Paper Legends: Open House with Paul Wong

TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2024 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Join us in the studio for an artist talk with Paul Wong, trailblazing papermaker and Dieu Donné Artistic Director Emeritus. With an artistic practice spanning papermaking, book arts, installation, and more, Paul layers materials and techniques to reinterpret decorative and ritual traditions and his Chinese heritage.

Over the course of his tenure as an artistic collaborator at Dieu Donné, Paul innovated and reinvented many of the core creative papermaking techniques that artists continue to experiment with in our studios today. Join us to learn more about Paul’s artistic practice as both an independent artist and as a master collaborator through a deep dive into his archive and slides.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Paul Wong was the Artistic Director at Dieu Donné from 1978 to 2017, guiding and assisting over 1,000 artists and collaborating one-on-one with 400 artists such as Lesley Dill, Jim Hodges, and Do Ho Suh, among many others. In recognition of his work as an individual artist, Paul has been the recipient of many awards including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, among others. He uses the papermaking process that he developed at Dieu Donné in his own work to create major installations and works in paper for exhibitions at institutions such as the Plains Museum, Fargo, and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York.

Open House: Kelly Taylor Mitchell

AUGUST 3, 2023 | 6:00 - 7:30 PM

Join us on Thursday, August 3 for an Open House featuring Kelly Taylor Mitchell. Kelly’s multidisciplinary practice centers oral history and ancestral memory, real and imagined, woven into the fabric of the Africana Diaspora. Her work is deeply invested in labor-intensive making, slowness, and home-spun passed down processes. Combining printmaking, papermaking, performance, book arts, and textiles, her current work stems from ancestral origin points in the American South, specifically The Great Dismal Swamp (NC / VA), Mitchell Place (Garysburg, NC), Nansemond and Weapemeoc land, and Gee's Bend (Boykin, AL), Muscogee land.

About the Artist
Kelly Taylor Mitchell is an artist and educator based in Atlanta, GA. Kelly has completed residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop and Atlanta Contemporary. Kelly has completed fellowships with The Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia (Working Artist Project 2020-2021), The American Academy in Rome (Spelman College Affiliate Fellowship 2022), and The SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellowship (2021-2022). She is a 2022 Atlanta Artadia Awardee. Her work is exhibited nationally and can be found in collections such as the Harvard Fine Arts Library, Bowdoin Special Collections, Smith College Special Collections, Walker Art Center Library, among others. Recent solo shows include Reunion at The Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Preaching to the Choir at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, and Kin, Spirit, Seed at Westobou. Kelly has taught workshops at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and Women's Studio Workshop. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College and a Midtown Heart of the Arts Artist in Residence (Atlanta, GA).

Kelly Taylor Mitchell is teaching a class at Dieu Donné as part of the Summer Paper Institute from August 4 - 6. Learn more here.

Website | Instagram

About the Artist
Ann Marie Kennedy is an artist and papermaker who creates works of paper, prints and installations out of her studio in Raleigh, NC at Anchorlight Studios. She is an Associate Professor and Program Director of the AFA in Visual Arts at Wake Tech Community College. In 2001-4, she was a resident artist at Penland School of Crafts and is a frequent workshop instructor in hand papermaking. She has also been an artist in residence at Headlands (CA), Morgan Conservatory (OH), and Women’s Studio Workshop (NY). Awards include: North Carolina Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award (2004-5), United Arts Council Regional Project Grants (2007, 2016). Ann Marie’s artwork involves the use of natural materials and fibers to create narratives about place and landscape. Her installations, prints, and works of paper have been exhibited both nationally and regionally in venues including: the Cameron Art Museum (NC), Gregg Museum (NC), Asheville Art Museum (NC), Cantor Art Gallery (MA), Women’s Studio (NY), Waterworks Visual Art Center (NC) and Horace Williams House (NC) and her artists’ books and editions are in many permanent collections, including Yale University, Bucknell University, University of Iowa, and Library of Congress.

Ann Marie Kennedy is teaching a class at Dieu Donné as part of the Summer Paper Institute from June 9 - 11. Learn more here.

Website | Instagram

Join us on Wednesday, May 10th from 6:00 - 7:30 pm for an Open House featuring artist and curator Melissa Joseph, 2021 Dieu Donné Workspace Resident. Every Open House includes a tour of the Dieu Donné studio and an artist talk. In addition to discussing her own artworks and experience in handmade paper, Melissa will present a selection of rarely-exhibited works from the Dieu Donné archive, including by artists such as Melvin Edwards, Arlene Shechet, Mary Temple, and more.

Curatorial statement:

I grew up 10 miles south of a paper mill in Pennsylvania, and anytime the wind blew in our direction we were reminded of it. The invisible scent made the paper present to us on a regular basis. The works I selected to share from the archive continue this investigation of trace in all its interpretations. Presence through absence, residue left behind, outlines, copies and searching. Paper has many purposes, but I am interested in its ability to record time in a hyper specific way, as an event horizon with cones of influence extending in both directions.

About the Curator/Artist:
Melissa Joseph, 2021 Dieu Donné Workspace Resident, is interested in connecting people through collective memory and shared experiences. Her work addresses themes of diaspora, family histories and the politics of how we occupy spaces. Her work has been shown at the Delaware Contemporary, Woodmere Art Museum, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Jeffrey Deitch Projects, Utah MoCA, MoCA Arlington and List Gallery at Swarthmore College. She’s been featured in New American Paintings, CNN, Architectural Digest (US and India) and Le Monde. She participated in residencies at the Center // Substructured Loss (Berlin), the Growlery (SF), the Textile Arts Center (NY) BRIC (NY), Fountainhead Arts (FL), Museum of Arts and Design (NY), and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program (NY).

Website | Instagram

Open House: Jaz Graf

APRIL 17, 2023 | 6:00 - 7:30 pm

Our first Open House of 2023 featured Jaz Graf, current West Bay View Foundation Fellow. Every Open House also includes a tour of the Dieu Donné facilities.

Jaz’s work delves through the meaning of familial roots, reimagining humanity’s relationship to earth. She ruminates on our connection to place, the location of identity, and the paradox of presence. Influenced by notions of the ‘eastern’ sacred and ‘western’ sublime, Jaz’s recent work juxtaposes synthetic and raw materials, the virtual gaze with organic imprints, and satellite imagery with dust.

About the Artist
Jaz Graf is a recipient of the Newark Creative Catalyst Grant, Salzberg Book Arts Residency and a Civil Society Institute Fellowship, among others. Graf exhibits locally and internationally, was 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 AM New York News, World Literature Today and on PBS (NJTV News) television program. Graf's works are in the collections of the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, Princeton University Library and Newark Public Library.

She has served on the Exhibitions Committee of the North American Hand Papermakers, as Vice President of Manhattan Graphics Center, NYC and as a Board Member of ProArts Hudson County. Graf holds a Master of Arts degree in Studio Art Printmaking from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from the University of Iowa. She will be teaching a papermaking workshop at Penland School of Craft this summer from June 4 - 16.

Website | Instagram