Matott, Artist-in-Residence at Salina Art Center
Peace Paper Project: embracing challenges to overcome cultural barriers
Salina, Kan. (Oct. 17, 2018) Drew Matott, Director of Peace Paper Project will be the Artist-in-Residence at the Salina Art Center Warehouse October 26-Nov. 4, 2018. Everyone is invited to participate multiple opportunities offered.
Peace Paper Project is an international community-arts initiative that utilizes traditional papermaking as a form of trauma therapy, social engagement, and community activism. Since 2011, Peace Paper Project has conducted hundreds of workshops worldwide in conjunction with community leaders, mental health professionals, and art therapists. Peace Paper Project is dedicated to helping strengthen communities through papermaking workshops, interventions, and international projects.
On Tuesday, October 30 at 7pm, Matott will speak in Fitzpatrick Auditorium on the campus of Kansas Wesleyan University. Matott will discuss how Peace Paper Project facilitators teamed up with Gabriel Project Mumbai and Naya Papermaking to help further develop the Naya Women's Waste-Paper Recycling Business. Gabriel Project Mumbai is an NGO caring for vulnerable children and their communities in slums and under-served rural villages of Maharashtra, India, as a grassroots response to poverty, malnutrition, ill-health hunger and child labor in India. Naya Papermaking is a new innovative, grassroots paper recycling initiative aimed at empowering women to improve their community environment in the Mumbai slum of Kalwa.
The two organizations reached out to Peace Paper Project for help with improving the quality of their products and increase their ability to produce more paper. After much planning, Jana & Drew traveled to Mumbai, where they spent two weeks in the Kalwa Slum making improvements to the studio equipment and teaching new paper techniques. The main focus was to increase the ability to produce paper soap wrappings, hotel notepads, and handmade books. As a result of Peace Paper Projects visitation and initiatives, the women from Naya Papermaking were able to increase their daily production from 10 sheets of paper to 200. This increase has a significant impact on the lives of the women since they are paid by the sheet.
The story of Peace Paper Project's collaborative visitation with Naya Papermaking one of a multifaceted international collaboration between organizations in Isreal, UK, USA, Germany and India. It is a story of embracing the challenges to overcome cultural barriers and have a profound impact on the lives of people living in the most strict poverty.
Matott will also lead a two session hands on workshop on October 27 & 28 at the Salina Art Center Warehouse. The papermaking revolution is in full swing across the globe, artists are invited to learn some of the most innovative techniques that should be in every contemporary papermaker’s bandolier!
This two-session workshop blends contemporary applications of hand papermaking, screenprinting, and hybrid collagraphic processes. Students will use pulp painting and pulp printing to create unique sheets of paper on which they will print using a hybrid callographic process called silk aquatint.
Saturday, October 27, 1-5pm
Students will make sheets of paper by layering pulp, pulp painting, and pulp printing using a variety of colorful rag pulp.
Sunday, October 28, 10am-12pm
Students will learn the hybrid collagraphic printing process known as silk aquatint, a technique that combines screenprinting and intaglio. Students will create their own images and print them onto their handmade paper.
Registration for the two session workshop is FREE. Please RSVP to gboyum@salinaartcenter.org or call 785-827-1431
Salina Art Center exhibitions and programming are funded by Art Center donors, patrons, members, sponsors, area foundations, and grant programs of Salina Arts & Humanities, City of Salina. Admission to the Art Center is free and galleries are are open Wednesday – Saturday from 11-5 p.m. and Sunday 1-5 p.m.