ArtFarm got its start during a collaborative partnership between WSW and Phillies Bridge Farm, a Community Supported Agriculture Farm in Gardiner, New York, about thirty minutes from Rosendale. Various fibers were grown there each year of the collaboration, which lasted from 1996 to 2001. In the spring of 2002, we relocated the fiber farm to a plot of land adjacent to the WSW studios. In 1999, the project was expanded with the addition of a full time AmeriCorps position. AmeriCorps is a national service organization devoted to placing service-minded individuals into community-based programs of all types, from literacy and peer mentoring projects in the inner cities to cultural and land preservation efforts, like those found in the environmentally conscious Mid-Hudson River Valley. Members receive a monthly stipend and an education grant award upon completion of their term. In addition to these benefits, members gain invaluable experience and the rewards of helping the community they become immersed in during their term, something ideally sustained long after the term ends. WSW's ArtFarm position uniquely blends environmental concerns with an emphasis on studio art. WSW describes ArtFarm's goals as follows: "...to help sustain the rural character of the surrounding area, incorporate the concepts of environmental sustainability into WSW's educational programs, [and] to increase awareness of the possibilities of producing and utilizing renewable plant fibers for hand papermaking." ArtFarm's main crops of flax, kenaf, rye, and alfalfa were grown at the WSW plot at Phillies Bridge Farm; additional fibers used in the six-year-old ArtFarm project have come from other sources. Corn stalk, husks, and leaves were gathered from Davenport Farms (a local farm stand) after the 2001 harvest season. Test gardens at WSW produced yucca, daylily, lamb's ears, and Echinacea. The noxious red rooted pigweed was gathered from the woods, parking lot, and garden at WSW. Ornamental grasses were donated by a large private garden and allowed us to experiment with Karl Foerster grass, giant miscanthus grass, purple maiden grass, and fountain grass. The efforts of the two AmeriCorps members who preceded me brought the ArtFarm project to the point that it needed expansion and more formal procedures. Eugenie Barron, former assistant to papermaking pioneer Douglass Howell, was brought in to oversee a research project that I would conduct during my year at WSW. The project's primary goals were to make complete beater logs of tests of different fibers, to create specific pulp recipes designed to best show the inherent qualities expressed by each fiber, and to use the resulting pulp recipes to create art during three artist residencies. Eugenie's role during the first phase of this research project was as an advisor, offering me guidance. I was her apprentice. One day a month, she would travel to WSW to brainstorm about tests and coach me in beating and studio procedure. During each visit we would perform one beater test together. She would analyze the tests from the month before, and offer suggestions. In each session she crammed in enough information for the entire following month of testing. In these whirlwind intensive sessions with Eugenie, I learned both how to make paper and the finer points of assisting in and managing a studio. Over the course of the project, we tested many fibers and made records in a beater log. The log included details of pre-beating preparation, including harvest date, method of processing, soaking time, and cooking time. We also logged precise beating durations, adjustments, and notes. For our research, we beat all fibers in pure batches. Each vat was prepared with cold water and pulp, with only formation aid added (to slow drainage), if necessary. We did not use any pigments, sizing, or other additives. We tested the fiber pulps both straight and mixed with abaca. We dried the paper in different ways: some sheets between blotters in a stack dryer, others brushed onto Plexiglas with a thin layer of methylcellulose. We also tried air drying. Rye was one of the fibers we worked with. Processing it was easy. The head of seed grain was simply pulled out and discarded. We then cut the stalk into 1" to 2" pieces. Next, we soaked 1.5 pounds of fiber overnight and then cooked it for 3 hours in a 20% solution of soda ash and water. After cooking, we rinsed the fiber thoroughly to rid it of the soda ash. At this point, the fiber was ready for the beater. One of WSW's Hollander beaters, the 1.5 pound "red" beater, designed and built by Davis Hodges, was used