Interview with Pati Scobey

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Interview #1854 SCOBEY, PATI SCOBEY, PATI (1954) Book Artist At UW: 1981-1984 Interviewed: 2019 Interviewer: Sarah Lange Index by: Sarah Lange Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen Length: 163 minutes (2 sessions) First Interview Session (March 21, 2019) Digital File 00:00:01 SL: Today is Thursday, March 21, 2019. I'm Sarah Lange with the oral history program at UW Madison. I'm talking with Pati Scobey, book artist, printmaker, and UW alum. Pati is speaking from just outside of Concord, Michigan, and I'm at the University Archives in Steenbock Library. Pati, would you start out maybe by telling us a little bit about your early life, your family and where you grew up? PS: Sure. I'm from a small family. I had one sister four years older than I am. My father was in the air force, so we traveled quite a bit. And my parents were both from the Midwest, my mother from south central Missouri, and my father from Tennessee. So being in the air force, Missouri, in particular, became kind of a base for us when we weren't away out of the country. Which we weren't out of the country too much. But between the ages of ten and 12, we lived in the Philippines. And I have many memories from that time, because our parents took us on trips, both in the Philippines, up to the mountains, and remote locations, as well as to other countries, like Thailand, where I remember seeing statues of the Buddha there. And when we left the Philippines, the air force had a deal with an ocean liner company. And they sent us back on an ocean liner, so we spent 21 days crossing the Pacific Ocean. But in contrast to this air force life, I spent quite a bit of time on my mother's parents' small farm. And I had many relatives that lived in that area. My grandparents lived a very simple life and grew their own food. They knew how to make and fix things. My grandmother made her own clothes as well as quilts and rugs. My mother was an excellent seamstress as well, and taught my sister and me to sew our clothes. She held us up to high standards. If it wasn't perfect, we had to do a redo. And I've often thought learning to sew well and construct clothes was good training for my work in making books. I don't remember going to museums when I was quite young, or really being very aware of art until the third grade. My teacher hung posters of famous artwork up in our classroom. The one I remember being fascinated by was Van Gogh's Starry Night. And when I was young, my mother took some painting classes. And in those classes, the instructor, it was like at a community center on the air force base. But the instructor would have a book and you would copy from the book. But she was quite skilled. Later, when I was around 13, she enrolled me in a class at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, that was taught by an artist named Matthew Monks. The class was watercolor, but Matthew taught in a very experimental and inventive way. He took us outside to paint. He took us around the museum. One of my memories is of a room which contained the cleaning equipment for the custodial staff. So we were making watercolors of the vacuum cleaners and the tubes and that sort of thing. I took with him for several years. He was very enthusiastic and encouraging. I hadn't really thought I was good at art before that. But because of him, I took advantage of art classes in high school. By the time I applied to college, I knew I wanted to study art. SL: And Pati, where did you go to high school? 00:04:21 PS: I went to three high schools because of my father was just retiring from the 00:01:00 air force. So I went to a high school in Belton, Missouri. And then he was doing a little training in Osawatomie, Kansas. I went to that high school for about a year. And then he did more training outside of Kansas City and I went to a Shawnee mission school. So I went from a very small school in Osawatomie my junior year to a very large city school outside of Kansas City. SL: What was that like, switching schools often while you were, well, in high school, going to three different high schools? PS: It was hard in high school, because you're continually leaving your friends. Of course, your friends are so important in high school. The last high school I went to had a lot of art classes, so that was nice for me. But since I was tired of switching schools, I graduated early. I had all my credits and graduated early. So I wasn't that pleased about moving every year. (laughs) SL: What kinds of art classes did you take in high school? PS: Well, in Osawatomie, I took I think just the regular art class. But I liked the 00:02:00 teacher quite well. And she ended up driving us, myself and I think she had twin daughters, to the Nelson museum to take those classes with Mr. Monks. And at the Shawnee mission school, I had classes like a class in textiles, a class in jewelry making and maybe a design class. Or drawing and design. But they were more specific classes there. And it was there that we took a bus one Saturday to the University of Kansas to look at the art department. And that's how I became acquainted with what was offered at University of Kansas for art students. SL: Could you talk a little bit more about that trip? PS: I don't know that I can too much. SL: That's okay. PS: Other than, yeah, (laughs) it's been so long ago. I just don't remember. Other than it being big, you know, a big department with, and lively and a lot going on. SL: Well what about your experience there, then? Getting your BFA in painting at the University of Kansas. PS: Well, that was a good experience. When I began, I took a freshman curriculum which all freshman art 00:03:00 majors took for one year, which was 2 and 3D design courses, drawing courses and art history courses. Until my senior year, the majority of my classes were in painting and drawing. There were quite a number of painting professors. And when I started, they were all men. One woman was hired while I was a student. I remember being a freshman and the seniors coming into our drawing class with a petition to hire a woman. So I signed it. And they went through with hiring a woman, who spent her career there, I believe. So I ended up working with at least seven of the drawing and painting professors. My senior year, I took lithography both semesters with Mike Simms. I really loved drawing on the stones and the printing process, and I knew I wanted to continue printing. SL: Okay. And then, just kind of setting this in time, you finished there in about 1976. Is that right? PS: That's right. I did. When I graduated, I traveled with a friend and fellow art major, Jean LeCluyse. We left Kansas and headed for Alaska via the west coast. We had 00:04:00 friends to stay with along the way. And we ended up on Kodiak Island and we worked in the canneries there. 00:09:27 SL: Oh, interesting. PS: So we got to Kodiak in, I think, August. And we left in October on the last ferry out before the winter. So I was there with Jean. And then came back and ended up going to Germany where my sister was living. And I stayed there for a while. And we traveled around quite a bit visiting Italy and Holland. Lots of museums. SL: And were you doing any art making while you were traveling? PS: I did do some. Jean and I both would sketch. But I got really involved in keeping a notebook, which was mostly just to record where we were, that sort of thing. But we did both sketch and draw. In Germany, since I was living at my sister's house, I was set up to do, I think I was doing some watercolor sketches then. SL: And how long did you stay in Germany? PS: I think I was there about three months. SL: Okay. And then when did you decide to apply to UW Madison for your MFA? PS: I decided after Germany. I returned to Lawrence. And there I was working for a while as a technical illustrator for pharmaceutical chemistry at KU. I could use the litho shop on Kansas. Mike Simms was still teaching, and I think I registered with him for a credit or something. And during that time, I 00:05:00 met Tim Moore, who was studying sculpture at KU. He works with wood. We ended up getting married and we moved to Minnesota. While I was living there, I bought a combination etching and litho press. I was working at a restaurant. And decided to apply to grad school in printmaking. So that would be 1979 or '80. SL: And where else did you apply? Did you apply at other programs? 00:12:16 PS: I did. I had always heard about the UW program being excellent. But the woman who took the litho job at KU after Mike recommended to me that I apply to UW and four other schools. So I applied to five. And all of these schools were in cities where it seemed possible Tim could find work while I was a student. In early 1981, I visited Madison. Books by Walter Hamady students were on display in the hallway. Immediately when I saw those books, I knew I wanted to go to graduate school there. At that time I was working in series and my work was narrative. I had been giving my prints very long titles. And books seemed perfect to me. So because of that, Madison became my top choice, even though I didn't know very much about the professors. My ideas were just based on the reputation that I'd always heard about and then that visit where I was so taken by the work in the hallway. SL: Did you meet any of the instructors or 00:06:00 students while you were visiting Madison? PS: I did meet with one instructor. I went to the art office. And I think that maybe it just wasn't the right day for some instructors, or else they were at a meeting or something. But the silk screen instructor, Dean Meeker, was there. So I met with him. And I had my portfolio with me, and he looked over my work. So we had a chat. And I might have talked to a couple of students in the hallway, too. I was there, I had come over with a friend from Minnesota. But I didn't ever end up taking any classes from Dean Meeker. SL: Okay. Well when you did end up getting the acceptance and coming to Madison, I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about what you thought of Madison when you finally were here to be in the program? PS: I loved Madison. Through friends, we found a small house to rent on Willy Street, near Dickinson Street. It was right next to Ace Hardware. It's not there anymore. It's a little garden center now, if you know that area. SL: Yeah, I do. PS: Yeah. So I loved 00:07:00 being able to walk to the co-op or restaurants. And also I walked or biked from home to school. And you know, living between the lakes was really great. And discovering Native American mounds in some of the parks around was, you know, just fun to come across that sort of thing. SL: And what about some of the students in your cohort? Who was there at the time that you were in the program? 