You may have heard the good news, we're moving! At least, our studio is moving. A rental space recently became available at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center and we decided it was worth exploring.  

The new space will more than double our square footage, but it will also add a monthly rental cost. We believe this investment in improved space with climate control, public restroom, improved electrical, etc. is worth the increased cost as we can provide better services to our students, artists, and creatives in our community.

In the past we've talked about the increased cost of real estate and living in Portland, and the impact it's made on our choices. That's what prompted us to crowdfund the purchase of a food truck in 2016 and turn it into a mobile studio. We also remodeled our garage into a home based studio in 2017. In other words, we adapted. 

Before we tell you more about the new space and our goals for the coming year, we should probably take a look back. Last year was one of extremes. Here's a look at what we did.

• We worked with 4 amazing artists via our partnership with the c3: Papermaking Residency (can't wait for their exhibition at c3 this spring!) 
• We hosted classes with our mobile studio for our Kickstarter supporters, at Portland Community College, and at the Bamboo Garden.
• Jenn used the mobile studio to bring her grant funded art project, Fruits of the Sun, to life via 10 pop-up portrait drawing sessions utilizing our handmade paper.
• Many artists and students rented our equipment both at our home studio and via our mobile studio. 
• We attended our first artist residency as Pulp & Deckle at Lone Pine Farm. 
• We went to our fourth Friends of Dard Hunter conference in Atlanta, GA at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking at Georgia Tech.
• We made custom orders for a variety of projects including paper and pulp for artists and businesses, stationary, and journals. 

All wonderful and positive things! But unfortunately life sometimes takes a turn for the worse, which was our experience in August 2017. Less than a week after Jenn had an exhibition of her Fruits of the Sun project at Portland Art Museum, and just a few days into working with our August residency artist, Jenene Nagy, an arson event took place at our home. We lost both our personal vehicle and the mobile studio to extensive fire damage, and we did not have comprehensive insurance coverage on either vehicle, meaning they were total losses.

In most ways we have been able to recover from this scary, mentally and financially destabilizing event. But we won't sugar coat that the end of 2017 was not easy. It felt like our confidence and momentum hit a brick wall. There was so much wonderful support from our friends, family, colleagues, and sometimes strangers, and that made a world of difference! Ultimately we needed time to process and heal. And for awhile there we were definitely in shock. While we would like to close this chapter and focus on our our move, there are still some lingering details to deal with. The suspected arsonist has been identified and is pending trial for which we will likely testify. And we're also still trying to find a junk yard that will tow away the mobile studio from our driveway. Because of it's size we're not having any luck finding a place that will take it. Let us know if you have a connection that would be able to help! 

If you've been following our progress over the last 5+ years, you might wonder how we're able to afford to rent a studio space. First off, our personal finances are a bit more stabilized thanks to our day jobs. Gary is now the Administrative Assistant at Arts People, an amazing Portland based ticketing and fundraising software business, and Jenn is a Project Manager at c3:initiative our partner for the residency program, and an inspiring arts non-profit organization. Secondly, at the end of 2017 we secured fiscal sponsorship status from Fractured Atlas so that we can receive charitable donations to support our studio as it evolves. We are putting our most recent donation funds towards the purchase of a folding table and a refrigerator. If you would like to support these types of studio expenses (rent, equipment, supplies) you can make a secure online donation HERE.

Moving the studio is a leap of faith. We have weighed the pros-and-cons and believe it is the way to put our best foot forward after the loss of the mobile studio. Here's how we hope to grow in 2018.

• WORKSHOPS! We'll have more space for students and will host workshops in the spring, fall and winter. 
• STUDIO RENTAL! Our improved facilities will be more accessible for artists and creatives looking to use our tools and equipment. 
• RESIDENCY! This summer residency artists will take over the studio in full between May-August, giving them increased time to create and explore.
• CUSTOM ORDERS! We'll continue making pulp for artists, as well as collaborating on custom paper orders. We really want to focus this on fibers that are unique and eco-friendly, such as recycled papers made from post-consumer waste, local plant based papers, and recycled textile papers. 

As we see how the year goes we also hope to add in some low cost and FREE drop-in events to grow our community and get more people engaged with the art and craft of hand papermaking. We are so excited, and of course a bit nervous, for this next chapter! As always, BIG THANKS to all who have been there with us through thick and thin. We couldn't do this without each and every one of you!!! 

