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Paper Talk

Helen Hiebert Studio

Paper Talk is an ongoing series of interviews by Helen Hiebert featuring artists and professionals who are working in the field of hand papermaking.

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22 episodes
monthly
Avg 1 hr 11 min
English

Episodes 22

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#160
Thursday · 1 hr 24 min
Katie MacGregor
Katie MacGregor entered into the world of production papermaking in 1980, when she was invited to do an apprenticeship at Twinrocker Handmade Paper. She never looked back, and built a cottage industry in her studio, which is located in Whiting, ME. She’s been working for and collaborating with book artists, private presses, bookbinders and conservators in public institutions for the past 46 years. In 2022, Katie was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award by the Guild of Bookworkers.
#159
August 22 · 1 hr 19 min
Fung & Bedford
Angela Fung and Ashley Bedford run Fung & Bedford, a multi-disciplinary studio exploring how material can think, hold memory, and reshape space. Through large-scale folded sculptures and installations, they transform flat surfaces into structural form, using geometry and repetition to give gesture a tangible presence. Their process is guided as much by gravity as by resistance to it. They test the threshold between weight and lift, creating forms that appear suspended — poised between ascent and collapse. To Fung & Bedford, folding is both action and a philosophy — a way to ‘Unfold the Moment’. Each work emerges through cycles of tension and release, where precision meets transformation. Every crease records a decision; every planereveals a dialogue between intention and material behavior.
#154
August 1 · 1 hr 22 min
Bernie Vinzani
Bernie Vinzani has a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from Indiana State University. He was a papermaker at Twinrocker Paper, and since the early 1980’s he has made book and conservation papers in his shop in Whiting, Maine. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, and has made paper for the Library of Congress, Harvard University Libraries and has collaborated with many artists and fine book printers.
#157
July 4 · 1 hr 11 min
Jaz Graf
Jaz Graf's recent body of work juxtaposes synthetic and raw materials, the virtual gaze with organic imprints, and satellite imagery with dust. It sets in motion, a contemporary discourse around intergenerational memory and cultural preservation. Graf exhibits locally and internationally, was most recently featured at The Newark Museum of Art, NJ and published in the peer-reviewed journal, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas. Her work has appeared in Whitehot Magazine, AM New York News, The Jersey Journal, World Literature Today and on NJ PBS Television Network.
#156
June 11 · 1 hr 15 min
Amanda Thackray
Amanda Thackray is a multidisciplinary ecofeminist artist-educator based in Newark, NJ, who crafts intricate artwork exploring the intersections between nature, industry, and human experience. She is the recipient of several Creative Catalyst Fund Fellowships, a Puffin Foundation Grant for Environmental Art, and a NJ State Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Residencies include The Arctic Circle, Norway; The Center for Book Arts, NYC; and The Museum of Art and Design, NYC. Her work has been widely exhibited and is held in numerous international public and private collections including The Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Mediatheque Andre Malraux, France, Yale University, and The Library of Congress. Thackray earned a BFA from Mason Gross at Rutgers University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), both in printmaking.
#155
May 20 · 58 min
Jim Patterson
Jim Patterson is a life-long papermaker and owner of Two Rivers Paper since 1986. Two Rivers Paper specialises in hand-made rag papers, using traditional methods, each sheet being carefully crafted one by one. After many years of production in a water and solar powered mill, Two Rivers is now situated at East Quay Arts Centre in Watchet, Somerset, UK.
#154
April 30 · 1 hr 12 min
Doug Beube
Doug Beube is a mixed-media artist working across numerous disciplines, including bookwork, collage, installation, sculpture, and photography. He holds a BFA from York University in Toronto, ON, and an MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. He lectures and exhibits internationally and is the subject of the monograph Doug Beube: Breaking the Codex (2011). Beube received a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship in 2016 and served as curator of the Allan Chasanoff Bookwork Collection from 1993 to 2014, culminating in an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT. His work has been exhibited internationally – in China, New Zealand, and across Europe – and he exhibits regularly throughout the United States. A solo retrospective of his artwork, curated by Buzz Spector, will open in April 2027 at Koffler Arts in Toronto. Doug has lived in Brooklyn, NY, since 1985.
