Last fall, I had the honor of being asked to teach a community papermaking workshop at the ArtSeaLab Festival in Dauphin Island, Alabama! This was the first year of ArtSeaLab, a collaboration between the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Art Does It!, a local arts non-profit.
I collaborated with Joshua Dugat and Nicole Gelb-Dugat on a community Ecolit workshop series, with the goal of creating an edition of 20 community-generated chapbooks over the course of two days.
We started with recycled papermaking on a rainy, blustery Thursday in late October. Before class, Josh, Nicole, and I ran out to the beach in the driving rain to collect seaweed, grasses, and other artifacts. We did our best to dry off before the participants — who came from as near as Dauphin Island and as far as Birmingham — arrived.
We started by blending up pre-soaked cotton paper to make a white pulp. I also taught them how to make a simple mould-and-deckle using a picture frame and screening material. Students took turns pulling and couching sheets, adding our beach-combed inclusions to form a beautiful, textured paper with delicate plant matter scattered throughout, to be used for the chapbook covers.
On the second day, the sun finally came out. Hundreds of monarch butterflies fluttered around in the bushes outside our classroom — a much-needed resting spot on their long migration south. And we needed the sun, too, because this was the day Nicole was teaching cyanotype printmaking! We started class by going outside and collecting materials, including butterfly wings, shells, plants, trash, etc. Nicole then taught us how to lay out our items on a sheet of paper painted with a light-sensitive chemical, then bring them outside to expose. This was my first time making cyanotype prints and I’m excited to try working this process into a future artist book!
Photo by Chengru He
Later that Friday, Josh led a generative poetry workshop. We brainstormed words, phrases, and ideas related to the Dauphin Island landscape, beginning with the prompt “What should be blue, but isn’t”? We were all truly amazed by how Josh’s expert guidance led us to write poems we were proud of in less than two hours.
We spent the night ironing still-wet paper, digitally printing the poems from 10 participants on the cyanotype sheets (we had laid them out so there was room for printing), then cutting the sheets down and collating them.
Photo by Chengru He
The next morning, everyone gathered to sew the books together. MFA students from The University of Alabama’s English department and friends from Tuscaloosa also joined us.
We presented our books and poetry at an evening event, with dozens of beautiful cyanotype prints floating above us. Afterwards, students from the English departments at UA and the University of South Alabama read their prose and poetry, followed by a reading by Alabama poet Kwoya Fagin Maples.
The extremes of rain and sun, fluttering monarch butterflies, lines of hanging cyanotypes covering the classroom, and wonderful company made for a truly enchanting weekend. For some pics of the final chapbook, click here!
Photo by Chengru He