for all research for consistency. Starting each time with the roll height set at the highest increment, with each downward adjustment we logged the time and the new roll height. We dispersed the yellow-green rye into the water, starting with one pound of fiber. Over the first hour of beating, I added a handful of fiber as I lowered the roll slowly, to prevent clogging. Eugenie stressed that beating is what determines a paper's resultant qualities. She taught me to come down gently to bruise the fiber to create fibrils, then cut at the end of the beating cycle to create a paper with lots of life and body. "Sometimes I wanted to push the fiber beating to see what would happen so that I could learn more about the potential for papermaking. There were a few surprises," she has said, looking back. Rye was one such surprise, after a little more than three hours of beating, we had a pulp that formed thin, translucent sheets with a lovely rattle. Here are my recollections of some of the other plants we grew, processed, and tested:Raw Flax. Bast fiber, with some shives (bits of stem) due to hand processing. Flax is a bear to process, once the work of prisoners or a garden party of fair young maidens. I felt like Rapunzel, turning straw into gold with the hours of breaking, scutching, cutting, and beating I put into making this creamy fiber into golden pulp.Kenaf. Ours yields woody brown fiber with outer bark left on and dried to darken. A bast fiber that could be used as an alternative to wood pulp in the papermaking industry, and a cousin to cotton and okra.Rye. Stalk. Rich golden yellow crisp paper. Alone, while translucent, it is not very strong, but when mixed with abaca it becomes a strong paper the color of butter.Alfalfa. In a log of May 14, 2002, I wrote: "Unwrapping cooked and stored alfalfa clumped like bird's nests. Golden tendrils. Some soft and fibrous, some hard like straw. I'd like to make paper from those bird's nest soup delicacies found in Chinese restaurants—that is what this alfalfa is like, and I am a chef using the finest, most labor intensive foods in the world to prepare." The resulting paper had a straw-like quality, and was more successful in combination with abaca.Daylily. Leaves. Surprisingly resilient paper that almost stretches. Ours was made from leaves harvested in the fall, cooked for one hour in soda ash and water, and processed in our commercial blender for 1 minute on high. 1" strips of fiber turned into a warm brown bespeckled pulp with a viscous consistency.Ornamental Grasses. Grass, Stalks. A variety of yellow-brown pulps best when mixed with a few handfuls of abaca for body. Karl Foerster had the smoothest texture. Purple Maiden had a slightly reddish-brown tint.Red-Rooted Pig Weed. Stalks. The tests we preformed were with pig weed harvested in the fall. The stalks were very hard to break down in the cook, and we were only successful beating them in combination with abaca. This made a smooth yet woody tan paper for writing, stationery, and printmaking.Corn. We used the husk, stalk, and leaves to make three distinct pulps. The Leaves made a dark green paper with a rattly sheen. Used for Artist-in-Resident Alison Knowles's piece Sound Shards. The research project culminated in a residency opportunity for three Mid-Hudson Valley Artists and afforded us the opportunity to see our pulps in direct artistic application. Eugenie made custom blends from a pallet of pulps, which she sometimes combined with flax or abaca. I quickly learned to arabesque around the studio as her assistant, trying to follow a million different things and absorb as much as I could. If I learned a month's worth of things in a day during our monthly beater brainstorms, I learned years of technique each week I spent with Eugenie and the three artists. Each artist was chosen for their media, resulting in a variety of styles and methods of working in the papermaking studio. Ken Gray, a printmaker, was chosen to see how our papers would behave in a printmaking context. In his case, at the end of the week, his work was just beginning, as the paper we made with him would serve as strata for manipulation and printing in his own studio. Fluxus artist Alison Knowles engaged us in her unique sense of play and work as we created objects to be used in performances exploring the textural qualities of sound and paper. She also used paper as a base for her large cyanotype prints, covering them with veils of pulp. We formed several found object collages as well. Jeweler and sculptor Talya Baharal created paper skins for the large-scale skeletal and spinal armatures