#153
April 11 · 1 hr 18 min
Lyndal Thorne / Paper on Skin
Lyndal Thorne is an arts administrator with a passion for grassroots arts activity and coordinator of the biennial Paper on Skin Wearable Art Competition, which launched in Burnie, Tasmania in 2012. She is also President of stARTs North-West (formerly Burnie Arts Council Inc) and recently retired as the chair of Slipstream Circus after three years tenure in the role. During 2024 she undertook a 12-month role as Regional Community Engagement Officer for RANT Arts (a peak regional arts advocacy body based in Northern Tasmania).
#152
March 19 · 1 hr 3 min
Mia Semingson
Mia Semingson received her MFA in photography and electronic media from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and France as well as nationally. Mia taught photography and book arts at the University of Colorado at Boulder for twelve years. She and her husband Gerald Trainor have owned Two Hands Paperie since January 2010, where their goal is to foster a community of creative people and support artists and other small businesses. Mia loves teaching and, in addition to her workshops at Two Hands, has taught for the Makerie, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado and recorded classes on Creativebug.
#151
February 21 · 1 hr 9 min
151. John Risseeuw
John Risseeuw received his BS, MA, and MFA degrees in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in1968, 1972, and 1973, respectively. Risseeuw is Emeritus Professor of Art at Arizona State University where he taught printmaking, book arts, and papermaking from 1980 to 2015. He directed the Pyracantha Press, founded in 1982 as the book arts imprint of ASU; his own Cabbagehead Press was founded in 1972. His prints, books, and collaborative works have been exhibited and collected widely. The Library of Congress has purchased all of his books and works on paper. He was founding president of the College Book Art Association and has served on the Board of Directors of Hand Papermaking magazine.
#126
January 27 · 1 hr 9 min
John Babcock
John Babcock lives and works at his studio near Santa Cruz,California, where he creates works using primarily paper as his medium. His work has been shown in over thirty major art museums in the United States and Europe. Most recently, his work was included in Contemporary Crafts at the Mesa Art Museum and the Shanghai Paper Art Biennale in Shanghai, China. In addition to exhibiting his work, Babcock has lectured and conducted workshops throughout the United States and internationally, including sessions at the Southwest School of Art and Craft in San Antonio, Texas; the Universityof Wisconsin; the University of Hawaii; Haystack Mountain School of Crafts; and the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work is included in numerous public and private collections, including The Museum of Art and Design in NewYork City.
#149
January 10 · 1 hr 12 min
Tran Hong Nhung
Tran Hong Nhung is the founder of Zo Project, a social enterprise, which preserves, supports, and expands Vietnamese traditional paper and papermaking techniques in a sustainable and creative way. Zó Paper is run by a dynamic young team who wish to bringtraditional values into contemporary society. In return, their profits are going back into the community of papermakers by creating job opportunities and a stable income for an ethnic minority village in the Northern province of Vietnam.
#148
Dec 19, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
Denise Jill Marshall
Denise Jill Marshall runs Blue Skies Above Photography. As a landscape photographer for more than 45 years, her recent work has focused on weaving her photographs, using many different types of photographic printing paper to create new ways for light to interact with image. Through deconstruction. she is able to create a new whole, in her art and in herself. Marshall is motivated by light, color, and the feelings a subject evokes. She often attends photography workshops, where she captures the unique architecture, water, and colors of the places she travels, as well as the surrounding areas in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she lives.
#147
Nov 25, 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
Lee McDonald
