Timothy Barrett: When and how did you become interested in making art, when papermaking, and when did the two blend into your current direction of making art employing paper pulp as the medium? Rick Hungerford: As far back as I can remember I drew a lot and was fascinated with it. At the University of Hawaii I decided to do what I was really interested in, which was art. I went into sculpture, metal casting, wood, more 3D-type work. About 1978 John Babcock came over to the school and gave a presentation on paper. As soon as I put my hands in the water and started playing around with it, I thought, "Wow, this is something I want to do." I went to my folks' house and set up tubs in the back yard and started making pulp with a blender. I think a lot of people start that way, with a blender. TB: I know I did. I started with a paint mixer on the end of an electric drill. RH: At the same time, I was interested in color so I went to the Fiber Arts area at the university and they gave me some advice about dying cotton fiber. At that point a lot of work in paper was white, so I started experimenting with dyes. At the University of Illinois, where I went to get a Master's degree, I kept working with dyes. My primary focus there was paper. Actually I can't say "paper" because I was basically rehydrating anything, from old egg cartons to cotton linter. I wasn't using a beater, but at Frank Gallo's studio I saw his and took note of it. I think in 1982 I met you and Kathy and Howie Clark at Oxbow, where I got an in-depth experience in beating and was exposed to different papermaking materials. At Oxbow I began to understand the difference between just mixing or lightly hydrating fiber, which is what I'd been doing up to that point, and the incredible range of nuance possible with a beater and different fibers. I worked a lot with the two beaters there. I saw Kathy using pigments and learned about the availability of Elaine Koretsky's pigments. All of a sudden I had a lot of new options in paper. I ended up in Chicago and started acquiring things, like my first mould and deckle, which was a kit from Lee McDonald. It took me months to put together. When I finally laced the surface down to the mould, I was so excited; I felt like I finally got something accomplished. I went back down to Champaign, Illinois, to work with Frank Gallo for a bit, which turned out to be a real opportunity. I was one of the main people in charge of color development there. They were working on a Victor Vasarely project and they needed colors. They gave me complete run of the place to experiment. They had two beaters, which gave me the chance to compare them to the Clark and Valley beaters at Oxbow. Frank gave me amazing leeway to experiment and play around with colors. I worked a lot with Elaine's aqueous dispersed pigments and I with Procion dyes, also using the materials I was developing in my own work. A lot of the developments I made at the time came as a result of stumbling on bits and pieces of information in books or material supply catalogues. They were usually just phrases like "beating refinement," "utilizing layers of color," or "the effect of light." It seemed like each was a little piece of a bigger puzzle. I started to think about combining dry pigments, aqueous dispersed pigments, and dyes on the same fiber to get the desired results. I parted ways with Frank around 1984. I was living in Homer, Illinois, and bought my first beater. It was a Valley from Voith and it cost more than the car I was driving. I built a stand, set it up in a tiny garage, and proceeded to make little tiny things. At that point I rented an incredibly large space which provided an atmosphere that inspired working big. I started exploring a six by eight foot format for pulp painting, and worked on figuring out how to work big without the assistance of other people. I think loneliness leads an individual down a trail to practicality. Eventually my solution was to work directly on a full size screen, eliminate steps that required moving the material, and drop the need for large felts and pressing and drying equipment, by letting the work dry on the screen. After months of research, I found out that formulating pulps with the right shrinkage characteristics and controlling the drying atmosphere were important to making it work right. In 1986 Karen Stahlecker invited me to submit an application for the position she had at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I didn't really want the job but I needed income to support a growing habit, so I applied, was offered the job, and took it. I learned a lot about learning, how to be an effective teacher. The experience was extremely humbling. I started to distance myself from departmental concerns and ended up actually enjoying the teaching part of it quite a bit. I moved to Chicago and found a seventeen hundred square foot space to work and live. It was stimulating artistically, but physically and mentally the city wasn't a great place to live. About that time I met my future wife. Maggie was a student at the Art Institute but decided she wasn't getting what she needed there. We looked around and she decided on Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. My grandmother in Keswick, Iowa, got sick and the family put the house up for sale. We bought it and moved here. After a year, I dropped the Institute job and cut ties with the city. I have to credit a lot of people. My mom and dad, who supported me early on; the teachers I've had, like John Babcock; people like you, the Clarks, Winifred Lutz, and Paul Robbert; Takeshi Takahara; all those people who were at the Paper Intensive at Oxbow in 1982. These were important people who helped me get focused. While in grad school it was Bill Carlson, a glass artist. Frank Gallo gave me full run of his studio when I was there. Bruce Vetter, who rented me my first big space; Karen Stahlecker who called me about the Institute job. And the students. I've had some students who were just dynamite. I stayed at the Institute for four years because of certain students. We learned a lot from each other. Helen Frederick at Pyramid has been another inspirational source. Joe Gallo, Maggie Hungerford, Julie Hays, Andrea Peterson, Karen Dee Organ, Beth Norwood, and Robert Viscont; they're all people who contributed to my