00:15:48 PS: Well, Kathy Kuehn and Ruth Lingen, Walter Tisdale, Bonnie Stahlecker were there. In printmaking, Gayle Hachen and Catherine Wild, Tom Hancock, Art Werger. Some of those people didn't really cross over into the book world. But yeah, I was sort of in both worlds from the beginning of the book shop and the intaglio shop in particular. SL: And what were your impressions of the art department, and I guess those two departments within departments that you were participating in? PS: I began in the summer of 1981. And I just happened to begin by taking a beginning etching with Warrington Colescott and a class with Walter Hamady. It was a quiet time to begin. And that was nice for me. Since my background was primarily in painting, I felt I had a tremendous amount to learn. I did meet a few students that summer. Stephanie Newman, who worked in Walter's print shop, kind of sought me out because I was new. And then when the fall semester started, it all felt very lively. I also felt, I was impressed with the camaraderie and 00:08:00 the atmosphere of collaboration as well as the generosity of my fellow students. I was impressed because many of them had extensive backgrounds in printmaking already. I was 27 when I started. I thought I would be old. And actually, I wasn't at all old to be starting grad school. (laughs) Most people were about my age. Some were in their forties. And just a couple of people seemed to come right out of undergrad school. I was right there in the middle. But I was impressed by how many students there were in printmaking, and by how many print shops there were and print instructors, and the great equipment. SL: And Pati, do you recall which class you took with Walter over the summer when you started? PS: It was called Print Illustration. I don't remember him ever teaching it again. Maybe it was an experiment, I'm not sure. But we talked about books and illustration and printing methods. SL: Okay. And then what were some of the other courses and instructors that you ended up studying with? PS: I studied with Warrington and Walter almost every semester. I studied with Ray Gloeckler several semesters. Fran Meyers was a sabbatical replacement for Warrington, and I studied for her. Joe Wilfer was for Walter. I 00:09:00 studied with him. Then I took independent study with Susanne Slavick, who was in the painting and drawing department, and did drawings with her. I also took from Pat Fennell, who was in the painting and drawing department. And I think I took a seminar from her. SL: How did you feel the painting courses were compared to your experience at the University of Kansas? PS: Well, it was an independent study. SL: Oh, okay. Got it. PS: Susanne and I were meeting just in my studio and talking about my work. And with Pat, I was trying to remember. I sort of think it was like a seminar on professional development. And we each gave talks about our work. So that was good. And we might have critiqued, had work up and critiqued work, something like that. And I could be a little wrong in my memory of that class. But I think I was interested in working with women. And they were willing to work with me. SL: And you were an assistant for Warrington Colescott, too. Is that right? 00:21:25 PS: Yes. Yeah. For a year. Warrington and Walter had a project grant to make a book titled Since Man Began to Eat Himself. I drove out to Warrington's home once a 00:10:00 week to print. And he was great to work with. I loved it. It was an honor to be with him. And Fran would join us at lunchtime. We always had delicious food and lively conversation. And he was just a very gracious individual. SL: And can you talk a little bit about the book that you were working on? PS: Sure. Warrington made etchings for the book. And there are a number of authors. There are two stories, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Bernard. And four poems--Allen Ginsburg, Toby Olson, Jerome Rothenberg and Joel Oppenheimer. And so we were printing with Warrington, we were printing the etchings. And some of them are a little, his illustrations are a little, they depict kind of lusty people. (laughter) And he had a great sense of humor. He would tell me to not look at what I was doing while I was working on it. (laughs) So we worked on that, I think, for about a year. And then Walter took the, we did the etchings first. And then Walter printed the type after that. SL: And what was it like working with Walter? PS: Well, Walter would really come out at the end of the day to check on our progress, sometimes. Definitely not every time. I would think he only worked, he only came out a few times. And I think the chancellor might have 00:11:00 come out once, too. That might have been Art Hove? Maybe. I'm a little fuzzy on that. Yeah. So it would be a more social event. You know, and they would come out. We would be done printing for the day. So Walter was really leaving the etching up to Warrington with me assisting him. SL: Okay. And what was he like in class? PS: Well, in class he was a big storyteller. And often quite enthusiastic. I found I could get a lot of instruction from him if I, I would sketch out what I had done when I was working on my own, like my lock-up in the Vandercook, and when I was a beginning type student. And I would bring my sketch in to see what I had done wrong. And he would tell me right away. And I think he kind of got a kick out of my crazy lock-ups. (laughs) I needed to learn more about that. And oftentimes I would put my work up in an empty drawing room and take 00:12:00 him in there and have him look at what I was working on so that I could get some feedback from him. He was very supportive of both my work and, for all my work, I would say, and type and books as well as the prints and the drawings that I was making. Even though my work, I didn't become a typographer that's able to set long pieces of writing. But he respected that. He also asked me to illustrate a book, which I felt like was quite an honor and indicated to me that I was taken seriously. It was a poem by Joel Oppenheimer. SL: And what was the title of that book? 00:26:35 PS: That is Notes toward the Definition of David. I made a simple woodcut that's printed in black. SL: And before we kind of focus more on some of your own books, is there anything that you want to add about this time, about studying at the UW? PS: I neglected to mention I did take the history of books and printing with Valmai Fenster, that was taught through the library school. And she was a wonderful teacher and it sort of sparked my interest, which has continued, in the history of books. And one semester on Saturdays I took bookbinding with Jim 00:13:00 Dast at his home. I think Jim served a very important function for us that wanted to make books in terms of teaching us step by step. I believe he made efforts to teach in a way that the art students could use. SL: Do you remember who was in your bookbinding class with Jim? I mean, the class that he taught in his house? PS: It was a mix. I remember an undergraduate, Amy Unger. And Beth Grabowski was there. There were just a handful of us. The other class that I should mention, my second year I participated in the seminar Walter led that culminated in the exhibit Breaking the Bindings. SL: Okay, yeah. Could you talk a little bit about your participation in that? PS: Yes. I think that was quite an experience that encouraged me toward continuing in books. We had money from the graduate school to travel. And people traveled where they had connections. I ended up traveling with Ruth Lingen, because we both had some Midwest connections. And we went to Iowa City and we met with Kim Merker, Kay Amert, and Bonnie O'Connell. We went to Vermillion, South Dakota, where Ruth had gone to school. And in Omaha, Nebraska, we met Harry Duncan. We also went to Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas. So we had that trip. And then the process of receiving, 00:14:00 we received some slides. So we looked at book work through the slides. But we encouraged people to send the actual work if they could. So the process of being able to see all the variety of work done across the United States by so any different people was wonderful and eye opening. Also, we were the jurors, so that was interesting. We had to vote. We each had one vote, including Walter, he only had one vote. (laughs) So just that as a group, we had to decide on who was in and who was out. SL: And Pati, can you clarify, when you were going on this trip, was it just to kind of start meeting people and soliciting submissions? 