Lee McDonald is a papermaker with a long history of making tools. He has been involved with paper for over 5 decades, starting in the early years of Twinrocker Handmade Paper, and then moving on to making custom moulds, followed by building beaters, presses, and papermaking dryers. His future projects include ensuring how techniques and tools will be available in the future. McDonald is currently working on personal paper projects in his No Name Yet Paper Mill, along with making the mill available to artists – reach out if you’re in the Boston area.
#145
Nov 7, 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
Naomi Kendall
Naomi J. Kendall is an artist based in Somerset in the UK. She completed a Foundation Course at Cheltenham School of Art, pursued a degree in Art History at Leicester University and received a postgraduate diploma at Manchester University in Gallery and Museum Studies. After a career working in galleries and running community arts projects, she returned to making her own work. In 2022 she was the Evolver Magazine Prize winner, she’s a member of the Paper Artist Collective and is featured as a master artisan in the Michelangelo Foundation’s Homo Faber Guide. In 2024, she was accepted as a member of the Royal West of England Artist Network.
#145
Oct 9, 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
Paulina Johnson
Originally from Mexico City, via California, and South Carolina, Paulina Johnson has been immersed in the fields of art and graphic design for over 20 years. She received a joint BFA from the Academy of Art University and the University of San Francisco in 1999. In 2017, she earned an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Paulina has been an ongoing educator and is currently an exhibiting partner at Pine Moon Fine Art in Steamboat Springs, CO. She lives and works in beautiful Steamboat where she enjoys the mountains with her husband, two growing boys and their pup Murray.
#144
Sep 18, 2025 · 1 hr 8 min
Carole Kunstadt
Carole Kunstadt's works often invoke a metaphysical quality. They reference antique books, music manuscripts, maps and artifacts - deconstructing paper and text and using it in metaphorical ways. Through the manipulation of the materials – history, memory and time merge in a hybrid form. Born in Boston, Kunstadt spent her childhood in a small New England town, received a BFA from the Hartford Art School in Hartford, Connecticut, and continued with postgraduate studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, Germany. Twelve years ago she re-entered a familiar landscape as in her youth, moving to the Hudson Valley, after spending 35 years in NYC.
#143
Aug 28, 2025 · 55 min
Dorothy McGuinness
Dorothy McGuinness is a contemporary basket weaver who lives and works in Everett, Washington. She took her first basketmaking class in 1987 and has studied basket-weaving techniques that have been handed down through the centuries. Dorothy has worked extensively with Jiro Yonezawa, a contemporary Japanese basket maker and teacher. She discovered her medium of choice in 2000, when she took a workshop with Jackie Abrams, who introduced her to watercolor paper as a basket-weaving material. She now works exclusively in diagonal twills and mad weave, creating contemporary sculptural baskets, and enjoys exploring the interplay of weaving, color, and design in her sculptural woven paper pieces.
#142
Aug 7, 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
Matt LaBoone
Matt LaBoone is an origami artist and papermaker in Orlando, Florida, who has a focus on folding and designing insects as origami subjects, and has developed thin and crisp paper especially suited for folding them. Over the years, LaBoone has found that most commercially available papers, and even many origami specific papers are not well suited for what he likes to design and fold, which is what led him to pursue papermaking. For many origami folders it can be challenging to learn what paper is suitable for what folds and to understand the papermaking process. LaBoone de-mystifies papermaking on his instagram account (@cabbagepaper), where he documents his process. He stresses that there is a hugevalue in using good quality paper for folding.
#141
Jul 15, 2025 · 1 hr 10 min
Galen Gibson-Cornell
Galen Gibson-Cornell was born and raised in Maryville, Missouri and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from Truman State University in 2009, (which included a 2007 study-abroad in Angers, France). He completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Wisconsin in 2013 and then set off on a year-long Fulbright fellowship to Budapest, Hungary. In the following years, Gibson-Cornell traveled to multiple international artist-residency programs, developing a creative practice based on urban exploration and repurposing found materials. His studio has been based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 2017.

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