Collaboration in the arts takes place in many varied forms—between artists and between craftsmen alike—but then there is the professional collaborator, whose role is somewhat more devoted to the idea of collaboration itself. Collaborators are invested in synergy, process, and experience. To these ends they can become shape-shifters, who take on the role of tailoring the creative process in their chosen media to a specific artist, balancing attentiveness with lateral thinking, spontaneity with consistency, frugality with playfulness, wit with humility, tact with candor, and decisiveness with experiment, often forming lifelong trust-filled relationships that can result in a continuing body of artwork carefully spun from shared creative discovery—all within the rigorous constraints of what are usually tight schedules and limited budgets. Production papermakers too maintain a very careful, balanced hand—not only at the vat, but in the art of human interaction. Collaborative relationships in production paper involve an intricate day-after-day marriage of movement between master craftsmen. There is a necessary struggle towards empathy and shared understanding that gives rise to the subtly measured movements and gestures required and to predict the shift in daily variables, in order to maintain the rhythm and flow required to exact a consistently excellent paper. This relationship of shared decision-making inevitably colors production paper output. It could be argued that an inherently collaborative craft platform naturally informs art made in paper and pulp. Artists speak often about the priority of their process, and when afforded the chance to work with a collaborator they share in an intimate side-by-side encounter with someone at once a viewer, cohort, and catalyst. Collaboration in the oftentimes unpredictable paper process, taking place in an ephemeral state somewhere between the changing phases of water, is by definition about cultivating innate human sensibilities in relationship with the surrounding physical world. Within the wet process there is afforded that readily available moment to give over into alchemy. On multiple levels paper is about improvisations, transformations, about the magic in the space between things, and is ideally suited as one more means—in a world where the metaphors of language continually fall so short—of speaking from within that space between to express the inexpressible. With empathetic imagination as their currency, artistic collaborators are masters at play. Moreover, paper collaborators are necessarily as dedicated to activating for their artists what is for most a new language, to sensitively channeling, comprehending, and conveying the message of their medium. In the process they refine their hold on their craft, thus their duty being to map out uncharted territory in all directions. In their support for art practitioners, paper collaborators are there to surprise and reinvent and sustain, in a visually saturated world, the freshness of visual art making itself. Outside the profession of collaboration, few discuss what goes on in this makeshift-turned-crucial space, but all involved agree that the holistic and regenerative collaborative process has been vital in their practice and transformative in their outlook and sense of creative possibility. What is there to say about a field that cultivates so much in the nonverbal? I sat down with papermakers and collaborators from different generations and contexts, between us a bunch of words, to discover if it is possible to put into conversation something that is curiously as delicate yet indeed resilient as a piece of finely crafted paper. Here is how it went. ON Finding the Rhythm First to the table are collaborator Catherine Cox and Brooklyn, NY– based artist E.V. Day. They have begun a twelve-day Lab Grant collaboration at Dieu Donné Papermill that seems to be going quite well. Halfway through the conversation, E.V. is called off to hang the installation Chanel/Shazam at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, and Catherine and I become immersed in shoptalk and a little contemplation. \[See full transcripts of this and other interviews excerpted here at www.handpapermaking.org/magazine. Ed.\] Genevieve Wood (gw): Maybe you could start talking about what you had been up to that fateful day a week or so back where things started going right, and how it ended up turning out...? E.V. Day (evd): I think you are talking about the day we did the "Black and Blue" piece…in a way it seems like months ago, I just can't wait to get back in there now that we have a recipe we like! Catherine Cox (cc): We had been trying, unsuccessfully, to press the fishnet bodysuit. We kept getting different results with each piece because there are so many different variables. It took about four full days on the wet floor just to work it all out. How did you finally arrive at what you wanted? gw Totally inspiring! That there is a good vibe in the studio—that is really an important part of collaboration. ON Cultivating Trust Sue Gosin and Paul Wong, in their thirty-second year at Dieu Donné Papermill, are currently collaborating on a William Kentridge book of watermarks. Kentridge is arriving in a week's time to check the results of some drawings that have been converted into cotton watermarks for a book project. On another project, Paul has spent the day in the studio on a new suite for Richard Tuttle, entitled Men + Women. In terms of collaboration as the profession which it has become, the printer Luther Davis, in a recent public forum on collaboration, made a comment about how they don't teach collaboration in art school and would that it were that they did.2 What are the balances that you try to keep in a collaboration and how would you convey the principles to somebody new? Paul Wong (pw): It takes a long time to teach someone the