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| Bleeding Tulips |
Falling Leaves |
Untitled |
Untitled |
| Ink, watercolour, collage on gampi and kozo |
Fabric paints and wax resist on Kozuke |
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Home Decor
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A boring worktable dressed up with cheery Tairei sheets.
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| Our very own creative Kayoko Torii sewed these colourful curtains out of Watermark Tissues. |
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| You've seen shoji screens - how about shoji shutters? Simple and classy. |
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Invitations
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Tara Moore-Jones created these stunning invitations, showcasing Chiyogami and Opaque papers with Watermark Tissue overlays. |
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Fine Art
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Mary Jane
Varro
Technique: Stitching & Dyeing |
Susan Low-Beer
Technique: Painting |
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Kenojuak
Technique: Stonecut & Stencil |
Leah Taylor
Technique: Collage |
Milt Jewell
Technique: Encaustic Monoprint |
World Washi Summit
June 2008 saw the World Washi Summit bring lovers of washi together in Toronto, Canada for a week of workshops, seminars, and over 35 gallery exhibitions of works on this remarkable paper.
Tree by Susan Farquar
Multiple silkscreen images and pastel over canvas.
Artist statement:
Washi is key to my image-making process. The natural fibers of this hand-made paper, its strength, range of transparency and colour are as important as the printing of my drawings onto washi. I am presently using three papers: Mura Sized White, Usu Kuchi Light and Uwa Senka Long.
I begin with the canvas painted in a solid colour then commence gluing the printed washi on top layer after layer until I reach a sort of image possibility. I take clues from what has appeared to begin drawing the image. The ability to control the range between opacity and transparency with each paper, to manipulate it when wet, and the variety of inherent surfaceand inner textures make these papers a dynamic designing feature in my work.
 Summer garden by Naoko Matsubara
Woodblock print
Artist Statement:
I started to do woodcut back in 1956 or so when I was a student of
Design under Frau Lizzi Ueno, an inspirational Austrian teacher at
the Kyoto Academy of Fine Arts. Then after I went to the States as a
Graduate student (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh), I changed
my course from Design to Graphic Design, specifically woodcut print
making.
I have been using washi from 1956 onward starting with very
cheep student grade, but as I grow older, I started to understand the
merit of really good hand made washi and have been using the most
beautiful good quality paper.
I am fortunate to know many great
washi makers in Japan as well as knowing such fabulous shop as
Japanese Paper Place in Toronto. Just touching, smelling and looking
at those various beautiful washi of all colors and sizes alone is a
great inspiration to create.
Snow Flower by Terhi Hursti (Finland)
Book - washi, wooden ring, wool
Artist statement:
The strength and sensibility of washi paper reminds me of the beauty of snow.
I wanted to make a work that holds the silence of white.
Like a snow flower.
Heron Island by Emma Nishimura
Chine-collé etching
Jacket by Mo Ying Chan
Dyed hosokawa lined with silk
Artist statement:
[Washi is] challenging but gratifying - the paper yields beautiful textures.
 Untitled by Deb Oden
Etching drawing, mixed media
Artist statement:
I first printed on Washi when in graduate school, looking for a paper that was strong enough yet supple enough to tolerate my unconventional printing techniques. During the print process, my paper is folded, and generally abused.
I print with very deeply bitten intaglio plates. The amazing texture of hand pulled paper is a wonderful foil for my intaglio lines. The resultant prints are more complex for the contrast of my hard lines and the sublime texture of the paper. The beauty of the paper itself poses a challenge for me as I begin printing.
The beautiful washi papers I print with have a natural, compelling color pallet. The naturals are warm, buttery, blushed with pink undertones or green hues. Washi offers a subtle color base that is an exciting suggestion of color combinations. I am able choose to work against the suggestion or with it. Printing on such rich and subtle color is a quiet thrill for anyone who loves color as I do.
My work with Washi, ink and press, becomes a duet of call and response between control and flow. Washi challenges me to be more attentive to issues of beauty and destruction.
Resting Caribou by Natalie Griller
Sumi ink painting
Artist statement:
Painting on washi is like working with a living thing; it helps bring paintings to life. There is great joy for me in this; washi's dynamic nature is part of the living spirit of art.
Ruin Spread by Reg Beatty
Book with seichosen kozo
Artist statement:
At first, it's artistic eye candy full of brilliant colours and gorgeous textures and patterns, but working with washi is an education in sensitivity training. Gradually, your initial enthusiasms evolve - all the quiet qualities step forward and reveal the heart of the paper; tone and the minute effects of the transmission of light, fragrance (both dry and wet), pliancy felt at the finger tips, even the sound of the paper in motion. In this sense washi is hardly a material - it is already a refined piece of skilled making. And every project becomes a score to play these subtle qualities with the artist's understanding of both their ideas and its possible manifestation.
My work The Ruin is another of my own explorations of washi, but an exploration in an extreme landscape. In a way, it is an exercise in disrespect, in going too far. I worked at the limits of the paper; took its pliancy and made it brittle, shattered the surface, folded, cracked, stained, almost exhausted it. Amazingly it held, and that became the heart of my piece.
A Morphology Naturalized by Liz Parkinson
Woodblock print on Nishinouchi kozo.