00:30:37 PS: Yes, I think we were, I think in Iowa City, you know, we went to each, Kay Amert's and Kim Merker's print shops, they had separate print shops. And I think we were meeting with them, seeing their situation and telling them about our exhibit, and encouraging people to send work, apply for the exhibit. And I think the other person we met with was the Coffee House Press. I can't think of his name right now. So some of those people did send work, and some didn't. But it was 00:15:00 getting the word out about what we were doing, and looking at their work, in several cases, depending on what they wanted to do, what they had time for. And so some work came in. And then of course it got voted on by the group (laughs) on whether or not it ended up in the exhibit. SL: Were there any particular books that you were advocating for? Do you recall any of the specifics? PS: Yeah, there was one situation where in Lawrence, Kansas, the teacher for intaglio and his wife had made an ambitious book that I liked, and Ruth did as well. So, and that book it seemed like there was a divide. It seemed like, and it lost out. There seemed to be a divide about it for some reason. SL: Well, would you like to talk a little bit about some of your books now? PS: Sure. (clears throat) I'm taking sips of water, because I'm getting a little-- SL: Oh, yeah. Well we can take a break, too, if you need to. PS: What's that? SL: We can take a break anytime that you like, too, so just let me know. PS: Okay. We might need to. But right now, I'm okay. Okay, well-- SL: Would you like to talk--I'm sorry, were you thinking of one in particular? PS: I was just going to start with the first book that I made, which is Beyond Reason. That was in 1982. When I first began, I was very taken with the idea of making everything 00:16:00 myself--the paper, the prints and binding. So that book I had made from woodcuts, a series of woodcuts in Ray's beginning relief printing class. So I had this series of related images I wanted to work into a book. So Kathy Kuehn and Ruth Lingen, who both knew so much more than I did, helped me figure it out. And I printed on some of my own handmade paper and agave paper, and was able to make my first book. Then I continued and was in Walter's beginning type class. And that's where I made Into Unknown Territories. So I was working in Warrington's class and making all the etchings, and incorporating type with those etchings. So that book, I made quite a plan. And I continued to do that for books, making either a pencil drawing plan or a watercolor plan, until I made The Back of Time. And I sort of changed my way of working after 00:17:00 that. And then for this book, Into Unknown Territories, I had been looking at my past. I mentioned that we'd taken an ocean liner back from the Philippines when I was twelve. And when I was 22, I was with Jean on the ferry going to Alaska. I began to see both of those points as transformative points in my life. And I started making work intentionally about journeys and transformation. So I was looking at nautical books to get some imagery there and combining that with other books. I was looking at books of animals in particular. I really liked drawing chameleons and crocodiles and alligators then. The other book that I was looking at was about the Japanese bunraku puppetry. There's a cloaked figure, human figure, all in black, behind the 00:18:00 puppet, controlling the puppet. And I began using that cloaked figure that's kind of cocoon-like in my work quite a bit at that time. I also had looked at pictures of dancers from India doing traditional dances with hand gestures. And I was doing a lot with having those cloaked images that were inspired by the bunraku puppetry have various hand gestures. So I started combining various things with this early work. SL: That's really interesting. You mentioned that you used your own handmade paper in Beyond Reason. When did you start making paper? 00:37:22 PS: I am pretty sure I took paper my first fall there. So that would be fall of 1981. And then I think I continued to use the paper mill most semesters. I might not have been enrolled in it every semester, and not used it for a semester here and there. But in general, I 00:19:00 continued to make paper. SL: Did you make your paper with, I mean, I imagine that it was intended for your books and your prints. What kind of paper were you interested in making? PS: I was interested in making paper to print on. And then using, I mean, mostly used rags. So white or off-white rags for the paper to print images on, and then colored rags to make a cover paper. SL: Okay. So I'm sorry, I kind of interrupted you there. You were talking about journeys and transformation and some of the images in your work. You also use birds, it seems, a lot, in your books. Could you talk a little bit about that choice? PS: Yes. I think I began using birds, well, a combination. I began using them as, thinking of them as a seer, or a messenger and a protector and a guide. And I also did that little book I illustrated for Susi Schneider, where it's A Bird in the Hand. So I had little wood engravings in that book that contained bird images. So it kind of coincided with using it in other work. And then later, I used the bird again, thinking of the bird as a seer or observer. And then even later, in a large-print series, points of view, I 00:20:00 have birds flying through all the prints. And then that project, I can describe in a few minutes, ended up being a big folding screen. There's birds flying under the narrative. And I saw that as a rhythm or a heartbeat. The birds making a rhythm or a heartbeat to accompany the narrative. But I'm not sure when, exactly what--I think actually in my prints, some of my early etchings I was using the bird like sort of sitting on a figure's shoulder as a protector, the idea that the bird was a protector. SL: Okay. Well, Pati, I know that you worked on Mining of the Heart. And I think that was published in 1986. And you also, you had mentioned that Walter Tisdale was in your cohort. I think he printed that one, right? 00:41:01 PS: Yes. Yeah. SL: Could you tell us a little bit about how you guys worked on that book together? PS: Right. I'm trying to locate my note here on that. Here we go. Yeah, Walter was interested in making a visual book. He's such an excellent typographer already. He wanted to explore that more and asked me to collaborate. So he was really the designer, printer, binder and publisher. He came up with the accordion structure, which is based on a structure that Hedi Kyle developed. It's a variation on that. And he made a dummy and determined the sizes, I think. Maybe we determined it together, I don't quite remember, the size that we would work in. And for each 00:21:00 page, I made a watercolor study. And then I did kind of a color separation on tracing paper of the regular blue and black to determine the blocks. Cut a key block for the black run out of cherry. And then the color runs--red, yellow, blue--were cut from linoleum. Walker and I did end up doing some of the printing together. I can't remember if we did all of it or just some of it or what. But he did the constructing of the book. He ended up doing two variations on the binding. One solution has a print going across the cover, and the other one he has a spine piece that slips in, which is closer to Hedi Kyle's original binding that we were inspired by. SL: And I think were you both done with school at that time? Were you, or were you still--I think you had graduated by then, right? PS: Yes. I graduated, I was living in Madison. I graduated in '84. And I moved in '87. So I had a little studio right down from my house on Willy Street. I think it might be a little junk store now. (laughter) It was a little storefront that was just two doors down, I think, that I worked in. That's where I was making my cuts. I had 00:22:00 my press there. I had stored my press while I was a student, and got it back from my parents' basement. So I was set up there to print. And Walter may have still been in school, because we used one of the presses in the letterpress shop, the Vandercook 2019. And so I suspect he was still taking some credits at that time. SL: And I'm curious. So he came up with kind of the structure. How did you work out the content? Like did he see something of yours that he kind of asked you to do more of? Or how did you decide that? PS: Well, he was familiar with my work in general, yeah. So he knew my work. And he didn't ask me to come up with anything specific. I think it was just to be woodcuts, and all printed on the Vandercook. But in terms of 00:23:00 the imagery, he didn't give me any restrictions or guidance. (laughs) So it was, from my point of view, it was quite a gift to have this expert printer offer to work with me on this book. SL: Mm hmm. Is there anything else that you want to add about either that book or maybe any works around that time? 00:45:33 PS: Well, I was going to talk a little bit about the imagery. I was looking at a book of Ethiopian magic scrolls-- SL: Oh, okay. PS: --at the time. And there are these diamond-faced images, faces within a diamond shape that repeat throughout the book. And those were inspired by the Ethiopian magic scrolls. And again here I'm using the birds as a messenger and protector and guide. And then there's one figure that I use, I might have come up with it for this book. It has a bird on its shoulder and I am thinking of it as a fire carrier. I had been reading how some cultures would keep a fire alive for many generations, and have a person designated to be the fire carrier. The idea fascinated me. So at that time I was 00:24:00 using a fire carrier character in my work. I also had had my son, my first child, in 1983. So I ultimately think about this book as being about love and the experience of being a new parent and having a new person in my life to love. SL: And Pati, this book is very colorful, too. And a lot of your books are, have this vivid color. Could you talk maybe a little bit about how you developed your sense of color? PS: Well in this particular book, Walter was really, I'd forgotten this until you asked. He was really the one who asked that we do like a regular blue black printing. And that's, and like watercolor, I'm not sure if he asked it before I made the watercolors, or if he saw my watercolors and he just thought that would be a good way to go. But I think that my color sense maybe originated even with that early class with Mr. Monks in 00:25:00 Kansas City at the Nelson. He would bring these big sheets of paper from his, he was an art director at a lithography company, printing company. Like commercial lithography. So he had access to these huge sheets of paper. He'd bring that, and he'd bring some watercolors, but he'd also bring food coloring. And we'd paint with food coloring sometimes. SL: Oh, interesting. PS: So that may be a connection there with that color sensibility. SL: Thank you. That's really interesting. I wouldn't have thought to use food coloring (laughter) PS: Yeah. SL: What about, is there another book that you'd like to talk about in particular? Anything that you want to discuss now? 00:49:04 PS: We could talk briefly maybe about Internal Change, number one. That one, the story is just kind of humorous because I had been real 00:26:00 frustrated with my work I was making. I was out of grad school and I wanted to change. So since my right hand wasn't drawing very well, I'm right-handed, I decided to make a drawing with my left hand. And so I made a