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Staff

Michael Fallon

Michael Fallon

Executive Director

Michael Fallon is the executive director of Hand Papermaking. After graduating college with degrees in literature and art, Fallon studied books with the artist Buzz Spector and eventually became fascinated enough in them to earn an MFA degree in book arts at the University of Alabama, where he focused on letterpress printing and hand papermaking. In 1998 Fallon moved to Minnesota, where he served as an artist in residence at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and published an article on paper—his first published arts writing—for Hand Papermaking magazine. He eventually wrote for local and national publications such as Public Art Review, Art in America, and American Craft. In 2005, Fallon went back to school to earn a degree in nonprofit arts management and now has more than ten years of experience managing arts and educational nonprofits.

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Mina Takahashi

Mina Takahashi

Editor of Hand Papermaking

Mina Takahashi is the editor of Hand Papermaking. Formerly executive director of programs at Dieu Donné Papermill in New York, she directed artist residencies and publishing projects, curated exhibitions, and collaborated with artists in the studio. Trained originally in Japanese papermaking, she teaches and consults on the artistic and craft applications of hand papermaking across the country and internationally.

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Karen Kopacz

Karen Kopacz

Designer

Karen Kopacz is the designer of Hand Papermaking. She graduated from Columbia College with a BA in fine arts, minoring in fiction writing. For nearly 2 decades, Karen has worked and collaborated in the Twin Cities arts community as a designer, brand strategist, Web developer, and artist. In 2000, she founded Design for the Arts, partnering with organizations, businesses, and artists to develop and launch brands and creative initiatives. As director of online arts & literature magazine Mental Contagion (2000-2008), she was invited to be a panelist at the SXSW Interactive Festival for Fostering New Culture on the Internet.

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Sophia Hotzler

Sophia Hotzler

News and Social Media Manager

Sophia Hotzler (she/her) is a papermaker, photographer, and crafter living in Minneapolis. She was first introduced to the skill of papermaking while attending the University of Manitoba, where she graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with honors. She teaches paper classes at the Avon Hills Folk School and co-hosts a handmade paper exchange program based in Minneapolis. When she’s not in the vat pulling sheets, she can be found printing digital photographs and making journals with her handmade paper.

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Board

Lisa Haque

Lisa Haque

Lisa (Switalski) Haque is an artist living and working in Miami, Florida; her work can be viewed at LISAHAQUE.COM. She was a Studio Collaborator and Production Manager at Dieu Donné, and a papermaker and bookbinder at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago, and has taught at Rutgers University, the University of Georgia Study Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy, and at a variety of other centers in the United States.

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Erik Saarmaa

Erik Saarmaa

Treasurer

Erik Saarmaa is an intellectual property attorney, living and working in the Boston area. He and his wife are avid collectors of works on paper and active supporters of the arts. Erik has a Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School, and a SM in Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering from Stanford University, and a SB in Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Marie Bannerot McInerney

Marie Bannerot McInerney

Board Chair

Marie Bannerot McInerney is a multidisciplinary studio artist and educator. Her site-responsive installations and discrete works in concrete, silk, handmade paper and canvas consider human agency within the framework of ecological systems, mystical thinking, and natural phenomena. She is a 2018 Charlotte Street Artist Award Fellow, a current resident at Studios Inc. and has exhibited extensively across the United States and abroad. Marie serves as associate professor in the Fiber Department at the Kansas City Art Institute.

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Richard Baiano

Richard Baiano

Richard J. Baiano is the President and Owner of Childs Gallery in Boston, MA. He has served on the Executive Boards of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA), and the Danforth Museum of Art. He also served on the steering committee for the Patron Program of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and recently finished a six year term as Chair of the Boston Chapter of Save Venice. Prior to joining Childs Gallery, Richard worked as an architect at GUND Partnership. His degrees in architecture include a BS from Clemson University and an MArch from Syracuse University. He resides in Boston and is an avid art collector, who has been engaged in the buying, selling, and appraising of American and European art for the past twenty-three years.

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Steph Rue

Steph Rue

Steph Rue is an artist and papermaker based in Sacramento, CA. She received her MFA at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, and studied traditional book and papermaking on a Fulbright to Korea in 2015. Steph is co-founder of the Korean American Artist Collective and co-founder of Hanji Edition, a publisher of limited edition works made with Korean paper.

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Lynn Sures

Lynn Sures

Lynn Sures is a recent Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2018-2020 President of North American Hand Papermakers, Founding Director of the Collegiate Paper Triennial, and guest editor of the 2016 Winter issue of Hand Papermaking magazine. Recent artist residencies were at Olorgesailie, Kenya; Museo della Carta (MCF) in Fabriano, Italy; and Museu Molì Paperer de Capellades, Spain. Her art is in collections of the US Library of Congress, Yale University, and NY Public Library’s Schomburg Collection. http://www.lynnsures.com Instagram @lynnsures

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Megan Singleton

Megan Singleton

Megan Singleton is a practicing artist, educator, and mother located in St. Louis, Missouri. The investigation of ecological relationships within society and the landscape is the basis of her work. As an interdisciplinary artist, she create works that resonate with the materiality and rhythms of the natural world. Her creative practice intertwines sculpture, handmade paper, found objects, photography, and books arts. She actively exhibits and was the recipient of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commision Artist Fellowship Grant, the Smelser-Vallion Visiting Artist Fellowship in Taos, MN and has participated in Artist Residencies across the US.