that her steel wire forms seemed to become, imbued with life from the subdued palette of pulps Eugenie created. They rusted as they dried. Talya would later apply beeswax to subdue some of them even further, adding luster to their surfaces. Meanwhile, on a vacant plot amid the ruins of stone buildings and rows of kilns from the Rosendale cement industry of the early 1900s, WSW's ArtFarm found a permanent home. In the spring of 2002, during an AmeriCorps team day, trees were felled and chipped, rusted fencing was removed, along with the root systems of small trees and shrubs, and years of dead grass were raked. AmeriCorps members from different environmental sites in the Mid-Hudson River Valley chipped in to break ground on the farm, process flax, and learn how to pull a few sheets of paper. WSW Executive Director Ann Kalmbach and maintenance mogul Robert Woodruff then supervised the tilling of the rocky land and the laying out of rows for planting. Vassar student Kate Clemente and WSW Interns Maureen Joyce, Abi Lines Griffith, and Sara Saltzman helped immeasurably in the transformation of the plot from ruin to farm. Finally, we planted corn, rye, and kenaf seeds as the inaugural crops. The new ArtFarm plot allows WSW to grow both a wider variety of crops and more of them. Its close proximity to the studio will allow educational groups, artists-in-residence, and visitors to witness the life cycle of plant-based paper, truly seeing the transformation from seed to sheet! "At last we have a field close to home so we can monitor plant growth and manage the harvests, essentials for maximizing production," says Ann. "It's absolutely magical to see the green plant in the ground and later to see the golden sheet of paper made from it." In the future, WSW will experiment with bast fibers such as hollyhock, milkweed, and hops; different varieties of lilies; and various grass fibers—New Zealand flax, Job's tears, Joe-Pye weed, and ornamentals such as feather grass and switchgrass. Pigweed will continue to be gathered and research will be done to use it and other invasive species in the area for a greater good: handmade  paper. My year at WSW gave me the opportunity to strengthen my artistic skills, expand my papermaking vocabulary, learn valuable lessons about the workings of a non-profit arts organization, and work extensively as an assistant to a master papermaker. I discovered the world of teaching, and was able to show children that paper could be a recycled thing and made from more than just trees. Ann Marie Kennedy's artist book Plant Dreams takes an intimate look at the life cycle of flax. While presenting this work to a group of fifth graders in the spring of 2002, as the woods behind WSW were becoming green, I realized that my tenure at WSW was like Kennedy's interest in flax, an "investigat[ion of] how material can be contained within a sheet of paper." I also realized the similarity in concept between the research Eugenie and I were in the midst of and what I was introducing to these young minds: that a powerful source for inspiration and materials for artwork can be found in the natural environment, as close as your own backyard. Eugenie Barron's level of expertise has inspired (and at times intimidated) me into realizing the depth of craft and technical knowledge that hand papermaking involves. Working with her has taken my soft cotton chartreuse play dress and turned it into a rattly translucent high-shrinkage flax work shirt, air dried under vigilant supervision because it could completely change during the last minutes of drying. (Eugenie has especially impressed me with her sensitivity to drying techniques; she once stared at an almost dry sheet for a few moments, and then said dreamily, "I could sit here forever and watch paper dry.") I now appreciate the subtle variation in texture of fiber and the imperfections in sheet formation that make a perfect sheet of paper. I also have now a better appreciation for the history of papermaking and the continuum of papermaking as an art form. Eugenie has been able to determine how pulps can be beaten beautifully and efficiently for paper, and has taught me how to turn these findings into recipes for future WSW use. Her analysis will help shape long term goals for WSW and ArtFarm, determining which fibers will be worth continued effort, the best and appropriate use of pulps (for production or artistic application), and possible plants to grow in the future.  Note: For more information about ArtFarm, the AmeriCorps position, and Women's Studio Workshop, go to WSW's website, >www.wsworkshop.org<.