dummy for a book all with my left hand. And then I ended up submitting it for a grant at the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. And I got the grant. So I thought oh, no, I drew this with my left hand. Now what will I do? (laughter) But by that time, my instructor, Mike Simms, from undergrad, wasn't teaching but had his own litho shop to print work for other people, called the Lawrence Lithography Workshop. So I used my grant money to print with Mike. And I did actually for the book, I stayed true to my dummy, but I used my right hand for all the drawings. And again I did the color separation like I had done with Mining of the Heart, and separated the colors out on tracing paper and then translated, used that as a guide to draw on the stones and the plates. But Mike did the printing onto my handmade paper. And I did the constructing for that book.So it was great to be able to return to Lawrence for a little bit and work with my first litho teacher. SL: Yeah. I bet that was really nice. So that was finished in 1988, is that right? PS: Right. In 1988. So I got that grant. And I also got 00:27:00 a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts to do a series of intaglio prints two feet by three feet, which I titled points of view. So I had this series of ten prints. Walter Tisdale introduced me to Dan Kelm with the idea that Dan might figure out how to present that series. Dan came up with a solution that if six feet tall and 20 feet long, it can be displayed in a variety of ways: an accordion fold, a wave form or a circle. I've almost always showed it as a circle. For the viewer, it's as though they are walking into and becoming enveloped by the narrative. So my original prints are on the top of these panels. And so Dan's solution, I had to make more prints. So I have a repeating and connecting image on the bottom that I was saying earlier is birds to accompany the narrative above as a heartbeat. And then on the outside--so the inside of the screen is very light. And the outside is quite dark. And those 00:28:00 prints are, they're the bird prints, again, printed in a different way on the top. They're wiped intaglio and relief, surface rolled black. And all the prints on the inside are white intaglio. So a lot more white of the paper's coming through. And the bottom on the back is boat imagery. Just tiny boats. So again, I'm working with the idea of a journey in this print, or this series, and shifts in physical and psychological perspective. So that was what I was finishing when I started to think about working on The Back of Time. SL: Okay. And then could you tell us a little bit about that book? It has a unique structure, so maybe you could kind of describe the structure first. 00:54:04 PS: Sure. Steve Clay of Granary Books asked me if I wanted to work with him. He said that he would have somebody bind the book that I made, and that he'd been using Dan Kelm. Well that was perfect for me because I had worked with Dan on The Points of View as well. I had taken a workshop with him on the wire edge binding. So as I thought about the book, Steve had told me I could do anything I wanted to, which is really pretty intimidating. (laughter) I guess somebody gives you their confidence and trust. But he 00:29:00 wasn't in a hurry, so I had time to think about it. And I often begin these bigger projects with sitting and thinking with no real goal, but a stack of note paper next to me. So on one of these notes, I wondered, what does the front of time look like? And on another one, what does that back of time look like? And on another I wrote, the structure of change, because nothing is ever still. So once I had made these notes, and I had those thoughts, I had an idea about a title, The Back of Time. And I started having ideas about the structure. For a long time, I wanted to make a book with no beginning and no end. I thought this might be the time to try. So I had the idea that having the wire-etched binding on both sides and being connected to the middle, 00:30:00 and opening up with a crack. I talked to Dan on the phone and we sort of worked the concept, you know, how it would work, on the phone. And he said, "Well, draw me a line and I'll have the crack done with a laser cutter." His only request was, don't make the line real pointy. Otherwise the pages won't turn well. So I went out to the woods and looked at rocks that were cracked, and drew a line that I thought of as a cracking line. I was thinking of my viewer going through the book and it being as thorough they were going through a moment of transformation. And after the book was all done and people saw it, they said, "Oh, I like that profile that you have the book opening with." Well, I had never seen the line as a profile, although I can see it now, what my viewer sees. (laughs) I had just seen the crack as a crack. So it's always instructive, what your viewers will tell you they see. It changes the way you see things. So that's how the structure evolved. SL: And--yeah? PS: No, go ahead. SL: I was just curious, how did you connect with Steve at Granary Books? PS: Well, that was through Wisconsin. Because Steve was in Minnesota when I was in Wisconsin. And Walter Hamady knew 00:31:00 him, as well as Kathy Kuehn, I'm sure, and Walter Tisdale, already had made books and Steve had sold them for them, I believe. So then I was introduced to Steve through them. And he had sold several books for me. I think he had all the editioned books I had made up until that time. So he had sold quite a few Mining of the Heart books. And he moved to New York about, around the time I moved to Michigan, probably. So I met with him while I was in New York. And that's when he asked me if I--he had started making these books, publishing these books with artists. That's when he asked me if I'd be interested. SL: And did Kathy Kuehn also play a role in The Back of Time? PS: Absolutely. Steve had said he would pay for a printer. And he asked if Kathy Kuehn might be someone I could work with. And actually, she was the main person I could 00:32:00 imagine working with, because she and I printed together as a team on each other's prints when we were in school. And we both liked to get up early and be at the print shop when nobody was there yet. And we would take turns editioning each other's work. So I knew she knew how I worked, and I knew how she worked. So she came out twice and I would say for two to three weeks each time, maybe even four weeks one time. And stayed with us and printed. SL: That brings to mind a question of how long this project took. Because it seems like it's pretty complicated. And you're talking about multiple visits. Do you recall like how long you were working on this book? PS: Three years. 01:00:29 SL: Three years. PS: You're right. Yes. Because there was the printing, so to print, I was surface rolling an etched plate and dropping stencils into it each time. When it comes off the press, it's the dark blue black and white. Then the next step was to water color and do the pen and ink work. Then the little shapes that are attached, I call them shard shapes, those are separate plates. So those were all printed and cut and attached with a dry mount tool. So then at that point, once the watercolor and drawing was done, pages got sent out to Dan to construct. So I would send groups of pages out at a time. Figuring the book out was a lot of fun, and I love to print, so that was fun. And the drawing, I had been worried, like oh, what if I can't do the drawing for 25 copies? But it actually, it 00:33:00 was very relaxing. So each step was a different kind of work. But just going to the studio and knowing I was going to draw on more pages was just pleasurable work for me. I work really slowly, so, and I also was teaching workshops at the time. So it's not as though I was only working on this book the whole time. And I have two kids. So my kids were young. My son was born in 1983, and my daughter in '89. So yeah, when I did Internal Change #1, when I was doing that drawing, I was pregnant with her. SL: And Pati, where were you teaching workshops? Were you teaching them in kind of in your local area, or elsewhere? PS: Well, in Madison before I moved, I had started working as an artist in residence in the schools a bit. So I came here to Michigan with that background. And I got lined up through a program that was countywide, I think. The office was in Battle Creek, I think. I can't remember the organization. But they lined me up 00:34:00 with various schools. So I would go for a period of time, depending on what the school had contracted for. A day, or a week. And work with the kids in the school. So this was all ages. And it must have been, I know I went into Dearborn and closer to Detroit a little bit, too. So that might have been through another organization. So these were, we'll say within an hour or two, that when I was working with kids in the school. I had a residency in some of the little towns around here, like semester-long residencies in Albion and a little town called Homer where I might have worked for a year, a semester or a year, depending on the grant. SL: What was it like teaching art to children? 