Artist statement:
My prints consider the collected languages we use to understand the natural world. Gampi tissue is part of my visual vocabulary because its qualities echo my explorations.
In A Morphology Naturalized (veil), a traditional floral pattern is overtaken by dandelions, enlarged and repeatedly printed on gampi tissue to become a room filling, delicately resilient, clearly delineated yet translucent and quietly whispering, floating vale of nature/culture.
 There is no beginning by Ólöf Björk Bragadóttir
Watercolour and ink on kozo washi.
Artist statement:
My project concerns water and its movement. The ocean and the rivers, water, in all its forms inspires me and has been a central part in much of my work. The material, this time, consists of watercolours, ink and this irresistible Japanese paper, Washi. The idea for my drawing is also inspired from the poem, circles, written by Sigurður Ingólfsson. The project consists of working on a form that symbolizes the movement of water, a whirl or a spiral.
There is no beginning.
There is no end.
There is light,
there are circles.
New worlds
constantly in creation.
And even silence.
There is no beginning.
There is no end.
Fish in Fish Out by Wendy Cain
Silkscreen print on kiraku kozo.
This print was shown during the Summit in a wire lamp frame made by Peter Jones.
Artist Statement:
As a papermaker, I have tried to make paper from both kozo and gampi fibre and I have nothing but awe and appreciation for the papers made by the papermakers of Japan. They make tough and translucent magic from these raw fibres and I am certain that my paper will always be eccentric and irregular in comparison with their amazing product.
I think I missed that part by Cybele Young
Dyed kozo washi. Actual size is about 4" square, and accurate in every detail.
Fold 1 by Lily Yung
Folded bracelet of Tosa usushi washi.
Paper as it is by Wu Wing Yee
Burn marks on Gampi washi.
Artist statement:
This paper itself is already a work of art; my idea for this exhibition was to preserve the papermaker's creation, while at the same time unfolding the beautiful natural quality of the Gampi.
I didn't want to impose an Art Work onto the paper. Instead I made a repetition of incense burn marks, which I see as a form of shape writing, describing the smooth buttery grain of the paper.
Lilies by Marilyn Lightstone (detail)
Epson digital print on torinoko gampi.
Go Green by Mae Leong
Ink and acrylic on Kizuki Tosa Kozo on the left side, and vinyl paste and acrylic on the right side.
Shepherd's Bookbinding
Classic hardcover with Nigerian goatskin with Katazome-shi end sheets and sleeve.
Giant Pine by Ed Pien
Kozo paper dyed with Sumi ink.
Artist Statement:
The beautiful sheet of Washi paper that I had acquired through the Japanese Paper Place prompted the imagery for this six-foot wide paper cut. The hand made paper's sweeping length was ideal for embracing the image that depicts the entire canopy of an ancient giant pine. Its dense foliage assumes the befitting backdrop where a group of figures enact their ritual.
Cutting away at the image of the pine reminded me of the ways in which such trees in Japanese gardens are carefully trimmed and shaped; with patience and time, beautiful forms come into being. The process for realizing Giant Pine involved two phases. The initial cuttings carefully followed the image that I had prepared. Once the cutting was complete, I spontaneously and intuitively began to "trim" away at the entire piece. It was at this stage that the semi geometric shapes and negative spaces playfully appeared. The presence of these unexpected elements compliments the figures and further reinforces the mysteriousness of the setting and activities taking place.
Spirit in Rice Rain by Tomoyo Ihaya
Intaglio on gampi, stuffed, starched and stitched.
Full size, left. Detail, right.
Back to the Great Temple by Sebastian Canovas
Acrylic and collage with various washi.
 Domes #1 by Penelope Stewart
Sepia ink on mitsumata tissue.
Artist Statement:
Domes...consists of a suite of brush and ink architectural sketches of the domes of glasshouses. Beginning with a photograph of the architecture it is then rendered and translated into line onto a light tissue (mitsumata). The nature of the line, the choice of paper, the ink, and the puckering all work to describe these canopy like structures and the utopian poetry implicit. They suggest imaginary places and spaces floating without ground. They appear like notes or an archive of possibilities.
 Yesterday's Tulips by Susan Wood
Both drawings are washi collaged unto a mouldmade 'western' paper with watercolour, and acrylic ink.
Comments:
I started working with washi in 1980 while in graduate school, making small collages, and layering the paper with acrylic gel and using a range of drawing media, although my primary studio practice at the time was painting. Then life shifted and I moved from Calgary to Newfoundland in 1983 and began to spend more time drawing on paper and less time painting on canvas and eventually completely stopped painting.
I had begun a series of large drawings (4'x8'), working with graphite, but had run into difficulties with the first drawing and in total frustration, I collaged a sheet of washi over the body of the drawing thinking it would obliterate what wasn't working but instead I ended up with this wonderful surface where some of the drawing showed through and other parts did completely disappear. I then worked back into the collaged surface.
It was one of those rare bits of serendipity, in covering up a 'mistake' I stumbled upon a way of building a drawing that I use to this day and in the process I fell in love with washi. It can be so many things, opaque to impossibly transparent, small to large, beautiful creamy surfaces to papers full of bits of bark, dyed and printed; so many variations and so many possibilities. It can be challenging and unpredictable to work with but I have come to appreciate those qualities as each new sheet has the potential to take your drawing someplace that you hadn't seen before.
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