​Over the past two months we've done a bit of travelling for the studio. In September we spent a week as artists-in-residence at the lovely Lone Pine Farm & Studio in Bainbridge Island, WA. It was a wonderful break from the day-to-day dealing with all things related to the fire at our home. We had planned to use the time to try out as many new types of plant fibers as we could, and we did just that. Our hosts at Lone Pine (Sarah and Ryan) were kind, gracious and helpful, providing us with awesome studio space, a cozy sleeping yurt, eggs from their chickens and produce from the farm, a lovely welcoming meal and a tour of the M&E public land site of which they are stewards. If you live in or near Seattle we highly recommend checking out one of their artist talks or events. The farm is just a quick ferry ride away.
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As this was our first time as artists in residence we felt a certain urgency about utilizing our time wisely and productively. Processing plants for paper can be very labor intensive, so we tried to give ourselves lots of studio time to work through steaming, stripping, cutting, cooking and beating. In other words even though we had been thinking the residency would be a bit like a vacation, it was really more like intensive and very focused work, but in a welcome way. If we had to piecemeal this type of time together at home it would take us several months to get as much done. The plants we ended up using were fava bean husks, indigo stems, scotch broom bast, alder bast and stinging nettle.

​We also made a bit of abaca and some recycled paper fiber from office paper waste to make paper for coloring books for our final Kickstarter rewards. It was a little heartbreaking making the paper for the rewards after losing the mobile studio in the fire. But our Kickstarter backers gave us their support and we want to recognize their generosity. 

Once we made all of our paper pulps we had an open studio event where we met some of the locals and enjoyed sharing a bit about what we were doing. After that we had a little over one full day to play and do some art making. Gary worked with the fibers to create layered pulp paintings and Jenn primarily focused on sheet forming for creating charcoal drawings. We both were working through a lot of emotions related to the fire and ended up making work dealing with themes of control/lack of control, impact/dissipation, and chaos/order. We plan on continuing to explore these ideas and expand on this new series, working collaboratively in a call/response type manner. This is our second time developing a body of work as an artist duo, and we look forward to future projects where Pulp & Deckle is not just our studio, but it is also our collaborative artist practice.

We did manage to squeeze in a few adventures outside of the studio (and Gary even recorded an episode of his podcast series - I'll Have a Beer and Talk) during the residency. One evening we saw a beautiful and quiet sunset at Fay Bainbridge Park. Jenn picked up a mussel shell to cast into paper, along with a few seabird feathers, and Gary took lots of documentation photos. Another evening we visited BARN (Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network) to attend a book signing and talk by Tara Whitsitt of Fermentation on Wheels.  Tara gave a sauerkraut making demo and tour of her mobile fermentation lab, a converted school bus that she has traveled the country in, teaching workshops and collaborating with schools, nonprofits, community centers and others to expand fermentation education. We felt a lot of simpatico with Tara's ideas and outreach efforts, and it was also really great to check out the amazing facilities available at BARN.  

At 1 am on Wednesday, August 9th, we were awoken by the sound of someone pounding on our front door. When dashing out of bed to investigate, we saw a wall of flame outside our upstairs window. There was a fire right next to our house. A fire crew was trying to get us out.

Thanks to the quick work of the fire response teams, the fire was extinguished before it did serious damage to our home. From what we understand, an unidentified individual started a fire in the dumpster of the business next to our driveway. The fire reached arborvitae trees that line our driveway for privacy and they went up instantly. After the fire was out and we were allowed to return to our home, we were able to assess the damage. All the arborvitae burned, and both our personal car and the mobile studio had their sides closest to the fire melted.

So many things could have gone differently that night. All things considered, it was the best possible result of a terrifying incident. We are working with insurance and hope to have repairs started soon. If you would like to help in our recovery efforts please consider becoming a monthly supporter of the studio via our Patreon page HERE. Thank you!!!

Though we are soldiering on, this has in many ways, especially on the emotional side of things, knocked the wind out of our sails. Our nerves are pretty raw, and we're trying our best to mitigate an overall feeling of vulnerability. Please be patient with us as we navigate through the recovery process and steer our lives back towards a more even keeled path. Until we find out more from insurance we have no idea what the future of the mobile studio (since the truck we bought is now unusable and will likely be scrapped) will be. For the time being we are planning on using a personal vehicle to teach offsite workshops as much as we can. 

Many thanks as always to our family, friends and supporters who believe in what we are doing and continue to help us keep on keeping on.