By Heidi Trautmann

It was an absolute pleasure to visit the new Dépendence of ARUCAD University with space for workrooms for Architecture and Design, for Ceramics and Glassblowing. The new building is at the roundabout down to the new harbor in Kyrenia. The departments on three floors are equipped with all necessary machinery and it was here, that ACPA was invited to hold a workshop on paper making. I spoke to Assist Prof. Dr. Esra Plumer Bardak, the Head of Plastic Arts, Faculty of Arts, ARUCAD, to explain the reasons why she issued the invitation to our association. You will find her response in writing at the end of my review.

On the morning of the first day Ismet Tatar, the President of the Association held a welcoming speech introducing the guests – there were about twenty – to the background history of the association and to their vision and philosophy. See the attached link for a presentation of the association on their website:  https://www.kksdcyprus.com/video-galeri

Inci Kansu, the first paper artist in Cyprus and co-founder of the association in 2015, then gave us a thorough insight to the history of paper, paper making and paper art.

Following the theoretical introduction we were taken to the basement into the Ceramic Department by its head, Mümine Özdemirağ Yağlı;  the tables were already prepared, laid out with the tools for papermaking, containers for the pulp, boards and the scooping frames. 

Note: the professional expression for these frames...scooping frames, wire mesh frames etc. are: 'mould and decle'... but beginners would not understand it at the beginning...

Ok, where to start, most of the guest students were most probably asking themselves. Big containers distributed over the room, stacks of paper, newspapers, differently coloured paper, carton, and the first duty was to  tear the paper  up into small pieces; lots of water on top to soak them. A big blender was used to thresh the paper soup into fine pulp.

The guest students were from all parts of the island, art students, art teachers from different disciplines, and other creative people, they were all excited to learn more about it. Three of the founder members, Ismet Tatar, Inci Kansu and Emel Samioğlu were attending to the guest students and were individually answering questions and assisting in the various processes.

On the second day, the guest students and some more members of our association had come to enjoy the paper making process. You could feel the excitement in the air; in one corner, cartons and pieces of material, felt and boards were being prepared, cut or torn. The further steps were done, i.e. distributing the pulp into the individual containers, then a binder – here wall paper glue – was prepared and added to the pulp. It was explained that you had to feel by hand the saturation of the pulp.

The first wire mesh frame was immersed into the pulp container and some pulp scooped out with the frame in a horizontal position until all the water had run off. Then, with some excitement, the frame was turned over onto a piece of cloth, the water taken off with a piece of sponge, and very carefully the sheet was loosened from the wire mesh until the first sheet was free. Within no time the guest students had all done their turn and the sheets were laid out into the sun to dry.

On the third day the members of the workshop were shown how to create paintings using paper pulp of various colours. Small amounts of pulp were mixed with… for example henna, various liquid art colours and by the means of a bulb syringe brought onto a newly made sheet of paper. There is no end to how to decorate the sheets and many new suggestions came from the very creative guest students of the workshop. They were doing collages with all kind of bits and pieces, dried flowers, pieces of newspaper, skins of vegetables, dried spices, pieces of string, cookie cutters to insert different colours. Fascinating. Some very basic sculpting was tried by means of some ceramic moulds.

In the meantime various samples of students’ dried handmade paper were taken off the underlying cloth and displayed on a line across the room. A display of new ideas….

On the fourth day we were shown the technique of embossing on the newly gained dry sheets with some hard board cutouts, geometric forms, with the help of a press available at the department. That gave a new dimension to paper art for the guest students.  The assisting founding members showed some more possibilities to use the scooped paper for all kind of decorative art creativity.

Visitors from outside came to see what paper art was about. I heard that paper pulp and paper art is being used in the universities’ departments of architecture as well.

It has been a very successful workshop and thanks to facebook it was the news of the day.

If you have more questions, perhaps for arranging a similar workshop for a selected group of interested people then please contact us. Meanwhile you may visit the website of the association…. https://www.kksdcyprus.com/about-acpa

Comment by: 

Assist Prof. Dr. Esra Plumer Bardak

Head of Plastic Arts

Faculty of Arts, ARUCAD

Paper Workshop

ACPA/KKSD at ARUCAD

10-14 September 2018

We are very happy to host the Cyprus Paper Artists’ Association “Making Paper” Workshop as one of the first public workshops organised by ARUCAD.

The Faculty of Arts and ARUCAD at large values creative exchange with local and international art associations, and seeks to build sustainable relationships with organisations who contribute to the learning and growth of artistic media and techniques. Cyprus Paper Artists’ Association (ACPA/KKSD) is a prolific organisation founded by well-known Turkish Cypriot artists who are also active members of the International Association of Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA).

The Department of Plastic Arts’ vision is to maintain an open platform where the local and the international, the traditional and the new can meet and fuse into innovative ways of creative art. The facilities of ARUCAD, including Ceramic, Glass and Carving Workshops, Printmaking, Photography, Video and Animation Studios, Digital Production as well as Painting and Drawing Studios are fully equipped to allow such transdisciplinary experiments and exchange.  

We are very excited to work with such a respectable group of artists from ACPA/KKSD, and hope to carry on this exchange which will continue to include members of local and international organizations, artists-makers, training students, and the wider public alike.