Susan Gosin

In this episode, Sue Gosin discusses her childhood in a commercial papermaking family and her desire to get away from paper. But she saw paper in a new light during her college years at the university of Madison and shortly afterwards moved to NYC to start a paper studio in a loft in Soho in 1976. She tells the story of how the mill almost fell through the floor when they first turned on the Hollander beater and how she met the painter Howard Hodgkin when he walked into her bathroom. We talk about how young the field of hand papermaking was when she started and how she had to find rags in the garment district, research chemicals to come up with the proper pigments for coloring pulp and commissioned a press that looked like a tinker toy compared to the other equipment in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Sue’s journey ends with a glimpse of the show she is currently co-curating with Mina Takahashi at the International Print Center New York, which will tell the story of how hand papermaking has been revolutionized from a craft into an art form. Continue reading Susan Gosin