01:04:30 PS: Well I was a guest, so I was special. (laughter) So that was very nice. And I made, at that time, too, in the '80s, late '80s, not as many 00:35:00 people knew about making books. So they were doing this for the first time. I also made paper with them. But making paper was great in that I had 100 percent success rate with happiness. They all loved it, and were all very happy with their paper. It was hard work, though, for me, because of hauling paper pulp in and out. And then I did book making as well as print making with them. I really, working with the kids freed me up to do things even more experimentally than I already had a tendency to work. Just seeing them work. There's a place in Ann Arbor called The Scrap Box that sells scrap from industry. And I think it's probably from the auto industry that I would get these sheets of kind of a foamy material that had adhesive and paper on the back. So 00:36:00 kids could actually cut a shape and take the adhesive off and attach it to a piece of cardboard and then roll it up and print. So it was fun and instructive to watch them work. And then with books, it seems like even in Detroit once I was in a high school, and when I first got there, the students were eyeing me like (bored sigh) who's this? (laughter) But I would see a transformation sometimes where they would be pretty jaded, and then they would make a book and forget to be cool, and get really happy about their book. So that was quite rewarding, too. And the best compliment I ever got was from a little boy who asked me to come out and play at recess. (laughter) He wanted to play with me on the playground. SL: That's very sweet. PS: So I enjoyed working with all the ages. And my opportunities sort of gradually changed to where I was being asked to do more specific workshops on basically the way I work, with adults. So it wasn't really intentional. It was just sort of gradual that I began working with adults 00:37:00 more. SL: And what kind of students come to those workshops? Are they pretty like advanced students already, that they're coming to take a workshop with you? PS: Well most of the workshops that I've taught have had the whole range of students. Like at Haystack you might have an art professor in your class. And Barb Tetenbaum and I team taught at Haystack. And we're like uh, I think the students all know more than we do. (laughter) So they're already very well developed in whatever media they work in. but also younger people with else experience can end up in one of those workshops. I taught for quite a few years in Ann Arbor at a place called Hollander's, which is both a store for paper, selling paper and book making supplies. And they had a school for many years. They took a break from that, and they've reestablished that school. But I taught there fairly regularly. And there I sometimes would have people who had never printed or made a book before in the same class with people who had taken a number of classes with me. So I had to teach, what I taught, I intentionally made accessible no matter what level you were at. So you could still challenge yourself if you had more experience, 00:38:00 but you could be happy if you had no experience. It ended up that a number of students I worked with at Hollander's asked me if they could continue working with me in my studio. So that ended up being quite nice. For about ten years, I think, I had students coming to work with me in the studio. A few of them I worked with maybe 14 years. So I really saw their work develop, and I felt I could really speak to what problems they were working on. They were people with jobs. One was a therapist fulltime and another was an elementary teacher. Those two used to come together. So they were working with me on the weekends. But quite serious about learning and what they made. So that was quite rewarding. SL: Were they working on book projects? Or more prints? 01:10:44 PS: Both. And usually I would try to get an idea of what they wanted to do the day they were coming. But oftentimes, from the time they wrote the email to the time they had arrived, they had changed their mind. (laughter) So we would usually sit down and they would tell me what 00:39:00 they wanted to work on that day and we would just go from there. SL: Okay. This is reminding me, too, that you had at least one class at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee. And I know a lot of the UW students in the art department had a connection to Woodland Pattern. I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that store? PS: Sure. That was a very important part of our lives when we lived in Madison. Going to Woodland Pattern and going to poetry readings there. And getting to know Karl and Anne. Kathy Kuehn and I had a show there at some point. (laughs) In probably the '80s. And then later, in the early 2000s, the first decade sometime, maybe 2005, I went to Milwaukee for a week, I think, and taught some workshops there as part of a grant-funded project that Anne Kingsbury had written a grant for, and I had a show at that time, 00:40:00 too. So, yeah, the connection continues. I just saw Anne and Karl last year at, so they were important people. SL: Okay. Thank you. I'm also curious, you mentioned working with children. Did you teach your own children printmaking and book making? Were they interested in that? PS: Yes, they were. We did quite a bit. My studio is separate from my house. So I had a little spot for them to work. And they both did quite a bit there. My daughter maybe continued doing more than my son. She liked to write a lot. And she would make books and wanted to make whatever book I was learning to make, she'd want to make that, too. And she actually went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and as a freshman started working in Special Collections and worked there for seven years. SL: Oh, wow! PS: Yeah. She's quite a book lover. SL: Is she still working in Special Collections? PS: She's not. Her husband went to library school. And they ended up at UW Platteville. He works in the library there. And she works in the public library in Platteville. SL: Okay. Cool. 01:14:17 PS: Yeah. You're familiar with where that is? It's like 20 minutes from Dubuque, over near the river? SL: Mm hmm. PS: Yeah. And my son 00:41:00 actually ended up in Madison. He works for Epic Systems. SL: Oh, okay. So you still have connection to this area. PS: Very strong connections. Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. I almost thought oh, I should just go over and have the interview with you. But the timing wasn't quite right for me to come over. SL: Oh, yeah. No worries. This is great. Was there anything that you wanted to add kind of either about teaching or we kind of started with, before that we were talking about The Back of Time. Is there anything that you want to touch on either with teaching or the book? PS: Yeah. I had quite a bit more about the book. SL: Yeah, yeah. PS: Since it was such a big project. I'll just start with how I began after I had the idea of the structure and had talked it through with Dan. I just started by following hunches and fake notions. And I didn't even know how I would use them, but I made three large intaglio plates. And two of them ended up being the background plates for the main book and then the wrapper. And then the 00:42:00 third plate was the plate that contained the shards that I cut up and collaged. When I made the background plate for the book, I was just drawing on a plate. Tiny, scribbly, gestural lines that to me represented a vibrational field, sound or music. And for the shard plate, I had referred back to the prints I made for the point of view series and extracted images from there to draw within those shapes. And sometimes wrote text in those shapes. Those shapes were, I drew those from broken pottery. SL: Oh, interesting. PS: Then, once I experimented with rolling these plates up, and I started by dropping stencils in. Torn paper, Mylar and string. And then I worked back into those areas that were left white after I printed them. So that, I could see, was my working 00:43:00 method. And then I began to develop the idea for the actual pages. Just through thumbnail sketches. And printed from those. Before I started on this book, my husband's sister had died unexpectedly. And when that happened, time seemed to change for a while. And that affected, that idea of time changing, and being different than your regular life affected me and led me to this book. I think of it as, that it refers to a moment, a moment of clarity or a glimpse, and an assembling of an image, an accumulation of information and repeated shifting and the cracking of that illusion or image. I also, one of the things I'd been reading was Sacred Geometry by Robert Lawlor. And I had noted, the moment itself of transformation from one state to another, from one quality of being to another, from one form or level of consciousness to another, is always a leap, or jump, an incomprehensible velocity, as it were, outside of time, as when one 00:44:00 cell divides into two. So I came up with the idea of the number of pages, eight pages or seven intervals, thinking about cycles of change, or musical octaves, and the spectrum of light in a lunar month. Then I was thinking of that page in the middle that links the two sides as the heart of the book. So I thought of my viewer as entering the circle on one side, and each time the pages turn, the square gets bigger and the circle gets bigger. So I was thinking of sending my viewer through that circle. And then I pass through the pages and get to the heart of the book. And there's the labyrinth. Then I close the book, turn the book over, and enter the labyrinth. And again, repeat through those phases. And get to the center of the book. And it's the circle. So I also had a little bit of text through the book on that one side where you reach the labyrinth. The text reads "Lost with the poet." And on the other side it reads, "Given secrets." So working on this book, developing the project, both technical shifts occurred in my work, because I was no longer working with making the image all in one 00:45:00 plate or in one block. Just having a big surface and manipulating what the resulting image was with these stencils. So my approach to printing changed. It really became more of a drawing process at the press. And that's when I quit making extensive preliminary drawings. And started printing in a much more spontaneous way. And also, I look back at this book from time to time. And sometimes I have intentionally used things like some of the phrases as titles for projects. Like Under Falling Questions, which became a book, and Broken Time, which became a book, are both on little shard shapes in this book. And now, for quite some time I've been working on an ongoing project that I think of as Lost with the Poets. It's kind of all circling back. SL: Pati, I wonder if you could also talk a little bit about kind of the container, it's not a container, I forgot what word you used, that kind of envelops the book because it opens in both directions? 