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Papermaking Workshop

Come learn how to make paper with artist Kristen Tordella-Williams. This workshop is aimed at artists and craftspeople interested in learning how to make handmade paper and objects. Paper pulp is a versatile and durable material that can be formed into sheets that alone can be works of art or they can be used as a format for additional creative processes including drawing, printmaking, and book arts. All activities are free and open to the public. This event is made possible thanks to the support of Partners for the Arts.

Kristen Tordella-Williams

My art questions deeply held assumptions of identity, gender, memory, and  labor through process, materiality, symbolism, and action. Through each of my  works, I endeavor to express the layers of the impressions left by our bodies on the  environment around us and the reciprocal impressions our bodies hold from the wear and tear of living. 

Kristen Tordella-Williams 

 

 

Kristen Tordella-Willams

 

My art questions deeply held assumptions of identity, gender, memory, and labor through process, materiality, symbolism, and action. Through each of my works, I endeavor to express the layers of the impressions left by our bodies on the environment around us and the reciprocal impressions our bodies hold from the wear and tear of living.

I use many processes to create art, including paper making, iron casting, metal fabrication, drawing, printmaking, woodworking, performance, video, and collaboration and choose each material and process carefully to include an attention to highly crafted final products that connote meaning through the history of its making and the chosen materials.

My works involve laborious repetition that result in final forms such as a cast iron representation of used, tattered work pants or a tall stack of handmade paper that erodes as it is viewed. The repetition in my works show the memories inherent in our bodies that result from repetitive labor.

I question how we process the past and present as well as how information is compiled in the digital age; often implicating the viewer to challenge their prejudices by presenting disgust and beauty through the use of highly crafted objects depicting charged images like cockroaches combined with materials like bleach or burnt books.

Kristen's interests lie in the layers of the impressions left by our bodies on the environment around us and the reciprocal impressions our bodies hold from the wear and tear of living. She gathers and re-interprets the remnants of labor, identity, gender, and memory, discovered or made. Kristen is inspired by processes such as performance, papermaking, sculpture or printmaking utilizing materials commonly found in hardware stores, scrap yards, and recycling bins.

Kristen has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently in a castle/monastery in Salem, Germany. She has been an artist in residence at Salem Art Works, the Visitor Center, and Franconia Sculpture Park. In 2018, Kristen was awarded Best in Show by Elizabeth Turk for her sculpture Stack I: Corrosion. She’s received a Creative Artist Grant from the Greater Jackson Arts Council as well as a Mississippi Arts Commission grant for the cast iron sculpture titled Eudora Welty Wreath (2016), a cooperative, community-engaged cast iron sculpture.

She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS, where she teaches drawing, digital arts, sculpture, performance art, and papermaking. She is the Vice President of the Mid-South Sculpture Alliance and a founding producer of VergeJXN, an interactive, free, community-centered arts festival held annually in Jackson. Her next community project is the creation of a contemporary public sculpture walk in Jackson’s Midtown neighborhood.

Papermaking

Papermaking

Day 1: Friday, March 27

Papermaking workshop

 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m: 

 

Attendees will learn how to make sheet paper, with inclusions, embedding, and pigmenting- adding decorative materials and forms and color to handmade paper. Paper will have to dry overnight and participants will be able to pick up their paper on Saturday (from 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. and 1 – 1:30 p.m.)

  • Registration required, limited seats to 15, with lunch on your own

Register

 

Public Lecture

6 – 7:00 p.m.: 

 


 

Day 2: Saturday, March 28

Demo

9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.:

 

Casting objects with paper pulp. In addition there will be a talk on how to start your own DIY at-home papermaking setup.

 

Participants will be responsible for obtaining their own visitor parking passes at the front entrance to USM on Hardy Street.

 

Workshop Location

3-D Arts Building

Room 114, 2905 West 4th street, Hattiesburg

Campus Map

Email
jennifer.torresFREEMississippi

 

Contact Us

School of Performing and Visual Arts

201E Theatre and Dance

Campus Hattiesburg

Campus Map

Email
spvaFREEMississippi

Phone
601.266.4161