What is now known as The Papermill was initially founded in 1978 by Rod Ewins, then senior lecturer in printmaking at the Tasmanian School of Art, part of the University of Tasmania. The School of Art employed former Twinrocker apprentice Tim Payne to work with Ewins in setting up the equipment and initiating the papermaking program. Originally named Jabberwock, this mill has developed into the largest and best-equipped institutional hand paper mill in Australia. Lecturer and technician Penny Carey Wells has been in charge of the mill since 1985 and has taught papermaking to many groups of students within the art school programs. Printmaking students at the School of Art concentrate on making flat sheets suitable for etching or collagraphs. Students from other departments�in particular sculpture and furniture-making�utilize the mill facilities to broaden their range of materials and to explore casting, fabrication, and other 3-dimensional techniques. Many students use handmade paper as a sculptural medium or as a unique surface for their painting and drawing. Some of the most interesting recent work has come from the furniture design department, as a result of specific projects that encourage students to produce furniture pieces either incorporating or constructed from handmade paper. Over the past few years the artists' book has developed as an expressive art form. Many students at the Tasmania School or Art incorporate both handmade paper and contemporary book structures in their work. The papermill teaching program now includes a focus on books, which also often involves students from the Graphic Design studio who are engaged in ideas for packaging and presentation. Students are the most frequent users of the mill but occasionally an artist will hire the facilities to produce a body of work over a week or two during the university vacations. Carey Wells then acts as technician and consultant. The mill includes two Hollander-style beaters, both capable of handling three to four kilograms of pulp; three presses; four large wooden vats; and many smaller plastic tubs and barrels, used as vats. The mill has many moulds and deckles of various sizes, a restraint drying press, air drying facilities, and a Japanese steam heated dryer. Much of the equipment has been specially built. Recently, The Papermill offered the wider Hobart community an innovative and comprehensive course in papermaking and contemporary book and box construction. Having originated this popular course, Carey Wells guides up to twelve participants through most of the basic aspects of these increasingly significant art and craft forms. Providing the same number of classtime hours as a regular, first year, practice-based university Fine Arts degree subject, this non-accredited course allows more scope for experimental work. In 1994, participants in this course formed the Tasmanian Paper and Book Guild, an active group of artists willing to show their artwork in thematic exhibitions, share purchasing costs of imported materials, and enjoy a lively exchange of ideas and techniques. Members have recently staged a second major group show in Hobart and participated in both the National Artists' Book Fair, held biannually in Brisbane, Queensland, and the London Book Fair. The ingenuity, originality, and diversity of the work produced by members of this group attests to the innovative nature of the Paper and Book course syllabus. The Graphic Investigation department of the Institute of the Arts at the Australian National University, in Canberra, embraces both papermaking and the artists' book as integral parts of the teaching program. The papermill there, fondly known as the Paper Cupboard, originally set up in the late 1980s by Katharine Nix, illustrates the efficient use of space. A Hollander beater, stamper, large press, restraint drier, vats, storage, and work stations all fit, incredibly, into a tiny area and still leave room for many students. Luckily both Nix and the present lecturer, Melodie Pike, are women small in stature. They are, however, large in both determination and love for their discipline. Despite the modest space, the work emerging from this mill has created great interest and, magically, can be of monumental dimensions. Closely related to the papermill, the newly created Book Studio, run by senior lecturer Dianne Fogwell, incorporates a well equipped typography facility, as well as printmaking and photo media equipment. Students from within the Graphic Investigation department and visiting artists produce exciting and finely crafted work here. Fogwell took an exhibition of her students' work to Washington, D.C. several years ago. It received much acclaim and attention from American viewers. The South Australian School of Art, part of the University of South Australia, also possesses considerable papermaking equipment at its Underdale campus. Former lecturer Ian Arcus motivated the establishment of this facility and has encouraged his students to explore locally found fibers for their papermaking, especially indigenous fibers. Since Arcus's recent retirement, Kay Lawrence now oversees this area. Arcus and Lawrence have put less emphasis on sheet forming and more on the use of paper as an expressive medium. In addition to students who enroll in a comprehensive unit of papermaking, others, from related subject areas�such as sculpture, printmaking, and textiles�also have access to the studio. Many other art schools have been teaching papermaking and amassing equipment over the last few years, giving Australian students good exposure to this medium. They are generally producing exciting work, showing great experimentation and diversity. Unfortunately, with vicious funding cuts forcing budgets to be slashed at our universities, more peripheral disciplines such as paper will likely have little chance to keep growing. Also, it appears fashionable to structure teaching programs away from the technical areas of the arts, focusing instead on purely conceptual concerns. This seems very short-sighted and sad, especially for undergraduates, who surely deserve to be taught some image-making skills. In Australia, paper has emerged as an art medium, with some practitioners now having worked with paper for almost twenty years. Much recent Australian work displays elegance and sophistication, mastery of techniques, and surety of handling. Artists now use paper with skill and confidence and are less often diverted by its novelty and seductiveness. However, operating as a papermaker in Australia still requires particular dedication and determination. Equipment, beyond improvised basics, is expensive and difficult to obtain, with few suppliers in the country. Papermakers often rely on international mail-ordering or the assistance of local tradespeople, who must work from sketchy plans, copy existing equipment, or interpret information found in books. In response to these problems, interested artists have pooled resources throughout the country. One development has been the inclusion of a papermill at the Primrose Park Community Art Space in Sydney, in 1991. The venture, called Primrose Paperworks Cooperative and presently coordinated by Juliette Rubensohn and Sherry Cook, has received considerable support from funding bodies and much interest from the local community. The Cooperative regularly holds workshops, demonstrations, and lectures, and provides opportunities for individual work projects. It offers classes in bookbinding, calligraphy, and related practices. In 1994 the group purchased a David Reina Hollander beater and they have since added a vacuum table and a large press. While the Primrose Paperworks Cooperative is presently the only community based papermill in Australia, most other states have groups or guilds that provide papermakers with many benefits. Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, and Victoria all have very active groups, with tireless voluntary committees continually organizing workshops, lectures, and exhibitions for their members. All of these groups also arrange for bulk purchasing arrangements, share workshop costs, and circulate newsletters. Prior to the 1st National Conference, ten years ago, many papermakers felt a great sense of isolation and a distinct lack of opportunities for engaging in vital dialogue with colleagues. The state organizations that have grown since that time now provide essential links that help lessen the tyranny of distance faced by most artists in this huge land. An important annual opportunity for networking and exchanging ideas among Australian papermakers and paper artists is the Australian Fibre Forum, organized by expatriate American Janet de Boer. This huge residential event is held over six days during the Easter vacation in a well equipped and comfortable school, in a rural setting between Sydney and Canberra. Generally over five hundred eager devotees descend upon the tiny town of Mittagong for the intensive workshops led by tutors highly regarded as specialists in their fields. Papermaking and artists' books have been regular workshop topics. Over the years many international tutors have spoken at the Forum, including Jackie Parry from Scotland and, from the United States, Walter Nottingham, and Peter and Donna Thomas. Another significant level of activity exists in the growing number of individual artists who have invested in serious papermaking equipment for their private studios. Katharine Nix in Canberra, Ruth Creedy and Heather McDonald in Adelaide, and Denise Campbell in Tasmania all own imported North American Hollander beaters. Others have locally-made models as well as additional sophisticated equipment at their disposal. A single production-based hand papermill now exists in Australia. Named Blue Lake, the mill produces a range of 100% rag and flax papers in Mt. Gambier, South Australia. The papers are both internally and surface sized, and watercolor artists keenly seek them. Leading art supply retailers within Australia and New Zealand distribute the papers. Kevin Smibert, the retired farmer and engineer who established this mill, made much of the equipment himself, based on designs of similar machinery in Indian hand papermills. He has devised a unique rag cutter as well as systems for pulling, couching, and pressing the sheets. More and more mainstream exhibitions and important galleries now include the work of well established Australian artists who use paper as their primary medium. Using paper as a cross-linking medium for curating an exhibition can be dangerous, however. Craft-based media, paper included, have been a traditional target for unpleasant criticism. Exhibit organizers must select work carefully to maintain credibility, as did Pauline Guthrie in 1994. Curator at the Tin Sheds Gallery, part of the University of New South Wales, Guthrie staged a national survey show of artists who work with paper as their primary medium. This closely juried exhibition provided the viewing public with exciting, stimulating, and challenging works. The show traveled to regional galleries for a year. If a generalization can be made about Australian paper art work, one might say it has a gutsy, raw, and powerfully unique quality. Artists might be responding to the landscape of this continent, which can present the eye with much ruggedness�untamed and weathered vistas, and great tracts unmodified by man. Even though most of us live in cities on a narrow coastal strip, it takes relatively little traveling time to plunge into the landscape and be forced to acknowledge its vast, almost brutal qualities. Indigenous plants can be used to produce papers of dense texture and often powerful colors. Artists with just the basic equipment have learned to exploit the low-tech roughness of their papers. The isolation of work practices have produced some exciting, idiosyncratic results. Paradoxically, the growth of the papermaking groups results in a sameness of techniques, as personal discoveries taught in workshops quickly become incorporated into the general collective knowledge. Fortunately, there remains great diversity in the paper and paper art work being produced in Australia. Many international visitors will have the chance to personally encounter our art work and our artists, papermakers, and educators in early March, 1998. The International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA) will hold its 12th congress then in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. (IAPMA, formed in 1986 and "dedicated to assist all those interested in paper and to advance traditional and contemporary ideas in the art of hand-papermaking and paper art," claims more than four hundred members in over forty countries.) Happily, the Australian congress will coincide with and be a part of the renowned, three week Adelaide Festival of Arts. The Festival also includes the Fringe Festival, the Adelaide Writers Week, and the Adelaide Book Fair, as well as an array of performances, exhibitions, and events encompassing traditional and experimental performing and visual arts. Currently in the organizational stage, the 12th IAPMA congress will feature displays and exhibitions, lectures, workshops, visits, and hands-on sessions. It will include information resources and networking opportunities for a wide range of paper-making connoisseurs, from bookbinders and conservators to printmakers, calligraphers, and paper suppliers. Gallery owners and curators, museums, paper historians, and arts organizations will also participate. The organizers plan to invite teachers and students involved in the use of pulp and paper or related crafts, and indigenous groups, especially fiber workers. The congress will also be relevant to special-interest groups, such as agricultural waste managers, recycling firms, botanical gardens scientists, and Australian Government Hemp research workers. Special attractions at the Congress will include a mail art exhibition (featuring original scrolls and letters) and an artists' diary/journal exchange (with journals produced in editions of two, for exhibiting and swapping). Organizers are also inviting expressions of interest in a paper trade fair. Post congress tours will be organized so that international participants, in particular, can choose from the varied travel and tourism possibilities across the country. International and Australian papermakers and artists eagerly anticipate the 1998 IAPMA Congress. Handmade paper is a fully viable and exciting medium with ever-increasing participation at all levels. The Congress will reaffirm the importance of this age-old craft and ensure its artistic relevance in Australia well into the next century.