01:21:59 PS: Right. Well once we made this, Steve's original plan was to make a box, have Jill Jevne make a box for the book, which he did. But because of the cracks on both sides, he was worried about getting it out of the box. So we came up with the idea of making the wrapper. So that was at the end. And then the wrapper could be the title. And the colophon. So I'm pretty sure I made the wrapper last. SL: Okay. PS: Yeah. And then Jill did make nice boxes for the whole thing. SL: Mm hmm. Is there anything else that you 00:46:00 wanted to touch on? PS: I think that's good. SL: Okay. Well I wonder if we could kind of talk a little bit about Hide, which is a very small circular book. And I think it makes for an intimate experience with the reader because of the size. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that developed, and why you chose to make a book the size that you did. PS: Yes. Well, I had made Under Falling Questions, which was, I had editioned that. That was a long-term project. And I had done another book that there's only one copy of, titled X. But it's three feet tall and it's, when you open it all the way, it's two feet by three feet. And it's got two spines with little pamphlets going up and down the spine. So I had done those two big projects. So Hide was kind of an antidote to working on these longer term, bigger projects. So I made an edition of 25 variants. So each book is different, but some things are common throughout the 25. The size. And I was using scraps from these other projects. So the 00:47:00 heavier paper in the book is scraps from X. I think the end sheets are scraps from Under Falling Questions. And then there's some translucent paper that is from just some experimental proofing. The shards in it with the text are ones that I didn't use for The Back of Time. I had seen a tiny circular book that was accordion fold, like a historical book, in an exhibit someplace. And that's when I thought oh, I'd like to make a circular book. And then the fact that it was little was appealing and intimate, as you say. But I don't remember why I decided to do signatures. Maybe because that was the best way to use my scraps and bind it up that way. SL: Did you want to talk about X or Under Falling Questions? PS: I could talk a little bit. Yeah. Under Falling Questions, again, I was thinking of invoking shifting perceptions by assembling those smaller pages with the bigger ones. And by this time, after The Back of Time, I started making linoleum blocks with very simple cuts on them. And was expanding my repertoire of 00:48:00 stencils. So I had this vocabulary of stencils to work with. And I had Katie MacGregor make paper with an eye watermark. So there's an eye-shaped watermark going throughout the whole book. And then the other, the little torn pieces, are paper I made. So this book also, I often am interested in something particular technically when I'm working. So I knew that Katie's paper was super strong, because the Library of Congress chose her paper out of a lot of handmade paper, for its foldability, to be able to fold it back and forth. So I thought well, this paper should work pretty well, because I'll be folding it and folding it backwards for the printing that I had in mind to do. So I was interested in this printing across the gutter, and using printing and using the ghost images that would line up. So after you run your print through once, and get the first inking off, there's still ink on the block. And you can, if you use stencils, you can take those stencils off and there will be ink on the stencils and you can turn them over and print on them. So I wanted to do that, too. So when I make a book, it's like I'm figuring out a puzzle. Which, for me, is a lot of fun. But sometimes I get kind of complicated. And for this book, I did have a flow chart when I editioned so I could remember what goes where. So I did that one. And then X was in response to a themed exhibit that the Racine Art Museum, I think it might have been called the Wustum at that time, used to have invitations to 00:49:00 themed exhibits. And that particular one was on time and geography. So I just made the one big book and I thought of all the pages. You might have seen images of the book in like the catalog that I know the UW has. So on each side there are nine signatures. And when all the pages were closed, so that there would be like 18 pages, the image connects. And then you can turn each one. And when you get all the pages turned, there's a new image. But you can also play with juxtaposition of images. So I was interested in it being big so that the viewer would have to lean across and become bodily involved in moving all the pages. And I was interested in this idea of the sequence of the images changing and matching up sometimes and not matching up other times. And let's see, in planning the book, my notes, I was writing measuring, rhythm, measure the change, measure the distance, the interval, the measurement of life, the weight of time, timetable of a pathway, charting a course, voices coming in like instruments, branching, pathways, sinuous, shifting. It was the time between. It was on the way from point to point connection and reappearance. SL: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. PS: Sure. 01:30:36 SL: 00:50:00 Would you like to talk about Morning? I know that one was published in 2008, and it features letterpress printing on some very thin paper, and relief prints with vivid colors. Maybe you can talk about kind of the impetus for that book? PS: Yes. Oftentimes I have the title first. And the phrase, "I took the morning out of my pocket," just are words that came to me. I wasn't doing anything in particular, but I wrote them down and thought I would use them sometime. And I had the idea of the pages folding out with text hidden for some time as well. So when I started this little book, I had little bits of text, writing, in my notebook that I thought I would use. And I was thinking of voices. So I wanted the text to represent different voices. So there are three voices, the voice that starts and says, I'm trying to turn the 00:51:00 page here, the paper is a Japanese paper that my friend Yumiko brought back from Japan. So I was interested in using the qualities of the thin Japanese paper. And I kind of liked that it became hard to turn. But of course, just now when I was trying to turn a page (laughs), that was a little frustrating. So the book starts out with the morning brings questions. And that line is in the middle of the book. And it ends with the text in the middle of the book that says, "I will swim with you." So I'm thinking of that voice as my voice. And then the next voice, "But who are you?" The questioning voice, "Who are you" and then "Where are you" and searching, that voice is a little higher on the page than the first line. And with each question, it gets higher. And just thinking of that as a questioning voice. And then the text in the folds, "can't tell," "not sure," I'm 00:52:00 thinking of that as my father's voice. My father was sick for a long time with cancer. And then he had strokes toward the end of his life. And although he was still himself in some ways, it seemed like I just wondered, where is the person? It seems like this other person is here now. Where is that other person? How does the brain work? How does the brain provide that? And so I'm thinking of these questions, "Where are you?" and "inside that, says my father", swimming, searching for the box, the box of lost words, words lost, in the sea of sadness. And then, "I will swim with you." So sort of based on my last visits with my father. And also, I was paralleling it to other experiences with friends who were going through 00:53:00 hard times and just becoming really quiet and searching for something. Technically, I'm using the leaf rolling and the stencils again. And, I was using water-based inks this time. I've used oil-based inks a lot in my work, and I've taught a lot with water-based inks because of the ease of teaching with them. So I also wanted to make a book that was using the inks I taught with. SL: And Pati, how did you come up with that idea of having the pages kind of unfold to reveal the text? 01:35:35 PS: I think, when I started making books, I was interested in playing with the page, having it unfold and page lengths, having them short and so like Into Unknown Territories, and of course The Crack and The Back of Time. So it was just something that 00:54:00 actually, yeah, I'm remembering now, the fold, I think I had just made a little fold by accident and liked the way it pulled out, and that gave me the idea. So a lot of times I just come across something that I do unintentionally and then I like it. So I end up using it. And then it became kind of a challenge to figure out how to print it, where I wanted it and how I wanted the text to be placed and the stencils and everything. SL: Well, thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else that you wanted to add about it? PS: I think that's good. SL: Okay. Well, I think that we're ready to wrap up here. I just wanted to ask you kind of your final thoughts, maybe how you think the UW impacted your career? PS: Well it definitely was a pivotal point for me. I went there with the intention of acquiring skills and techniques in both prints and books. And I did that, which I've continued to build on all these years. My instructors made a big impact, I believe, to, maybe by their example, to present yourself 00:55:00 professionally, or how to operate in the professional world. I feel like I left there knowing how to write grants for projects, and teach workshops and that sort of thing. I felt prepared for those things. I felt like excellent work was being made all around me by my fellow students, in addition to my professors. But I think of that as being very high on the list of the good things about going to UW is while I was there, there was cross-pollination with ideas between students, the sharing of techniques, and connections were begun. And those connections have continued through today for me with people I've remained in contact with. Kathy Kuehn, and Tracy Honn and Diane Fine and Walter Tisdale, and Barb Tetenbaum and Bonnie Stahlecker are people I team taught with. And then meeting people through the UW connection like we talked about Woodland Pattern. But also the poet Joe Napora, who Kathy Kuehn and Walter Tisdale and others have printed 00:56:00 his work. He was in Ohio at that time and started coming to Madison regularly. I'm still in contact and see him pretty regularly. So the connections continue to be a big part of my life, and just seem wonderfully endless and intertwining. I think of these other UW grads. Even if I didn't overlap with them while I was a student, but they came before or after me like Diane or Tracy, I think of us all as sharing a common ancestry. SL: Thank you so much, Pati. PS: You're welcome. Thank you for the interview and giving me a chance to do it later. This timing was much better for me than it was last spring when you first emailed. SL: I'm going to stop recording. 