I completed two sculptures, "Spiral Shelter" and "Silo Shelter," during my residency. I also planned other pieces in the series and brought home paper and pulps to complete these other works. The Duntog Foundation was established in 1988 as a private non-profit foundation for research and education in the use of native Philippine fibers for handmade paper. The Foundation's mission is to explore the use of handmade paper in artistic and commercial applications while encouraging the development and preservation of papermaking skills in the Philippines. As part of its work, the Foundation sponsors residencies for international artists to experience papermaking in the Philippines and share their knowledge and skills. Artists and papermakers from such countries as Australia, Bhutan, China, Costa Rica, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand, as well as the United States, have visited and worked at the Duntog. Many have learned of the Foundation through its publications and international conferences of hand papermakers. David Jansheski, an artist from Chicago, has visited the Duntog two times in the last few years, producing a series of prints and an artist's book while in residence. I was the first sculptor working with handmade paper to visit the Duntog. The Foundation plans to continue its residency program and to offer workshops and tours for interested artists and papermakers.  While at the Duntog Foundation in Baguio City, I was treated royally. The staff prepared and served excellent Filipino and Oriental meals, with lots of vegetables and tropical fruits, and did everything to make me feel comfortable. I adapted easily to this routine, working as long as I wanted in the studio. There was no pressure to produce anything; I could do nothing, if I wanted to. I felt myself slowing down, thinking more, going with the natural flow of things, and letting myself enjoy the whole experience. The Duntog provided an ideal atmosphere for me to focus on my artwork. Michael J. Parsons, a multi-talented artist--papermaker, printmaker, bookbinder, poet, film producer, suminigashi marbler, and accomplished musician on the Philippine bamboo flute--, founded the Duntog Foundation. Parsons came to Baguio City, in northern Luzon, in the mid-1970s. He established a printmaking studio with another artist, Pandy Aviado. They soon met Leonida Dumsang, a young Filipino woman who was experimenting with handmade paper using native plants and fibers. This marked the beginning of Parsons' fascination with handmade paper. Since then he has explored the vast resources of the Philippines, identifying over 400 different fiber plants potentially useful for handmade paper. He has developed hand papermaking as a viable commercial mini-industry for the Philippines and has maintained his interest in its artistic applications. The site of Parsons' first improvised paper mill was his house in Baguio. The house soon grew too small for all the papermaking activities, and he built a new and larger mill on nearby property overlooking the city. By this time Parsons had learned much about the craft and had made contacts with international papermakers. Two paper engineers from China helped to design the new mill, making it more efficient, and Parsons added machinery to speed up production. Parsons named the new mill, built in 1985, Duntog, which means "mountain" in the Kankana-ei dialect of the province. The mill is a large rambling structure of wood and concrete, containing a library, offices, lodgings, a mini-gallery, book bindery, and studio space for visitors, as well as spaces for preparing, storing, and dyeing fibers, forming sheets, and drying handmade papers. The mill has a Hollander beater, six large vats, a large press, and many walls for air drying the handmade papers. There is also an experimental Chinese drying wall, made of clay and heated with a wood fire. In 1988 Asao Shimura, a Japanese papermaker, book artist, publisher, and paper historian, visited as an artist in residence. He remained, working for the Foundation, through 1991. During this time the Duntog expanded its operations, building an additional mill at Ag-agat, in the Cordillera Mountains north of Baguio City. The Foundation also continued its work in training papermakers and providing economic assistance to help them establish their own mills throughout the Philippines. Tommy Sibaen, a Kankana-ei native, is now the master papermaker at the Duntog Mill. Parsons trained him and sent him to study papermaking in Japan. He supervises the mill and trains other apprentices in hand papermaking. The mill's four or five papermakers produce several hundred sheets per day of finished paper. They form most sheets using the Western method, with molds and deckles which the skillful Duntog woodworkers have made. Some of the papermakers also practice Oriental-style papermaking. In addition to using native fibers, the mill staff also produce handmade paper from recycled paper, sometimes mixed with other fibers, as well as specialty and custom-made papers. The papermakers gather and prepare pulps such as salago, tikem, talnag, suksuka, latbang, and pina, as well as bleached and unbleached abaca from fiber plants grown throughout the country. My favorite pulps were salago and suksuka; they both produced strong, translucent, silk-like papers which I used in my sculptures. Previously, I had used unbleached abaca pulp and cotton linters purchased in sheet form, which I rehydrated with a "Lightnin'"-type mixer. With the new and exotic fibers available at the Duntog I could produce thinner papers with more interesting textures and colors. The Foundation is exploring retail and wholesale outlets to offer these unusual and distinctive pulps and papers to artists throughout the world. I made paper for my sculptures at both of the Duntog's two mills, in Baguio City and at Ag-agat, a four-hour drive from Baguio, high in the mountains where most of the fiber plants are grown and harvested. At Ag-agat, the Foundation employs local people to raise fiber plants, prepare fibers, and make paper. The papermakers there sometimes employ a naginata beater to beat the pulps, although they prepare and beat most fibers completely by hand. The Foundation grows flax there and continues to discover and propagate new fiber plants. The farm also contains a large plot of buckwheat, which the Duntog papermakers have discovered provides the best ash (lye) for cooking the fibers. They cook the fibers in large pots with the ash solution and then wash it in the nearby river. I was able to participate in one of the fiber washing outings, a real social occasion as well as a work party. The Duntog papermakers placed the cooked fibers in colanders and screen bags and held them in the river until the water ran clean. They then squeezed the fibers and gathered them on a tarp, to be carried back to the mill for picking, beating, and placing in the vats for papermaking. During my residency, I had the opportunity to share methods and techniques with the Duntog papermakers. I showed them my method of pouring pulp on large screens to produce three-dimensional effects and how to use squirt bottles filled with water to make lace-like lines in the wet pulp. I explained some of my collage techniques to the bookbinders and I taught the weavers how to do card weaving and inkle loom weaving.  I learned much from the Duntog papermakers about preparing raw fibers and using production equipment. I also discovered how to do multiple dips into the vat to produce thicker sheets. The Duntog weavers, Jeanette Domingo and Solidad Joaquin, showed me how to make the paper thread used in shifu, a traditional Japanese style of weaving. The paper thread is amazingly strong and durable, and I used it in my "Silo Shelter" construction. Jeanette and Solidad use the shifu they have woven to bind books and to make other paper products. They have also begun crocheting hats and bags with the paper thread. The Duntog Foundation now has an affiliated retail outlet in Baguio City. They stock different sizes of handmade papers; art work on handmade paper; stationery, boxes, journals, albums, bags, and other handmade paper items; as well as shifu and paper thread hats and purses. A video tape called "Papermaking at the Duntog" as well as videos about several of the artists in residence are also sold. A video about my own residency at the Duntog will soon be available. The Duntog residency gave me many new friends and contacts, and I had the opportunity to experience a new and different culture. I learned much about pulps, fiber plants, and papermaking skills from the Duntog Foundation papermakers. My experience in the Philippines as an artist in residence gave me a new appreciation for the patience, discipline, and dedicated work involved in producing handmade paper.

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