08/28/2026
Sharing again!
“Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Secret Messages in Handmade Paper” is the title of our upcoming fifteenth handmade-paper portfolio. In hand papermaking, artists often create work that utilize novel forms of communication embedded in the paper itself. The materiality of handmade paper lends itself to thinking about the form as the content; and methods such as watermarking, pigmenting, lamination, embossing, and inclusion often result in works that require some investigation to reveal the artist’s conceptual intent. Words and images appear and disappear, are obscured or viewed through the gauze of the fiber, and the varied materials have meaning in and of themselves. There are endless opportunities for creating handmade-paper works that contain pockets, folds, embedded texts, and other materials, as well as those that use color as an integral form of communication. Handmade paper allows artists to experiment with the two-sidedness inherent in the medium and play with contrasting colors, blow-outs, and stencils, among other techniques, to embed hidden messages.
We welcome proposals that consider the theme both formally and conceptually.
Proposals should demonstrate how the artist plans to use handmade paper in a substantive way as the sole or a primary medium in the work. We invite all manner of mark making, both on and in the sheet. Preference will be given to submissions that emphasize hand-papermaking processes in the development of the image and or text. Each piece should be 10 x 8 inches or less, and no more than 1/8-inch thick. In the portfolio, each piece will be placed in an 11 x 8½-inch protective folder labeled with the artist’s name. This portfolio is not a set of sample swatches; we expect the pieces to be works of art that stand on their own and create a compelling collection together, showcasing a wide range of traditional and non-traditional papermaking techniques, and the imagination, skill, and originality of artists working in handmade paper.
The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2026. For more details on submissions requirements and the benefits to being selected to participate, visit the link in our bio!
