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I am continuing to make my handmade paper artwork in Uvita, Costa Rica, and this is the end of my 4th week as an artist in residence at Le Diamante Vert, with choreographer and dancer Marie M’Ayala Saurat. This morning Marie and I worked together with some of the handmade paper pieces to think about the choreography she will create to go with the handmade paper artworks. At the Facebook page of Marie she has put up some video and images of us working together this morning with some of my “made in Costa Rica” handmade paper artworks. Marie and I are doing a collaboration with handmade paper art and dance/movement, and this work will be presented live for the first time in May 2023 in Havana, Cuba, by Marie at a festival where she has been invited to present this new work about water and the healing flow of water for life. Check the link from Marie’s facebook paper here:

This week I also made paper with a local grass that is growing along the side of the road in front of Marie’s house. This grass is bright green, and I noticed a local horse eating it! I have made paper from long-leafed grasses in many different places around the world, so I thought this one would be good to try in Costa Rica. The paper is a nice green-yellow color and it forms pulp without too long a cooking time or too much beating by hand. It is, I think, a grass with the scientific name of Papsolum sacharoides. I used the leaves and took out the hard white center stem to make paper for my artwork in Costa Rica. Here are some photos of the plant and the process of making the paper pulp from this local grass.

Beating the cooked and washed grass to a pulp!
My husband Tim picking the grass along the roadside in front of Marie’s house in Uvita, Costa Rica.

This week we also took an early morning tour to a nature preserve for some bird watching. See many of Tim’s bird photos taken in Costa Rica on his site at allentimphotos2.wordpress.com Tim has been with me for this residency to document my art project and also is having a great time taking photos of all the many interesting birds we can see in Uvita and near here. One of the sites on the bird watching tour that I enjoyed seeing was an old sugar mill there in the middle of the rain forest. I was told it is being repaired and will be used to make some special liquor with the crushed and cooked sugar cane. Here’s a photo of the wood-fired sugar mill in the forest.

Old sugar mill at the nature preserve near Uvita, Costa Rica

Also, this week one of the things I did was make handmade paper and put it to dry on the large sacred tree growing from Marie’s deck. After the paper was dry I removed it to capture the many three-dimensional markings on the old tree. I put the six sheets all together to form a long panel that Marie may use for part of her choreography about water and the flow of life.

Handmade paper drying on the old scarred tree to capture its texture.
Detail of handmade paper drying on tree at Marie’s place Le Diamant Vert in Uvita, Costa Rica

Putting the 6 sheets of handmade paper dried on the tree together with natural string from Costa Rica; this work can fold up for easy packing to take to Cuba for Marie’s performance in May 2023.

This photo shows one of the panels of “water” handmade paper put together with natural thread of Costa Rica that will be used in the performance work.

This image shows Marie’s cat lounging on the handmade paper artwork. The cat seems to like hanging out with me and the hand papermaking process even though it involves lots of water!

Marie’s cat napping in the handmade paper artwork.