understanding. TB: So here you are in Keswick, Iowa. This is a very small town. You've been here now about 4 years. How do you look back on the decision to move from the city? RH: When we moved here we cut our costs almost 70% compared to living and working in the city. In addition it removed us from the "art game" that seemed to pervade the art community there: going to openings, people coming over, people having parties in their lofts to show their current work, all efforts to gain attention. In coming here all that disappeared instantly. Also, in the city it was an incredible hassle to accomplish anything. Here I can go from my house to the post office to the bank to my studio, on foot, all in ten minutes. Sometimes I feel like a hermit here but at this stage of my life and work I just need to focus. This is an ideal setting for accomplishing that. TB: Do you ever imagine becoming focused enough, and financially secure enough that you would move back to the big city for whatever reasons? RH: I think about that all the time. I consider it a lot. Thoreau decided he needed to spend time at Walden Pond to take care of business, and then eventually he moved away because he'd resolved certain things to his own satisfaction. Maybe someday I'll move back to the city, but right now this is where I'd like to be my whole life. Right now I'm just interested in pursuing "the work," as an individual, and I can't see that happening in a city. This place allows me the isolation to grow as an artist. I'm still really experimenting. I'm not interested in marketing my art right now. I make production papers, decorated papers for income but they're not art. The creative aspect of sitting down, experimenting, and playing around with the material to produce work is not something I'm doing for money at this point. Thinking of income while you're making art changes the focus of the work in an unhealthy way. TB: I know people like to be careful not to dwell too much on technique as it relates to making art--supposedly because it circumvents more difficult issues like artistic integrity--but I am personally convinced that making a masterpiece is ultimately related to mastery of materials and technique. Having said that, it's my opinion you are doing some of the most innovative work in the world in the realm of pulp coloring, pulp manipulation, and 3D-illusion (trompe l'oeil) effects on 2D surfaces. How do you view your own development in these areas in relationship to paper-based artistic technique development by others in the field today? RH: Basically I'm just doing research with the material. I don't really think too much about how what I'm doing relates to other people's work. I'm too engaged in my own problem solving. Most of the time, the developments are just revised versions of an earlier procedure. Other times they are complete sidetracks from what the work was initially going to be about. I'm very much in support of the notion that a masterpiece can only come from mastery of the materials, the subject matter, or your skills. You have to know how to use the material, how to make it do what you need to do with it. The way I push the material is by research. One direction for me is safety. A number of the materials I work with can be carcinogenic if you don't handle them properly. Another issue for me is time: learning to work with a material that has a shelf-life once it's prepared yet needs to be kept wet in order to stay workable, so the creative process has time to work. We're talking about learning to control the material. TB: So while I'm seeing much of what you're doing as being an important contribution to the field, from your point of view it's all just day-to-day personal, artistic problem solving. RH: Right, it's just an issue of practicality for me. I'm engaged in trying to make the material produce what I want it to produce. Not by going in and learning everything I can about it-- I'm not interested in all the baggage connected with it, I'm just trying to get at one particular element of the material at any given moment. So it's an issue of safety, it's an issue of time, also an issue of space. Prior to the way I'm working now I would fill up 5 gallon buckets with this crap. It would either spoil or I would have too many buckets around. So I had to find a way to store it in a more practical fashion. You know people get a little hung up on the "paperness" of this material. I try to stay away from that. I don't think it can be that clearly defined. TB: Is there something about paper as a medium that distinguishes it from other media for you? RH: I'd have to say "Yes" and "No" to that one. "Yes," I have to admit I've grown up with paper as a medium and I'm continuing to grow with it. By that I mean a certain amount of my creative ideas and experiences have revolved around paper-based materials and processes. In a very real sense, my conceptual ideas have evolved as my own understanding of the material has evolved. So, yes, paper is a medium very distinct from other media for me, because of how I've grown up with it and invested in it. On the other hand, "no," I don't think there's anything really distinctive about it. I'm interested in this material because I think it can give an artist, a wide range of results. But when I look around it doesn't seem to me people have gone beyond a very limited point with it. I think part of the problem is that here in the western world we tend to romanticize things from other cultures or times. I see something similar happening in contemporary paper art in the way it's tied with history and tied with tradition. I see "contemporary tradition" as what we have available in our time. Back then, they didn't have spray nozzles or hoses or large amounts of water pressure or modern formation aids. I use what's available today to go about creating the visual element I'm after. TB: So a lot of what's being done today in paper art is seen as being more effective than it is because of the historical connection, or just because its newness is being romanticized? You're saying the whole business just isn't as important as a lot of people think it is? RH: I don't want to say it's not important. It may be very important to an individual. I tended to romanticize paper when I was getting started and it helped fuel my interest in learning