Paper Talk

Velma Bolyard is a mother, artist and teacher. Living north of the Adirondacks, she forages for and cultivates fibers, dye and papermaking plants. She makes paper, threads, spins kami-ito, weaves shifu, and fish skin parchment, and she spins and cultivates wild silks for her artists’ books. A papermaker since 1977, her specialty is local plant papers and flax, which she colors with plants and earth pigments. She delightsin edges, selvedges, deckles, and ecotones where the woods meet open land; that is also where she finds the material and stories for her work. Small adventures and stories show up as poems in her books from time to time.

Born in Virginia, Chauncey Foster is an experiential artist whose work explores the intersection of collective action, environmental philosophy, and applied ecology. He studied Biology at St. Andrews University and has since worked extensively in ecology, conservation, and outdoor education. He currently works alongside Noah Mertz at we.grow.eco, a Northern New Mexico nonprofit that uses art, science, and hands-on education to explore our relationships with waste, consumption, and the environment. A central part of Chauncey’s practice focuses on textile waste management, transforming discarded clothing and fibers into handmade paper, books, and other functional and artistic materials. Through papermaking, creative reuse, and community-based workshops, his work examines how discarded materials can become tools for learning, storytelling, and collective action.

Katie MacGregor entered into the world of production papermaking in 1980, when she was invited to do an apprenticeship at Twinrocker Handmade Paper.  She never looked back, and built a cottage industry in her studio, which is located in Whiting, ME.  She’s been working for and collaborating with book artists, private presses, bookbinders and conservators in public institutions for the past 46 years. In 2022, Katie was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award by the Guild of Bookworkers.

Angela Fung and Ashley Bedford run Fung & Bedford, a multi-disciplinary studio exploring how material can think, hold memory, and reshape space. Through large-scale folded sculptures and installations, they transform flat surfaces into structural form, using geometry and repetition to give gesture a tangible presence.Their process is guided as much by gravity as by resistance to it. They test the threshold between weight and lift, creating forms that appear suspended — poised between ascent and collapse. To Fung & Bedford, folding is both action and a philosophy — a way to ‘Unfold the Moment’. Each work emerges through cycles of tension and release, where precision meets transformation. Every crease records a decision; every planereveals a dialogue between intention and material behavior.

Bernie Vinzani has a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from Indiana State University. He was a papermaker at Twinrocker Paper, and since the early 1980’s he has made book and conservation papers in his shop in Whiting, Maine.  He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, and has made paper for the Library of Congress, Harvard University Libraries and has collaborated with many artists and fine book printers.

Jaz Graf's recent body of work juxtaposes synthetic and raw materials, the virtual gaze with organic imprints, and satellite imagery with dust. It sets in motion, a contemporary discourse around intergenerational memory and cultural preservation. Graf exhibits locally and internationally, was most recently featured at The Newark Museum of Art, NJ and published in the peer-reviewed journal, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas. Her work has appeared in Whitehot Magazine, AM New York News, The Jersey Journal, World Literature Today and on NJ PBS Television Network.

Amanda Thackray is a multidisciplinary ecofeminist artist-educator based in Newark, NJ, who crafts intricate artwork exploring the intersections between nature, industry, and human experience. She is the recipient of several Creative Catalyst Fund Fellowships, a Puffin Foundation Grant for Environmental Art, and a NJ State Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Residencies include The Arctic Circle, Norway; The Center for Book Arts, NYC; and The Museum of Art and Design, NYC. Her work has been widely exhibited and is held in numerous international public and private collections including The Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Mediatheque Andre Malraux, France, Yale University, and The Library of Congress. Thackray earned a BFA from Mason Gross at Rutgers University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), both in printmaking.

Jim Patterson is a life-long papermaker and owner of Two Rivers Paper since 1986. Two Rivers Paper specialises in hand-made rag papers, using traditional methods, each sheet being carefully crafted one by one. After many years of production in a water and solar powered mill, Two Rivers is now situated at East Quay Arts Centre in Watchet, Somerset, UK.

Doug Beube is a mixed-media artist working across numerous disciplines, including bookwork, collage, installation, sculpture, and photography. He holds a BFA from York University in Toronto, ON, and an MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. He lectures and exhibits internationally and is the subject of the monograph Doug Beube: Breaking the Codex (2011). Beube received a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship in 2016 and served as curator of the Allan Chasanoff Bookwork Collection from 1993 to 2014, culminating in an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT. His work has been exhibited internationally – in China, New Zealand, and across Europe – and he exhibits regularly throughout the United States. A solo retrospective of his artwork, curated by Buzz Spector, will open in April 2027 at Koffler Arts in Toronto. Doug has lived in Brooklyn, NY, since 1985.

Lyndal Thorne is an arts administrator with a passion for grassroots arts activity and coordinator of the biennial Paper on Skin Wearable Art Competition, which launched in Burnie, Tasmania in 2012. She is also President of stARTs North-West (formerly Burnie Arts Council Inc) and recently retired as the chair of Slipstream Circus after three years tenure in the role. During 2024 she undertook a 12-month role as Regional Community Engagement Officer for RANT Arts (a peak regional arts advocacy body based in Northern Tasmania).