paper wasps: the original paper makers -

I took a papermaking class my senior year at Columbia College Chicago and it transformed my relationship with art. I loved the sensory experience of making paper, and I loved how pulp was a medium that could be painted with and even sculpted. I continued my career in education, loving papermaking, making simple paper with my students and for myself, but not pursuing it in any serious way.

One evening a few years later, on a walk in Durango, I spied a huge paper wasp nest in the trees above me. I stood in awe gazing at it, admiring the beautiful work of art that it was. I had never seen anything like it; I grew up in Arizona, and they don’t have paper wasps that far south. Coincidentally, one of my preschool families brought in a wasp nest to my classroom for the children to observe later that spring, cut down from a tree, abandoned by it’s inhabitants.

That year, when school was halted due to the pandemic, I took the nest home and unraveled it and I marveled at the artistry. The streaks of color amongst the gray enchanted me. I wanted to showcase it, I wanted to work with it. I wanted to know it. It was this moment that inspired me to combine my own handmade with wasp paper.

Though colloquially called “paper wasps” the artists that make the nests here are actually bald faced hornets. They nibble tiny bits of fiber from trees and plants and use their saliva to create their paper and build their nests, which only last about 5 months of the year. When the frosts come, the workers die and the queen finds somewhere quiet and warm to rest until spring.

It is my dream to follow the original paper makers and use 100% locally sourced materials. Botanical dyes, foraged flowers, local fibers, and rain water or river water. Each day takes me closer to this dream.

So, though wasps and hornets inspire a special kind of disgust and fear in most people, I hope you can appreciate them for the artists they are, and the beauty they bring to our natural world.