01:40:31 End First Interview Session Begin Second Interview Session (April 12, 00:57:00 2019) Digital File SL: Today is Friday, April 12, 2019. I'm Sarah Lange with the oral history program at UW Madison. I'm talking with Pati Scobey, book artist, printmaker, and UW alum. Pati is speaking from just outside Concord, Michigan, and I'm at the University Archives in Steenbock Library. Pati, last time we talked about your time here at the UW, but we didn't get a chance to talk too much about your husband, Tim Moore, and his bookbinding tools that he developed, and how that related to your work. Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about that? PS: Yes. I would like to. My attending UW was pivotal for Tim's life and work, as well as my own, because I worked with Walter Hamady and because of the enthusiastic papermaking and book arts community thriving there. Tim found his niche for his career making paper molds and bookbinding equipment. And he's made an important contribution to the field of book arts. I really don't believe that would have happened, had I attended a different school. I wanted to talk about how I became interested in papermaking. That happened when I was still in Lawrence, Kansas. SL: Okay. PS: Kathy and Howie Clark of Twinrocker came to KU and gave a workshop I attended. I also went to a lecture Tim Barrett gave at KU around that time. So I was 00:58:00 very interested in paper. Like me, Tim, my Tim, Tim Moore, not Tim Barrett, had attended the University of Kansas. As a student there, he was already an accomplished woodworker and majored in sculpture. He finished his degree in the spring of 1979. We got married and then moved to Minnesota that fall. While we were living there, we had the 1978 Dover edition of the 1943 Dard Hunter book, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft. We used the description and illustrations in that book and we set about making a paper mold together. We built the frame and began weaving a surface by hand, but didn't finish it. However, this experience and effort prepared Tim for his later endeavors. I started school, like we talked about before, the 00:59:00 summer of 1981. Right away when I met Walter Hamady, he asked me a lot of questions about myself, as well as questions about Tim. I brought a small framed print with me that day to show Walter. Tim had made the frame, and Walter loved it. SL: And Pati, can you tell us a little bit about the context of this? Was this when you were meeting Walter for a class? Or was this before a class started? PS: I think back in those days, maybe because it was summer session, too, we went into the class and met the instructor and signed up for the class. I think that's why I brought the print with me was I wanted to sign up for the class. My memory's a little fuzzy but I think maybe he was offering papermaking and the print illustration class I described before. But he talked me into the print illustration class because he needed students for that. And at that time, Tim had a job working on a Kohler Foundation restoration project in the village of Valton. That's about an hour and a half northwest of Madison. His job that summer was to work on stabilizing a simple frame building that houses murals painted by Ernest Hüpeden, who was an itinerant painter and worked on these paintings 1897 or eight through '99. These paintings 01:00:00 depict the rites and symbols of the Modern Woodmen of America, who owned the building at that time and asked Hüpeden to make the paintings. That building is called the Painted Forest. SL: Interesting. PS: Yeah. It's currently owned by Edgewood College. And I think might be a little bit of a retreat center for them. So it was the fall of 1981 that I took my first papermaking class with Walter. And by that time, I think Tim had already been out to his house to fix something. Like one day he brought a two-on mold from Britain to class, and asked if I thought Tim would be able to cut it down to make two molds. The two-on mold is a very long and narrow mold that makes two sheets of paper at a time. So Tim did cut this down and created two molds, and made a deckle for the molds. And these were to be used, and were used, by the students in the art department's paper mill. So I think Walter really recognized Tim's attention to detail in woodworking. And I suspect that he felt that paralleled his own attention to detail in working with type. So a little bit later, Kitty Kingston, who was a graduate of UW, decided to set up a paper mill in Madison. Walter suggested that Kitty contact Tim about making molds. Initially Kitty had a kit for a mold that she had Tim put together. Next, she asked him to make a laid mold. Tim began to research molds. He had already been to Appleton, Wisconsin with me on a field trip Walter organized for the paper making students. It was fairly casual back then. Tim 01:01:00 often got invited throughout my graduate days to go on field trips with my classes. And if he was free, he would do it. In Appleton, we toured the Appleton mills, which is a felt making factory; J.J. Plank, which makes dandy rolls; and the Dard Hunter Museum at the Institute of Paper Chemistry. The museum had examples of historic molds that Dard Hunter had collected. SL: Okay. 01:48:08 PS: So in preparation for making Kitty's mold, we returned to the museum in Appleton so Tim could study the construction of the molds there. He also examined the British molds in Walter's collection. Then I'm not sure exactly when Joe Wilfer replaced Walter, but he was an additional resource for Tim, and knew about an important book for Tim to reference that was published in the Netherlands called Paper Mold and Mold Maker. So while Tim 01:02:00 was doing this research on the construction, he couldn't find a source for purchasing backing wire, or a good source for purchasing laid surfaces for molds. SL: Can I interrupt you just for a minute? PS: Sure. SL: For people who don't know what a mold and deckle is, can you like just briefly describe it? PS: Yes. It's a tool for making paper. The mold part has a wooden frame construction with ribs and a wire surface, which is either laid or wove, is attached to it. There are ribs running along between the frame, the edges of the frame, and then the wire surface is sewn to the ribs. The deckle is a frame-like object that goes on the outside of the mold and that holds the paper pulp in while you're making the paper. So then you remove that deckle when you get ready to cooch, or transfer the paper pulp from the mold to a paper making felt. SL: Great. Thank you. PS: So Tim decided to build a loom for weaving these 01:03:00 surfaces that he couldn't find. And as I mentioned when we previously talked, we live next to Ace Hardware on Willy Street. Its owner, Bob Shepherd, was also our landlord. We had an account there, which was very handy while Tim was designing and building the loom. He was able to go to Ace, get parts that might work on the loom, and if they weren't right, he could run back over and switch them out for something else to try. He also had to find wire to make these. And Lee Scott McDonald, who was making molds at that time, was a generous and helpful resource for obtaining wire. At some point, Tim finished the loom and we used the laid surface on it, and was able to make this mold for Kitty. Word about making the mold soon spread. And early on, he 01:04:00 made molds for Jennie Frederick, Peter Thomas and Tim Barrett. At that time, the paper making organization, the Friends of Dard Hunter, which was started in 1975 by Joe Wilfer, met every fall in Appleton. Tim attended a couple of these meetings, and at one gave a presentation about making the molds. And before one of those meetings, we had a group of people traveling through that included Tim Barrett and Paul Robert, Lee Scott McDonald, stopping by our house. And other friends from the Madison paper making group came as well. And we all made pizza together, and then the travelers went on to Appleton that night. Tim and I came up later for the meeting. And this became kind of a pattern throughout our lives, where people that were passing through have stopped by our house and studio to see Tim's studio and work, or my studio and work. And this way, I feel as though we've reinforced each other's connections and work, and friendships have developed enriching our community of people in our fields. So it was in May 1983 that Kathy Clark of Twinrocker, which is in Brookston, Indiana, and her sister Peggy Prentice, were in Madison to see the Breaking the Bindings exhibit. Peggy had a book in the exhibit. And 01:05:00 they had heard about Tim's efforts. I came home from school one day and Kathy and Peggy were there. And I'm pretty sure it was Kathy Kuehn and maybe Walter Tisdale who had brought them over to talk to Tim about molds. It was at that time, Kathy Clark invited us to come visit them in Brookston. She and her husband Howie, who made beaters for paper making, were very generous with their time and offered us valuable suggestions about being self-employed. Peggy, who's Kathy's twin sister, also a paper maker, lived in Brookston at that time. And we were introduced to Barb Tetenbaum there. Even though she went to UW as well, she was an undergrad before I was a graduate student. So I knew about her work, and I'd seen her work in Walter's class. But I hadn't been introduced to her until then. She was there using the 01:06:00 letterpress equipment for about a year or so. I'm not sure if it was quite an internship or what. So since that time, Tim has made many more molds, including a number for Twinrocker. And he's used that first loom for many years. A few years ago, he made some improvements on it and has a new loom now. And at this point, he continues to think about ways to improve molds. And he tries his ideas out on experimental molds. A little bit more than being interested in making molds to sell in the last few years, he's been interested in passing on his knowledge he's accumulated from his research and practice to people who are interested in making their own molds, or molds for other people. So in recent years, we've had several people come visit us for a few days to learn from him. And a couple of these people, Claudine Latron, who lives in France, and Serge Pirard [from Belgium] were already making molds. And then the other, well, James Kleiner, who works at Cave Paper, may be making his own mold. Akemi Martin and Kerri 01:07:00 Cushman also came. And I have overlaps with some of these people. For example, Akemi had taken a workshop with Barb Tetenbaum and me at Penland. And then years later, when I was in Brooklyn, New York, and walked into Pace Prints to see Ruth Lingen, Akemi was there working on a paper piece. So while I was there, she asked about the possibility of coming out to learn how Tim's loom works. And then after a year or so, she did come for a few days to learn from him. So these overlaps have been very interesting as they occur. SL: Pati, when people are coming to learn from Tim, are some of those artists also then working with you on any projects? Has that happened? 