Hand-beaten Bark Paper & Natural Dyes with Lisa Miles
Thursday, June 12 · 6:30 - 7:30 pm ET
Deepening her connection with the natural world, papermaker and book artist Lisa Miles creates hand-beaten bark paperworks using bast fibers and natural dyes. Her process transforms raw materials into undulating, abstract landscapes where image and paper merge seamlessly. Each piece is crafted by "drawing" with plant-dyed fibers on a wood board, a process done upside down and backwards, then hand-beaten with a volcanic stone. The final image only reveals itself after the sheet dries. Striving to localize her practice further, she has been cultivating a fiber and dye garden at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is working towards embedding the spirit of place into each piece, while making offerings to desert pollinators and honoring the slow, meditative journey from seed to sheet.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lisa Miles is a papermaker and book artist who creates one-of-a-kind, hand-beaten bark paperworks. Originally from New England, Miles is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book, a BFA in Graphic Design from the New England School of Art & Design, and an AA in Printmaking from the Santa Fe Community College. In 2016, she researched papel amate in Mexico, with support from a University of Iowa Stanley Graduate Award for International Research. In 2017–2018, she received a Fulbright Arts Research Grant for her project, “Bark Paper, Plant Dyes, and Book Arts in Indonesia,” where she studied daluang bark paper in Java and fuya barkcloth in Sulawesi. In 2018, Miles was awarded the Holle Award for Excellence in Book Arts from the University of Alabama. Her work is held in public and private collections, including the British Library, Fisher Fine Arts Materials Library, and University of Denver Special Collections, among others.