more. At this point for me it's the excitement of learning how to push the material. These days the "romantic spark" for me happens when the material and certain creative elements come together and I'm right there in the middle of it. I don't think much at all about the history of the process or what anyone else is doing with it right now. TB: If you could change the way people are making paperworks, learning about making them, or teaching or discussing paperworks, what would you change? RH: First I would tell everyone to read Plato's The Republic, especially "The Allegory of the Cave." Students should be challenged to develop the material for their own specific needs. I don't know what else to say. Someone teaching the use of any material has to be able to strike a spark, light a fire under the student, get the student excited, and then the student can go on to figure out how to use the material for their own purposes. I'd like to see a lot less emphasis in teaching on productivity and ego-centric one-upmanship. There are no fail-safe methods or techniques for moving ahead in the art world. I'd like to see curriculum that focuses on specific elements and skills: classes on paper and prints, sculptural paper, books, pulp painting. Courses that emphasize basic skills while developing specific issues. Paper is a medium that requires more than three hours of time every other day. When necessary, specific elements can be dealt with in those three-hour slots. Fundamentals covered should revolve around what the instructor knows best. One of the main reasons I got so turned on to the material was the people I came into contact with. These people showed me the aspects of the material or process that they were interested in. I liked was how focused they were. It might not have been what I was interested in but it told me a lot; I picked up on their fascination. TB: So you're saying people need to find their own way of engaging the material, their own direction-- develop a personal involvement with the material. RH: Right, and to figure out that this is how they need to use it. There's never an answer, or a tool, or a process that's going to work for everyone. If a person becomes excited they will draw on that energy to learn to adapt the material to answer their needs. I honestly don't feel that there are any great "answer-makers" or any great "problem solvers" out there that are going to hand you a set of rules or techniques that you can apply to your own work, because 90% of the time their language won't translate. A teacher needs to trigger that initial excitement and send the student off on their own research path. It becomes a quest. Frankly, I think if someone is really serious about this they should learn to be poor, spend every last dime they own, and focus intensively on their own creativity. TB: Like a personal direction. RH: Exactly. We live in a society where people want things provided to them pre-packaged. We no longer have people who are willing to challenge others or themselves. I can get strong about this kind of thing in a workshop. But I'm thankful I had instructors who were thought provoking in that way. They sent me looking for my own answers. I saw the passion they had for working, and I thought, "hey, they can give me advice, but they can't give me the answers because only I really know what I'm looking for." Hopefully, I can present a challenge to someone else. TB: How do you deal with a workshop situation where you have a student, or maybe even a peer, who's fascinated by the process, and maybe fascinated by your work and asks a specific question, like "how do you get that 3D trompe l'oeil surface effect?" What's your response to that? RH: I teach a workshop that revolves around specific practices. When the subject comes up in conversation during a pulp painting workshop I tell them that it's not open for discussion and doesn't apply to workshop information. People tend to get my personal technique confused with normal, worthwhile workshop content. I haven't taught and won't teach methods I employ in my current work. TB: What do you do in a workshop situation then? RH: First of all, I refer to the workshop description, emphasizing that the workshop deals with specific information, such as color or painting with pulp. I often deal with a mixed group of individuals, some with pre-conceived ideas about papermaking and other who have no idea whatsoever. I attempt to show techniques, ways to approach the material with common sense and practicality, skipping the paper jargon. I put them all to work developing the material in a step-by-step manner, keeping everyone together as a group. An individual must challenge the technique with their own imagery. I present exercises that help answer questions about opaque layers, washes, and color theory. I show basic steps which are practical solutions for me. If the workshop focuses on painting pulp with a brush, I show how I prepare a base sheet; I discuss how I work directly upon that sheet as a painter would approach a canvas; I show how I hold a brush. Then I encourage them to find out how they hold a brush, manipulate colors, and lay in color. I attempt to provide a few key elements and emphasize that the only way for them to understand how it works is for them to learn for themselves. I make them put the puzzle together. A serious workshop is for short bits and pieces, which the student must then synthesize into their vocabulary on their own time. If I'm lucky, a few of them take that challenge; others I hold hands with, sometimes pushing them over the humps. TB: A lot of times I think when people ask you for something what they want is not the technique but the passion that they sense you have for your work. And, curiously enough, that's what you want to give them, not the technique. That's the whole point you're trying to make to them. RH: That's right. I show elements of technique needed to develop a work, but I attempt to remove myself from the picture making and share what is really required, as distinct from the technique alone. There is a certain proprietary aspect to some of the techniques I've developed. I'm an educator, but I'm also an artist and a businessman. It's difficult to move back and forth between those three roles. Sometimes people don't understand that you may have spent a tremendous