01:56:43 PS: That hasn't really happened yet. SL: Okay. PS: Akemi and I did talk about that, because we do have a little paper making setup in the basement of our studio. Yeah. But Akemi and Claudine and James and Carrie are all artists. But usually, most often, people who come to visit me want to see Tim's shop and are very interested, and vice versa. So it kind of reinforces that for each of us. So in terms of passing on the knowledge, Tim's written a couple of 01:08:00 articles for two issues of the Hand Papermaking journal, and has an appendix in Tim Barrett's new book on European hand paper making. SL: Okay. PS: So while I was still a student, Walter had another suggestion for Tim. This time, for book binding. At that time, Walter used a cradle to nest a signature in while punching sewing holes one by one. He proposed to Tim that he design a tool that would make this process easier and more efficient. So Tim came up with a design called a signature punch. It quickly and accurately punches these sewing holes a signature at a time. So instead of nesting the signature in the cradle, you put the signature on top of a row of pins, and then there's a bar to bring down and the pins are pierced all at one time, instead of having to pierce them individually. It also has a little stop so you can nest the signature at that stop every time, so they're exactly the same from signature to 01:09:00 signature. So this has been a very popular tool, and used by many hand book binders for both small and large editions. SL: And Tim also developed some other book binding tools as well, right? PS: He did. He designed a tool that Gary Frost, who was in Iowa City at the time, put him up to called a precision plow. And that machine is for taking off incremental amounts of paper from the edge of a stack of paper or a book. Gary's interest was because he would get these nice art books in that had images across both pages. So across the gutter. But the binding was what they called perfect bound. So all the pages were just glued up at the edge. But then it would fall apart. And Gary wanted to save as much as he could. So the tool he had, he kept wearing out and having to buy new ones. He suggested to Tim to make something that would last. So he designed that tool. And Gary was quite pleased. He sold a few of those, although it's 01:10:00 pretty much a specialty tool. And you have to know how to use it to work on it. Actually, he had me use it. And we called me the Chuck Yeager of the precision plow, because I blew out the bearings on it-- SL: Oh, no! (laughter) PS: Because I was using it so hard. But he knew he had to make an adjustment. (laughs) So I kind of test things out. And I joke that since I have access to all these beautiful tools, that I'm the envy of all the book conservators. So he's also made a variety of finishing presses. And these are presses that were already being made, but he's made them in his own way. And I think because he has that background in sculpture, he brings an aesthetic to his tools that's unique to him. Many times I've had comments from people that, "Oh, this is a piece of sculpture. I'm afraid to use it." (SL laughs) But of course, they shouldn't be. So this work, I think because he's got that background in sculpture, he really loves the problem solving of his work. And he's been able to do that over the years with his work, and develop and refine these tools to be used. SL: And Pati, you mentioned at the beginning that you didn't think this would happen without being 01:11:00 here. Could you just expand a little bit on that? 02:02:20 PS: Yeah. I think, I think it's because Madison was, for us, a special place where a number of intersections took place for both of us. But working with Walter Hamady which, you know, he put Tim up to do these things. And then Breaking the Bindings, bringing Kathy Clark to town, Joe Wilfer being there, and the fact that the Institute of Paper Chemistry was in Appleton at that time. It's now at Georgia Tech. And then the individual groups of students that were there that got to know Tim and me, and were also interested in his tools. I think all of that combined to be a place where he could make, envision making a living off of making these tools and just gain the knowledge that he needed to. So I feel as though going to another school just wouldn't have had that same combination of things. And I asked him about this and he said yeah, he found his niche there. And he might not have even found a niche elsewhere. And he does have a particular skillset that's, I think, unique to him, and that worked just perfectly for developing the paper molds in particular. 01:12:00 Although he does really enjoy the other tools. Because he also has the skills to make tools to make tools. So for example, the signature punch comes with several strips made out of a certain kind of plastic. And they all have holes punched into them, drilled into them is more accurate, at different increments. So the book binder can choose from all these different increments. So when he drills those, he sets his drill press up into its own machine so that it's automatically pushing these strips through and drilling the holes. So he has that kind of engineering mind, too, that he could figure that out. And then for the book presses, the finishing presses, like the repair presses and bevel top presses, he makes screws for those, 01:13:00 wooden screws. So he's made the tools that have the knives in them to cut the threads for the wooden screws and for the inner part in the block that's the main part of the repair press will have threads inside a well. SL: Okay. PS: So I think all these kind of skillsets he happens to have are fairly unique to him. And we find that when people come who are interested in making molds. For example, Claudine, who came from France, went back and she's making, she had a friend who helped her make a loom. And she's making the woven part and she's having a woodworker make the wooden part. And then she finishes them off. Sews the wire screen paper making surface to the wooden part. So she's solved that problem, which is a good way, I feel, by it being more than one person, the final object. SL: Well, thank you, Pati. Is there anything that you would like to add that we haven't touched on? 02:06:33 PS: Maybe one brief thing. I had wanted before to mention Julia Miller, who's a conservator and book historian living in Ann Arbor. And she is an example of somebody that Tim and I both met. She owns some of Tim's tools. But what I wanted to mention before was that she had been a mentor to me. For a year or two I worked with her about one day a week to learn traditional book binding skills. And 01:14:00 she's since become a very close friend for both of us and has introduced us to many people she knows in our fields. But having worked with her, I am often working in my studio and I reflect back that I learned what I'm doing from her. Because she was a trained conservator who became a book historian. And I had mentioned that Valmai Fenster in the library school at UW was my teacher for the history of books and printing, and sparked my interest in the history of books. And Julia has continued, just whenever I see her we talk about various historical books that she's very excited about. And that deepens my understanding of books and the history and sort of a tangential interest to me, but also I think an influential one. SL: Mm hmm. Thank you for sharing. PS: Yeah. You're welcome. [pause] Madison, I think for Tim and I, was a very magical time where everything was kind of coming together for us. And I guess we didn't know it would last for the rest of our lives. But we were both able to become self-employed while we were there. And because we were self-employed, we decided to move to Michigan where Tim's family has some property. And we built a house and studio on that. And that work we began in Madison's continued here in our studios for the past 32 years. SL: Pati, I'm kind of curious. Can you describe the studios a little bit? Like are they near each other? Or kind of in the same space? I just would like to know a little bit more about where you work. PS: Sure. Our house and studio are two separate buildings, but next to each other. And the studio is a large, two-story building. Tim's woodworking equipment is all on the first floor. And my printmaking equipment's on the second floor. I have a nice balcony that I can go out on, on the second floor. Nice skylights with northern light. And then in our basement, I mentioned before, we have a little paper mill that we sort of rescued from a place that was throwing it out. We heard about it and rescued that equipment. So it's set up and a few people have used it. So I sort of see it as a community service. There was an artist in residence at Albion College named Amy Lee, who's a Korean paper maker. Hanji is what the Korean paper is called. 01:15:00 And while she had her residence, she came out and used the little paper mill. SL: Oh, nice! Well, I think, if there's nothing else, then I'll stop recording. PS: Okay. 2:10:53 End