about
Me at CODEX 7 2019.
Wake Robin is one of the common names (others include ‘Stink Pot’ and ‘Stinkin' Willie’, my favorite) for the deep red trillium that grows in the North Country of New York State, US, in early spring and is the name I use for my studio. I’m Velma Bolyard and I began my working in textiles and making paper in the fiber art program at Buffalo State, before I landed in the western Adirondack Mountains of New York. I set up my paper and fiber studio, Wake Robin, in the North Country in the 1980's. I'm a weaver, spinner, papermaker, book and fiber artist. Currently I work with paper, shifu (a spun and woven paper textile), botanical contact (or eco-) printing on paper and textiles. I make artists' books, in small editions. In 2016 I retired from teaching special education in public school. I am now teaching workshops/classes in shifu, hand papermaking, and book arts in North America, and Australia and at St Lawrence University in Canton, NY. My work maps how I respond to this place I call home, and explors my connections and concerns for the land, animals, plants, and weather of this place. I’ve fallen deeply in love with this harsh, hard scrabble, beautiful place.
handmade paperwork
I make paper, and for many years have specialized in making paper from indigenous plants. This big stack (about 14 inches or so) includes papers made from: slippery elm inner bark, day lily leaves, cotton linters, abaca, milkweed bast, hosta leaves, iris leaves, canada thistle seed heads, corn husks, rhubarb leaf stalks, wild clematis seed head papers. The golden papers are cotton rag, a bed sheet from a garage sale. By pulping cellulose cloth and making it into paper the story of that clothing which once intimately covered the owner’s skin, or in this case, covered someone whilst sleeping, remains embedded in the page.
handmade paper experiments
In order, left to right: worked and inked (my walnut handmade ink) lokta (momogami), lokta and handspun wool singles, lokta, winter field retted milkweed papers, gramicci cotton climbing pants paper and the waistband "shibori" as cloth covering for a coptic bound book, and another piece of milkweed paper.
a sampling of my artists' books
12 moons
This book has two signatures of Arches text wove pages that were contact/pressure printed. The pages have fold-outs and graphite drawings, so when you read this book it grows and dances. The cover is botanical pressure printed shifu (cotton warp, lokta weft) lined with printed flax case paper. It has botanically contact printed silk organdy endsheets, and an ostrich egg shell button on the spine of the stationers binding. This book is part of my Hortus Siccus project, and is in the collection of Baylor University Library.
a year of wooden books
12 coptic bound wooden board (poplar) books with pages of wordless contact printed Arches text wove, also a part of the Hortus Siccus project.
