Pioneers in Hand Papermaking: 50 Years of Innovation at Dieu Donné, showcases art made by contemporary artists who have transformed the ancient “craft” of papermaking into a fine art discipline including books, two-dimensional art, and sculpture. The art of eighty artists has been selected to represent innovative hand papermaking techniques developed in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Dieu Donné is a not-for-profit fine art studio that collaborates with artists to create original artwork using the hand papermaking process. Most of the paper and art made at Dieu Donné uses ancient Western papermaking traditions in combination with new technology. Since its invention in China more than two thousand years ago, paper has played an integral role in human communication and self-expression. 20th century handmade paper pioneer Dard Hunter stated, “Paper is fundamentally a sheet of matted plant fiber.” Handmade paper art, however, is more difficult to categorize. At Dieu Donné, paper is not only a substrate but also the actual substance of which art is made.
The exhibition organizes the works by the different techniques; the first four vitrines on the West Wall include examples of historic and contemporary watermarking, stenciling, and painting with colored pulp. The fifth vitrine highlights the “blow out” technique, a contemporary art-making method that uses sprayed water to draw, erase, and remove wet pulp when composing an image.
Along the East Wall are works of collage and sculpture. Multiple sheets of wet paper can be “double couched,” or layered on top of one another, to build a composition or enclose collage elements. To make three-dimensional paper art, sheets of wet paper are laminated onto an armature to construct kite-like paper sculpture. Paper pulp can be cast and manipulated to make sculpture.
At the far end of the gallery, a vitrine of historic art and artifacts highlights contributions to the revival of hand papermaking in the 20th century alongside work from pioneering artists who revolutionized the craft into an art discipline. The exhibition also features examples of custom sheets of paper that were designed by artists for prints and artists’ books.
Many of the books on view are dynamic works and “exhibitions in a box.” The exhibition showcases how handmade paper art developed through studio collaboration with innovative artists and master hand papermakers. Thus, alongside the name of each artist, the names of the Dieu Donné professional master collaborators, are included in the labels. The partnership between artists and collaborators at Dieu Donné produces original and sophisticated art using the hand papermaking process.