Ritual Mining by Katharine DeLamater

$850.00 - Please contact 23 Sandy for current availability.
In Ritual Mining, the handmade paper folios, translucent and slick, rattle with each page turn like footsteps on placid earth. As the viewer progresses through the book, the paper in each section becomes increasingly dark. Some sections are sewn shut, which is reminiscent of reaching a dead end in a winding cave. Like stalagmites and stalactites, the world in Ritual Mining grows from both the bottom and the top. The shadowed forms of my great grandmother’s double wedding ring quilt-top are layered with textile pressure prints and silhouettes. These images cast shadows of familiar forms across the pages, while maintaining a ghost-like fog. To reveal the full image, the viewer must try to access the inside of the French fold folios, which mirror the action of opening a map and encourage the viewer to peer beyond the traditional recto and verso.   

Produced with support from The Caxton Club, Chicago.

Artist Bio

Katharine Lark DeLamater is a hand papermaker and writer based in Brooklyn. She is currently the Art Director of Carriage House Paper. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2020 and shortly thereafter was a West Bay View Fellow at Dieu Donné Papermill. Katharine first learned about hand paper making at Mount Holyoke College and went on to intern at Pace Paper, Dieu Donné, and the Boston Paper Collective. An Iowa Arts fellowship recipient, Katharine worked as a research assistant to Timothy Barrett at the Oakdale Paper Research Facility from 2018-2020. Katharine has taught classes at The University of Iowa Center for the Book, Dieu Donné Papermill, The Morgan Conservatory, and Polka! Press. Her handmade paper works have been featured in portfolios including Hand Papermaking’s ‘Intergenerationality’ and Art and Literature Laboratory’s CSArt (2017). Her artists books are held in the special collections of Kenyon College, The Bainbridge Museum of Art, and private collections.