Peace Paper Project - Workshop & Exhibition

Made possible through out Art in Public Spaces program, this was a free workshop designed as a collaborative effort between Peace Paper Project and the Torpedo Factory Art Center's Target Gallery.



The workshop was be led Peace Paper Project Directors Drew Matott and Margaret Mahan, as well as Art Therapist Arielle Matthews. Participants were comprised of Torpedo Factory Artist and survivors of trauma and veterans in the Washington, D.C. area.

Through making paper from their own clothing and prints from their own images, workshop participants will utilize both traditional and contemporary applications of the paper arts as a means to tell their individual stories. The workshop will culminate with an exhibit of handmade paper, pulp paintings, pulp prints and broadsides made throughout the workshop.

About Peace Paper Recognizing the therapeutic benefits of the medium, Peace Paper works to make hand papermaking available to the world in numerous ways. Peace Paper works with survivors of trauma and uses a portable paper making studio and fibers that hold significance (such as articles of clothing that one might have worn during chemo treatment, or part of a military uniform, etc) to create hand made paper. Their goal is to bring paper to the people so that they may transform their unique fibers into works of art; expressing their stories through the pulp while using the medium of papermaking to enrich their artistic voices.

TF Artist of the Year Exhibit: Susan Makara's Masks

What: Susan Makara: Masks
When: June 30 – July 29, 2012
Reception: July 12, 6 - 8pm; Award Ceremony at 7pm

The Target Gallery presents Masks, a solo exhibition of work by Torpedo Factory artist Susan Makara, winner of the Friends of the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Artist of the Year award. A special reception will be held on July 12^th from 6-8pm, with an award ceremony at 7pm. Guests are encouraged to wear a mask to the reception.

The Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Target Gallery presents Masks, which opens on June 30 and runs through July 29.  This solo exhibition features paintings and sketches by Susan Makara, winner of the Friends of the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s annual Artist of the Year award. About this series of paintings Makara says, “Masks showcases my strongest and most fantastical work to date. The ideas for the series come from my imagination, visible only in my minds’ eye until I paint them. We all wear masks. Our true feelings and thoughts are not always revealed for others to see. Sometimes we hide the person within.”

The juror for this exhibition was William Schran, Assistant Dean of Fine Arts at Northern Virginia Community College. About Makara’s work he said, “Susan demonstrates a command of the medium with powerful imagery that speaks to the viewer, yet presents a sense of mystery. There is a haunting dream-like quality with the figures, all hidden behind masks.  Behind the mask, who is looking at whom?”

Susan Makara holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She served as assistant art director at a Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington, DC and as art director for the PBS series “Powerhouse.” Her work can be found in the School of Art Museum in Buenos Aires, at the U.S. State Department, in the homes of James Brady and Barbara Bush, and at the Garden Court in Jordan’s Royal Palace.