Local Tourism I
Yesterday
We began at the Morgan Conservatory
Gala (The Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory and
Educational Foundation is
an Ohio non-profit art center dedicated to the
preservation of handmade papermaking and the art of the book.
http://morganconservatory.org/).
Who knew this existed in Cleveland?
We followed our GPS to a tiny
residential street of old early 20th Century houses and abandoned
looking factories in the middle of what generally feels like no-man's
land - the area of Cleveland between the elegant downtown and the
university area which with the 60 year decline of the city went from
housing the Rockefellers and their ilk to becoming a sorry example of
urban strip-mining.
And there it was - a renovated brick
"repurposed" industrial building peeking out on the street.
We entered through a metal door that looked like a locked emergency
exit only - of course, this was the backdoor, but our GPS was
following the street address - and entered a den of delights! Paper
lanterns, really good live jazz music, elegant catering with abundant
heaps of tasties, walls covered in really interesting prints by local
paper artists, wonderful antique wooden paper storage armoires taller
than me. 20,000 square feet of studio space hung with mainly prints
but also paper chains hung from rafters and sculptural works of paper
in the odd niche. Machinery of mysterious steampunk vintage - presses
and binderies and medieval looking equipment that does who-knows-what
but I sure would like to find out!
book bindery - I plan on taking the next class offering in this!
The front door, when we got there, was
breathtaking. A huge open courtyard with views of the Cleveland
skyline and an enormous garden with a labyrinthine stone walkway. I
didn't recognize all the plantings but I did identify bamboo, and
many Kozo plants from which the conservatory makes its own signature
handmade papers through an elaborate process of steaming and scraping
the bark, reducing and beating it, and then placed in big vats and
pulled into paper.
the garden
making paper
We bid in the Silent Auction on several
works (had to leave for Part II of the evening so couldn't nurse our
bids until the end) and maybe there will be a call on Monday and some
new piece of art will find its way into our home. I did pick up a
little handmade journal whose cover was a collage of colors that
struck me as carnivalesque, and I will use it as my travelog for my
upcoming weekend trip to Rio.
But whether I walked away with a new
print or not, I certainly walked away full of the romance of paper
making and book binding and I now want to devote the rest of my life
to making paper and binding little books that I can fill with
whimsical musings and botanical drawings. Perhaps in my next life?
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