sensitivities of working with an artist. Collaborators probably need to be artists themselves, no matter what level they are at, and mature enough to understand the process completely. So that is a whole training in itself, and then to be able to have the maturity to be thrown into a room with someone they've maybe never met or only talked to very peripherally before the session and be able to read the other person and know how to respond. To be able to know for example, "Well, I need to make that further step to bring them out some more." So it's mostly about nonverbal communication? Sue Gosin (sg): To reiterate what Paul is saying—to be a successful collaborator takes a lot of maturity. Your ego has to be It has to do with the different pigments we were using and how much pressure to use in the hydraulic press…and E.V. was so patient! How did the decision-making work at first? Did you have in mind exactly what you were after, or did you go in trying to discover where paper would lead you? Cat's understanding of the pigments was really the key. I had fun trying out different things with wet pressed paper and then pulp. I wanted to have an active surface and use the potential of the pulp, so wet with dimension. Have you used paper before for any of your pieces? Did something attract you to working in the medium of paper? No. I have made blueprints and etchings but this process is a whole different animal, not even the same species…When I had the tour of the Dieu Donné facility I just got so turned on by all the potential and possibilities with this new material. It's this great discovery about how to make the process do something different, something very specific to your work. I think I would imagine that I would use the paper like the way I have manipulated fabric in the past, but that has not happened yet. It is more about recording a moment of action, a burst of energy. I think that energy resonates with the pressure of the press on the water, pulp, and pigment…not only Cat's expertise with the pigments' chemical behaviors but also her music selection in the studio has been fantastic! I am so glad that E.V. is into ghetto rap! Well, every project you do, in one way or another informs future work. In school I made these thick sheets and cast them onto really chunky knitted objects, but I haven't ever had this much fun with pigment: the stretched fishnet and the fishing line, coating those with pigment, and smushing them in the press. The way the water radiates out and creates these lines of motion—like an explosion. Digital video still of Richard Tuttle (right) in collaboration with Paul Wong at Dieu Donné Papermill. Filmed by Peter J. Russo, Summer 2008. Courtesy of Dieu Donné Papermill, New York. Richard Tuttle, Men + Women, 2009, 13 ½ x 50 x 5 ½ inches overall, hand-cast cotton pulp, wood, and wire. Published by Dieu Donné Papermill in a suite of 4, edition of 10. Collaborator: Paul Wong. Courtesy of Dieu Donné Papermill, New York. with an artist and an artist who works with their assistants, who just perform for them and make stuff, but in this context you're having a dialogue with the artist and it is like a dance. ON Paper Versus Print On a cold and wintry evening down in Gowanus, Brooklyn, New York, Ruth Lingen from PACE Prints and former Dieu Donné studio director Rachel Gladfelter, now at PACE's Chelsea gallery, gather to admire and name the long-awaited fire-engine red press setup at their brand-new interdisciplinary print and paper studio. We talk about the art of collaboration in print and paper, and the role of perfection and chance in papermaking practice. I was wondering if texture is a preoccupation with printmakers— that we are always trying to overcome, subdue, or somehow capture surfaces… Ruth Lingen (rl): Yes, \[as a printmaker\] you do get all excited about it. Do you have any thoughts on whether or not that holds for papermaking too? There have been a lot of exciting paper projects that involve deceiving the eye, like the work done with Robert Gober… Rachel Gladfelter (rg): I think that is a huge aspect to it, certainly. Another thing that paper can offer is three-dimensionality. Like Mel Kendrick's recent project, where he was casting into a rubber mold taken directly from a wood grain with the screw heads in the surface, he captures all of that detail in the paper pulp relief3…and Peter Seminsky just did that cast bucket project with Steve \[Orlando\]4, with the cast ropes. There are some elements to it where you can see that this is definitely paper, it's not as convincing as a really perfect texture in print—but people are certainly going after texture in some way. Trompe l'oiel was not Peter's specific goal per se, but I think achieving a certain texture in paper is romancing a lot of artists and directing them in that way. But certainly it's those inherent qualities in paper that I love. It's the way paper feels a little bit more like fabric and that it's sensuous. I tend to like paper that isn't super-defined, superhot- pressed with deckles minimized. I like seeing the hand because that's the beauty of it—the handmade quality of it. In terms of professional print shops, printmaking is reaching new levels of refinement and perfectionism—the human hand is ever closer to being taken out of it. Papermaking is not at that point yet, but it's probably headed in the same direction. Aldo Crommelynck, who worked with PACE Editions for a long time—his prints were like that. They were very pristine and you couldn't even believe human hands had touched them! It's like an argument with the commercial printing process that is being made by hand printers—like John Henry and the steam drill. But, there's also space for that to go another way—to take a commercial look and to mess with it—to use the perfection and then still have yourself present in a way— to still have the presence to pervert the