Arbor Day

Wiliwili, Erythrina sandwicensis

Arbor Day is a day to recognize and plant trees. Trees are the most massive, longest lived, and tallest organisms ever to inhabit earth. Trees support more communities of living things than any other organism on earth. Trees are our greatest natural resource. November is the month that we celebrate Arbor Day in Hawaii, usually the second saturday of the month.

The Maui Nui Botanical Gardens hosts the celebration on Maui and in honor of the event, give away many hundreds of trees. And these are not just trees, they are all indigenous, some endemic and endangered Hawaiian species that are rare and hard to find. 

http://www.mnbg.org/home.html

 

A Celebration Of Tree Planters Around The World:

Arbor Day is also celebrated in other countries including Australia. Variations are celebrated as 'Greening Week' of Japan, 'The New Year's Days of Trees' in Israel, 'The Tree-loving Week' of Korea, 'The Reforestation Week' of Yugoslavia, 'The Students' Afforestation Day' of Iceland and 'The National Festival of Tree Planting' in India.

It seems that now, this time in our history, the world has a growing common concern; our environment. One of my favorite tree notations reguarding Wangari Maathai, known as the "Tree Woman" of Kenya, founder of the Green Belt Movement, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004, responsible for the planting of over 30 million trees,
“Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment.”
Amen!!

Tension

Original Oil crayon drawing on Rives BFK hotpress drawing paper 19" x 24"
This is one of a series of drawings that I did in the early '80's after reading newspaper articles concerning the tension in the middle east.

"All art can be placed somewhere along a political spectrum, supporting one set of class interests or another, actively or passively, at the very least supporting existing conditions by ignoring other possibilities, silence giving consent." M. Stevens

Watercolor Drawings

Original watercolor drawing; part of a series of watercolor studies, I really enjoy doing figure drawings using a model.

Paper Samples

Beautiful papers made from various plants; hibiscus, philodendron and spider lily.

Papers from various plants grouped together. The light brown paper on top of the pile is a piece of tapa. Tapa is a polynesian word for bark cloth. Tapa is made from the inner bark of plants and trees. The inner bark is obtained by peeling off the outer bast or bark, soaking and pounding the fibers until the bark piece becomes very soft and the fibers have spread out to the desired size of cloth. Its very similar to making handmade papers except tht with tapa there is no cooking involved. For this little piece of tapa, I used the inner bark from a Ficus or Banyan tree and pounded the piece with a wooden meat tenderizer.

A very loose, lacy, fibrous brown paper made from the cooked and pounded leaf sheaths of a philodendron plant paired together with the soft, blotterlike white papers made from the inner bark of Hibiscus.

Useful Uses For Handmade Paper

The handmade papers on the left are folded into envelopes and used as very rustic stationary. The envelopes have two paper layers, the white paper for the base layer is made from the bast fibers or the stripped inner bark of hibiscus branches. Each branch is cut, peeled and cooked. Hibiscus paper is naturally very white and soft like cotton. The second layer of paper is made from a mixture of different plant fibers, the dominant brown flecks come from the shed leaf sheaths of a Monstera plant. The leaf sheaths are reddish to dark brown in color. The fibers are very coarse and really hard to break down. I love the effects from this plant, the papers have a really lacy look to them and are a great combination layered with papers made from softer, blotterlike fibers such as hibiscus.

Papermaking from Plants

Bird of Paradise plant

Cooked and washed Bird of Paradise fibers on a wooden cutting board, ready for the beating process.

These lovely handmade papers are made entirely from a Bird of Paradise plant. I harvested the stalks and leaves, cut them up into pot sized lengths and cooked the plant pieces in water with 1/4 cup washing soda for about 6 hours.

After the cooking, I washed the fibers till they came clean using a paint strainer and then beat the fibers with a wooden mallot on a wooden cutting board. Beating the fibers took approximately 3 hours.

After beating, the fibers were further pulverized in a kitchen blender and finally poured into a papermaking vat, then using my screen and deckle, lifted into sheets of paper and transferred onto glass windows to dry.

There are many things to do with papers like these. I like to use them in bookbinding and when making my handmade paper journals. I also use the papers for making three dimensional sculptures, when I do my cast paper pieces- I take dampened sheets of paper or straight paper pulp and press into a plaster of paris mould. I also love to combine my basketry and papermaking; one technique is to dip a freshly woven basket into a vat of paper pulp, as the paper pulp dries it shrinks into all of the indents from the pattern of the weave creating sort of a tight outer skin. The effect is very interesting, it makes the vessel look like it was dug from some ancient ruin. I also prepare the papers with photo sensitive chemicals and print my photographs onto the papers, this technique can get real interesting and I'm still experimenting with different types of alternative photo techniques.

I've been working hard on my botanical photo series which many of will be printed on papers made from all different plants.

Cordage & Basketry

This tiny basket is not much bigger than my thumbnail. I wove a series of necklaces made from different strands, twisted and braided cordages that were made out of the inner bark of different plants. Some of the baskets had lids on them. This is the only one I have left, it is made from Hau bush.