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Kazuko Hioki

Kazuko Hioki

Secretary

Kazuko Hioki is the Preservation Librarian at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library. She earned an M.I.L.S with a Certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from the University of Texas at Austin, and was trained and employed as a conservator at various institutions, including the University of Kentucky Libraries, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. Before her career in conservation, she was a chemist at the Sumitomo Chemical Company in Osaka, having completed a Bachelor of Agriculture degree focused on Pesticide Chemistry from Kobe University. She has lectured and published widely on various topics related to conservation and preservation, ranging from sustainable environmental control and disaster preparedness to the physical characteristics of printed books and recycled papermaking in 18th -20th century Japan. More information about her research can be found here: http://works.bepress.com.

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Emily Duong

Emily Duong

Emily Duong is a paper artist, printmaker, and graphic designer currently based in New Jersey. Her works are known for their abstract subjects, which evoke a sense of infinite space and possibilities. She formerly served on the Committee at the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA) as the Bulletin Editor.

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International Advisors

Winsome Jobling

Winsome Jobling is an Australian papermaker living in Darwin. Her art practice is linked to the environment on both political and physical grounds, often using watermarks to reference the sometimes hidden nature of knowledge, ownership, power, and history. Jobling has experimented with approximately 60 native and introduced plant species over the past 30 years and participated in many cross-cultural papermaking projects.

Vicky Sigwald

Vicky Sigwald worked for Fred Siegenthaler at his papermill in Switzerland, where she was formally trained in production hand papermaking. With her husband she established El Molino del Manzano, a hand papermill in Buenos Aires. She has travelled widely, teaching, learning, exhibiting her paper works, conducting research on the Tururi paper in the Amazons, authoring three books and dozens of articles on handmade paper, and working to promote the use of paper and pulp as an art medium.

Therese Hofmann

Therese Hofmann is a professor of fine art at the University of Brasilia in Brazil.

Radha Pandey

Radha Pandey is a papermaker and letterpress printer. She earned her MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book where she was a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship. She has studied Western and Asian Papermaking techniques with Timothy Barrett and teaches book arts classes in India and the US. Her artist bookwork has been exhibited in the US and abroad. Her interest in the history of papermaking led her to research creating stop-motion animations using watermarks, and she is currently working on such a project in collaboration with artist Brian Queen.

Kyoko Ibe

Since receiving an MS from Kyoto Institute of Technology in the late 1960s, Kyoko Ibe has pioneered contemporary washi art and design, and worked in more than 20 countries. The recipient of numerous awards worldwide, Ibe has pushed the limits of washi into a unique art form, combining her respect for tradition with radical experimentation. She is now a professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology, the director of Japan Paper Academy, and a special advisor to the government of Japan for cultural affairs.

Jane Farmer

Jane Farmer is an independent curator of traveling exhibitions. She is Director of the Crossing Over Consortium, organizing international artist exchanges. Jane is also a director of Paper Road/Tibet, an organization working to reestablish the traditional art of hand papermaking displaced by China’s incursions into Tibet.

Helen Hiebert

Helen Hiebert is a Colorado artist who constructs installations, sculptures, films and artist books using handmade paper, thread and light. She teaches and lectures about papermaking and lampmaking and exhibits her work internationally. She is author of the books Papermaking with Plants, The Papermaker’s Companion, Paper Illuminated, Playing With Paper, and Playing With Pop-Ups. Helen has an extensive network of paper colleagues around the world and her interest in how things are made (from paper) keeps her up-to-date on current paper trends, which she writes about in her weekly blog called The Sunday Paper. Helen’s most recent installation, The Wish, is a giant dandelion sculpture at Anythink Huron Street Library in Denver. She holds an annual paper retreat in her Red Cliff studio each September.

Helen C. Frederick

Helen C. Frederick is an American artist known mainly for printed media and large scale works created by hand papermaking and the use of language. She is recognized as a distinguished curator, educator, coordinator of international projects, and as founder of Pyramid Atlantic. She has exhibited, curated exhibitions, and fulfilled speaking engagements around the world, always emphasizing collaboration across disciplines. She serves as Professor of Art at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Carolina Larrea

Carolina Larrea, a papermaker and paper artist since 1994, is head of the papermaking and bookbinding program at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile School of Arts. She teaches paper as a medium of expression as well as artists book classes, and she is helped to create the first papermaking and bookbinding program in Chile. Her work is exhibited internationally.

Brian Queen

Brian Queen lives in Calgary and has been making paper by hand for 20 years. He specializes in creating light and shade watermarks, and building papermaking equipment; but his interests span the book arts, including letterpress printing, and the impact of new technologies. In his day job Brian owns and operates Sensa-Light, a company that manufactures custom architectural lighting for offices, hotels, and restaurants.

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Founders

Amanda Degener

Amanda Degener

Amanda Degener is co-founder of Hand Papermaking magazine and produces sculpture and artist books using handmade paper and various other materials at Cave Paper Editions. She received an MFA in sculpture at Yale School of Art and a BA at Bennington College. Amanda travels internationally to show her artwork and conduct lectures and workshops. You can learn more about her work at http://amandadegener.com/.

 Michael Durgin

Michael Durgin

Michael Durgin co-founded Hand Papermaking with Amanda Degener in 1986 and served as its editor for 18 years. He was first exposed to making paper by hand in 1980 and has studied and been deeply engaged in papermaking and book arts ever since. For the last few years, he has sold books for charities in Beijing, Silver Spring (Maryland), and Frankfurt (Germany), where he now lives. He was the guest editor of a special issue of Hand Papermaking (Winter 2014) devoted to China.