perfection. That talks against going that far. And that's what I personally respond to. Walter Hamady, for instance, saying that one should work mistakes into what one is doing… Yes, "One flaw for the gods." in repose and yet your vision and your skill have to be as refined as the artist you are working with. And the most exciting collaborations occur when you are peer-to-peer with the artist that you are working with—what you are bringing is of equal value in a way to what the artist is bringing. It often reminds me of dance—because if you're dancing with a partner you take cues from each other all the time, and very often one will lead and then the other follows and vice versa. It is that rhythm—that give-and-take—and it gets really good when there is a lot of trust—and trust comes from being able to read each other quite well. That's why sometimes remarkable collaborations happen right off the bat, but very often collaborations get richer and better over the years as you have developed this incredible trust, which is a great foundation for collaboration and is quite personal. You really know each other quite well, you've worked together before. I think Richard Tuttle and I are probably at that point. He has brought projects to us, and even if we only made the paper for them, we have still been having a dialogue that has been going on since 1988. So you've learned to speak his language? Well, I think now I understand his language. When it's really fun, and you're willing to work especially hard for an artist, it is a very satisfying experience—you are stimulated by the ideas that they are working with, you bring your own ideas, and when they're appreciated, that's very rewarding. In the visual arts we don't have as strong a tradition of giving collaborators the kind of credit you might get in the film industry for example, where collaborators traditionally play off each other, feed off each other, and are then recognized for that…there is a very rich art product coming out of all these people working together and knowing that they will be recognized for the contribution they have made. I think in the visual arts we are really lagging in that sense. I think that's the difference between a collaborator who works To follow the ways set out—it's not something that happens overnight certainly, as the years go by it becomes part of you. As you stand by the vat over time your body gets used to doing that. How do you get the perfect paper again and again? Takashi Miki (tm): It's not that it's perfect at the start, but if you come together as a team and everyone is thinking, "Let's get it the same again, let's get it the same," after that, to an extent you are able to get the same results. The paper that is pulled isn't perfect. It is man-made, handmade, and there are slight differences each time. But it's over and over again saying: "Let's do it the same, let's do it the same." It takes a few years in the beginning…five years, seven years? Seven years isn't enough. It's handmade stuff, it's not something that you can, say, crank out of a computer. It's all in the hands. Hands as well as sense... a sense for the neri,5 a sense for the pressure, a sense for the spirit of paper. ___________ notes 1. Editor's note: Japanese names appear in this article in Western name order—first name, followed by family name. 2. Luther Davis from panel discussion, Converge and Conquer: A Conversation about the Trials and Victories of Collaboration, an Evening with Artists Robert Buck, Ian Cooper and John Kessler, and Master Printers Luther Davis, Phil Sanders, and Papermaker Rachel Gladfelter, Michelle Levy (moderator), at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space, November 11, 2008. 3. Editor's note: For more on Mel Kendrick's work, please see Lynne Tillman's essay, "on Mel Kendrick: Initial Notes, Later Developments— Seeing ‘Loopholes,'" which appears in this issue. 4. Steve Orlando is creative project director of Dieu Donné Papermill. 5. Neri is formation aid. ON Dedication Akiko Tamura and Takashi Miki are papermakers for Heizaburo Iwano—an Echizen papermaker in Japan whose studio produces not only traditional papers including Torinoko, but also custom papers for artists. The studio collaborates frequently with Kyoto artist Eriko Horiki on her large-scale interior and exterior architectural paper installations. Tamura and Miki both work in teams as papermakers, and over okonomiyaki, Japanese pancakes, they share some insight into the nature of collaborative production papermaking. How is it different to work in these two different ways—comparing projects for designer papers with Eriko Horiki to your usual work on Iwano paper? Akiko Tamura (at): Working for Heizaburo Iwano is about making paper that has been transferred down the generations for more than a thousand years. But working with Eriko Horiki is a new way of working for us. Iwano's paper has withstood history. It is made in the way we were taught. It is paper where you are preserving the methods passed down to you by your elders. But with Eriko Horiki you watch excitedly as every single new piece is brought into the world. "Wow— is this kind of thing really exhibited somewhere? Who will use it? Who will see it?" It is somehow very exciting. Making traditional paper, one has always to keep the rules—it is important for us to keep the same way of working. Horiki's work is different, defiant. To preserve the traditions of the paper that you make, some people might think it's impossible to work at this standard— how do you achieve it? How do you train your body and mind to do it? We are just taught, and we abide by it—you have to love what you do though. More than just learning—by loving it you come to know how to make it. It's not easy to make—and you know, Miki came here because of his love for the craft. That's how you learn—by putting your heart and soul into it.