Jennifer Spoon
I work with wet fingers and digital imagery, back and forth between digital and traditional media. I make my paper outdoors using western and Japanese methods and both natural and commercial dyeing agents. Summer days are spent gathering fiber, processing it and making paper. Nights I spend at the computer working with digital images, informed by a love of type and typography that I use in graphic design.
The immediacy and speed of the digital image helps me realize my ideas quickly and in countless variations. I can take scanned traditional work adding and combining in endless variation. I print digitally drawn or manipulated images and collage them with the actual textures of my handmade paper, fabric, wire, and/or water colored and inked images.
In many of my pieces, I apply kakishibu, or fermented persimmon juice to the finished sheet of handmade paper. Used in Japan for centuries, the juice gives paper a rich brown color and makes it impervious to water.
With my recent work, I try to reconcile the natural beauty that surrounds me – both in the mountains of Virginia and the cities of Japan–with the horrors of what I consider an unjust war both past and present. Other work treats the controversies surrounding religion and
evolution.