Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum) on Invasive Phragmites Paper

Finally, a successful transfer onto a smooth piece of phragmites paper that is exhibition-worthy!

Last week I was having trouble making transfers onto the finer pulped phragmites paper. The fibers of the paper kept peeling up every time I removed the transparency paper. So I posted my dilemma to the Digital Art Studio Seminar group on Facebook and received the wonderful suggestion of spraying the paper with Krylon Preserve It before doing the transfer. Thank you to the wonderful person who made this suggestion, as I was about to start pulling out my hair!

This shadow of the cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum), which is threatened in Michigan, was taken at the W. J Beal Botanical Garden at Michigan State University.

A Trip to the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden & Fenner Nature Center

Today has been a busy day. I stopped off to visit the Endangered and Threatened Species Garden at MSU to see what's starting to pop. There are three plants with buds that will bloom in the next few weeks: Twin leaf (special concern), Jacob's ladder (threatened), and Prairie trillium (threatened).

Virginia bluebells (endangered) is already in bloom, so as soon as the sun comes out I'll go back with my professional camera to capture their shadows.

I was lucky to once again run into Hope, a botanical technician at the gardens. She has been a huge help in both pointing out where the plants are and in helping me identify and collect Common buckthorn. While she was showing me the Canadian burnet plant, I caught sight of this wonderful creature out of the corner of my eye. Hope said she'd been there for a few weeks now sitting on her nest. We were standing within 5 feet of her and she didn't move a muscle.

Afterwards, I made my way over to Fenner Nature Center in Lansing where Program Manager Katie Woodhams walked me down a trail to point out Garlic mustard, an invasive plant and one of the biggest threats to Michigan's native woodlands. Once we had identified it, I started seeing it everywhere. I pulled plants for about an hour and now have enough to try my hand at making Garlic mustard paper. I'm going to use the whole plant, roots and all. I've been told it will smell a lot better in the pot than the other plants I've worked with.

The Michigan Nature Association and a Request for Plant Locations

Sunday afternoon I was honored to give a presentation about my project at the Michigan Nature Association's annual meeting at the Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids. What a beautiful park and day it was! It was great to hear about all the wonderful work MNA is doing to care for their more than 170 nature sanctuaries across Michigan and about their additional land acquisitions over the past year. If you are not already a member, please take the time to learn more about this wonderful organization at www.michigannature.org.

After the meeting, I received several suggestions from MNA members on where to find endangered and threatened plant species that are soon to bloom. I am anxious and ready to start photographing the shadows of as many threatened and endangered plant species as I can. My short term goal is to collect at least 10 images of plant shadows (10 different plants) for two art exhibitions in Japan this September. The transferred prints need to be completed and ready to ship in July. The long term goal is to collect at least 25 images of plant shadows for an exhibition in 2016, but I'll post more on that later.

If you would like to participate in this project by suggesting where I can find and photograph endangered and threatened plant species, you can contact me through this blog or at info@janekramer.com. More specifically, if you know of a plant that is blooming and are willing to share its location, I would be very grateful! I'm ready and willing to travel. :)

Prairie False Indigo on Invasive Buckthorn Paper

This sheet of paper was made after giving the buckthorn pulp another round of chopping in the blender. The paper came out a bit finer in texture. I was also finally able to produce a clearer transferred image due to drying one side of the paper on acrylic, which gives it a smoother surface for printing. It looks like I'll be collecting more buckthorn in the coming weeks.

The image is the shadow of the seed pods on a white or prairie false indigo (Baptisia lactea) plant that I photographed back in November at Welsch Nature Preserve. The status of white indigo is "special concern", meaning that it is rare (or uncertain) but not legally protected.

Common Buckthorn Paper

It looked a lot better before it dried. :)

This is my first attempt at making paper from the invasive plant common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica). I dried one side on acrylic to make it smoother and even tried an image transfer, but I'll spare you that picture. It came out a lot rougher than I thought it would considering how smooth the pulp had felt. I'm going to throw this piece and the rest of the pulp back into the blender and give it all another chop. As I predicted, each plant is going to require a new learning curve both in processing and image transfers. Back to the drawing board.

Invasive Buckthorn Pulp

I finally had a chance to cook and chop the strips of inner bark from invasive buckthorn which have been sitting in my laundry room for the past few months. I was curious if the pulp would be orange or green, but the answer was immediately clear as soon as I added the cuttings to the boiling water. The water turned a dark reddish orange within minutes. Unlike phragmites, the strips blended easily and created a nice smooth pulp the first time around - one boil, one chop. It was a great relief as I am now on my THIRD boiling of a stubborn pot of phragmites. Anyway, I made two pieces of buckthorn paper which are now drying on a sheet of acrylic so that one side is very smooth. We'll see if it holds together and how it takes an image transfer before I collect any more. I'll post a picture as soon as the sheets are dry.

More Phragmites Pulp

I tried to make more paper last week out of phragmites, but found that I wasn't getting enough pulp to cover the screen as I lifted it from the water - a clear sign that more pulp is needed. So I've spent a lot of time this week processing the last batch of dried phragmites collected last fall. (Note to self - next time you collect phragmites, separate the outer stalks from the inner stalks BEFORE you cut it into pieces.) As a result of not doing this the first time around, I've spent a lot of time picking through all the cuttings and pulling out the tough inner stalks as they don't break down no matter how many times I boil and chop them.

The whole phragmites process is time-consuming. It's not bad...just slow. First I boil the cuttings for 2-3 hours. Then I rinse it all and chop it in a blender. Then I boil it again for another 2-3 hours, rinse again, and then finally I chop it once more until it becomes a fine, consistent pulp. 

Picture 1 - cuttings after one boil. Picture 2 - cuttings after a boil and one time through the blender. 

Picture 3 - cuttings after a boil, a blend, another boil, and a final blend.