It is very important to me to document the actual plant fibers I use for making the handmade paper as well as the various locations where I have gathered certain natural elements within the "media" for my artworks. The gathering of natural elements is an integral part of my creative process: a silent, meditative time when I contemplate the life of the dead plants I gather and am about to creatively recycle or the geological process of the earth, sand or rock I am shoveling. Plants have always drawn me to them, since when 12 years old, I would gather wild edible foods from the woods near my house and cook them over an open fire.

An intuitive relationship between the natural world and ourselves evokes the desire to create within me: the life of root and bud are at the heart of our being. Paper is distilled nature. The words of Thich Nhat Hanh inspire me and put reason to my need to work with paper. He eloquently and poetically shows us how a simple piece of paper contains not only the forces of nature and the hands that created it, but also ourselves within it, as the sheet of paper is part of our perception:

"When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist...So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here...time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it..." from "The Heart of Understanding" by Thich Nhat Hanh

Bio:

After Catherine Nash received a BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of New Hampshire, she spent a year and a half creating prints and drawings in Europe and, in 1987, graduated from the University of Arizona with a MFA in Mixed Media. Nash has traveled twice to Japan to study the techniques of Japanese woodblock printing and papermaking. An artist-in-resident for the Tucson/Pima Arts Council and the AZ Commission on the Arts, she teaches mixed media painting, artists books and Japanese/Western papermaking in Arizona schools and has taught advanced workshops in sculptural artist books and paper casting using flax and kozo in professional paper studios throughtout the U.S. and in eight European countries. Her mixed media sculptural paperworks, artist books and environmental installations have been exhibited across the United States and Japan.