amount of money and time getting to a certain level of expertise. People have a hard time respecting issues like that when I refuse to go into a lot of detail. Educational and business motives unfortunately butt heads in many instances and require very different perspectives. TB: Well, that's a difficult issue for everyone. We all want an atmosphere in the paper community where ideas and techniques are freely exchanged but some of us are running businesses and the bottom line is that you reserve the right not to go into it, and there should be no hard feelings. Many of your techniques, like preparing very highly beaten pigment loaded pulps, and applying pulp with a brush could be considered more painter's techniques than papermaker's. Why not just paint, with painter's materials? RH: I'm not in the habit of separating painter's and papermaker's techniques. I'm working to find ways to utilize a material safely and with a degree of control that doesn't put limits on me or the work at hand. The steps to getting there also make up the path to creating an image. Extending my range of possibilities during application provides me with new ways to see the material. I always quote Magritte: "Unfortunately, we have to admit that many artists restrict their messages to information about the importance of the material they employ." I will always be interested in understanding the material. I keep wanting to refine it, to understand it more. While I'm working on that, my images develop. They're one and the same process. TB: Do you feel paper has more of a range than paint? RH: For me it's the full circle of taking the raw material and processing it from beginning to end to make the painting substance. It's having the ability to take the material through such a metamorphosis that's attractive to me. It's a lot of time, sure. I could go out and buy canvas and tubes of paint and go to work right away and get some similar results, but that's not what I'm interested in. TB: The real equivalent in painting would be collecting the raw pigments, grinding them down, mixing them in with different vehicles, and being engaged in the artmaking at the same time. RH: Right, and going through that long process of manipulating the material gives you time to think. It becomes part of the creative process. Working with the material allows meditative time for the ideas to connect. I need that time to bring images, ideas, and processes together with my personal experience. TB: I know you've recently done some installation work that included glass, wood, cement, and other materials. If you look ten years down the road, do you think you're still going to be primarily involved with paper as your main medium or could it be, say, cement? Do you have a heartfelt affection for paper that you'll be rolling with for a long time? RH: I'll probably stick with paper. I've spent a lot of effort putting it together, but also it's an evolutionary process of always exploring the material and I want to stick with it. I like the exploration. I'm not trying to work toward a final outcome or product. I've got lots of directions I'm curious about. Like getting pulp to lay on a non-porous material, I want to explore that and a number of other things. TB: You must have a love for the material, or an affection for it. RH: It's passion. You have to be in love with it. There've been times when I felt like throwing in the towel: "this is it, I've had it." And then there are other times when there's a moment of discovery, a moment when something works, or when everything funnels down and touches this one point. Those moments make you say, "OK. I'll stick it out. I'll keep going." The money's not here, but the magic is. It's that magic that not everybody's going to get close to. They're not willing to put the time into it or they just don't have the ingredients inside themselves, that soup; it's got to be there. So it's passion. And with passion there's always hate and there's always love. The material challenges you. You struggle with it all the time. TB: What do you think is needed for the professional art world to begin to take paperworks more seriously as it eventually did drawing, photography, video, and film? RH: Personally my feeling is that people need to take it out of the "kitchen" and turn it into a real serious pursuit. It can't be a part-time thing. People have to go to their studios and work. Forget about showing. Just work for about ten years. I come to the studio every single day. I'm fortunate at my age to be able to come in and put in the time. The legitimacy will grow out of that kind of commitment on the part of artists working with paper. It has to be seriously pursued on an individual basis. People can't go out and look for it from others. People have to examine who they're making the work for and where it's being exhibited. Too much of it is viewed as a commodity. In other words, instead of making it for a design marketing firm supplying corporate office spaces with interior decorating, they should be making the art for themselves, period. That too will make a difference. I think people should isolate themselves. We're barraged by so much information today. Things are moving too fast. There's too much external input. Creativity comes from our own experiences. The artist needs to go into his or her security zone and just work. I try not to look at other people's work these days. I try not to go to shows, I try not to look at magazines because people see things and are influenced and think, "Oh, I should be doing this." I'm more interested in myself as a source. If people ask me for advice on this, I tell them to go isolate themselves for a long period of time. TB: You were just telling me that you don't look at a lot of other peoples' work right now, but when and if you do see a paperwork that really impresses you, what is it that makes it special for you? RH: First off it gets past a certain sense of novelty, or kitschiness. And then there's some evidence the artist was able to really control the material. They've explored and succeeding in capturing an image, or an element. They've been able to focus their ideas in the material in an effective way. And I think some of the most successful people are coming from backgrounds of extended periods of creativity in other media, like painting.

‍