MEDIA ALERT: Announcing Free Sedona Peace Paper Workshops

MEDIA CONTACT:
Kelli Klymenko, Marketing Manager
(928) 282-3809

Sedona Arts Center Offering Peace Paper Workshops
Opportunity to Learn the Art and Tradition of Hand-Made Papermaking

Sedona Arts Center continues its efforts to build community through the arts with the upcoming Peace Paper Workshops. The community papermaking opportunities on April 7 and 8 at 2pm and 5pm, will be led by the Art Center's April artist-in-residence, Drew Matott.

The founder of the Peace Paper Project—a creative effort to bring the joy of hand-made paper to the world—Mattot is spending the next few weeks in our community and inviting public participating and creativity.

"I've been here a week and this is such a beautiful and wondrous community, with so much creative energy and inspiration around every corner," said Mattot, who also founded the Combat Paper Project as an artistic and therapeutic process for war veterans. "I'm already planning to return this summer and ofer more advanced papermaking classes with the Arts Center."

Upcoming workshops will be held in the Village of Oak Creek at the Arts Center's satellite space, the VOC Arts Annex at The Collective. Those interested can chose from 4 workshops times, and are asked to bring a few items of unwanted clothing or fabric, organic material like leaves and plants, or printed matter such as letters, junk mail, or old photographs. Participation is free for Arts Center members and $25 for non-members, and no experience is necessary. .

Mattot will guide Sedona's Peace Papermakers through an overview of the 2000 year-old traditions behind modern-day papermaking, and use a bicycle powered Hollander beater to transform our local materials into hand-made paper.

"The Peace Paper model is a community art process that explores our relationship with ourselves, the people around us, and the environment we live in," said Eric Holowacz. "Participants become acquainted with traditional western hand papermaking techniques and learn contemporary fine art applications—like pulp painting and pulp printing."

Those interested in participating in the Sedona Peace Paper Workshop should contact the Arts Cetner at 282-3809 or stop by the office in Uptown Sedona to register.

Sedona Arts Center was founded in 1958 and has been doing creative things in the community ever since. The nonprofit organization serves as the artistic hub of the Verde Valley, and has recently expanded its outreach programs, established the VOC Arts Annex, formed Sedona Ukulele Posse, installed new public art, and a whole lot more. Learn more at www.sedonaartscetner.org

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For Media Information, including interview requests and photo opportunities, please contact Kelli Klymenko, Marketing Manager, at (928) 282-3809 or click here.

Photo Opportunity:
Sedona Peace Paper Workshop

Workshop Participants Transforming Their Items Into Paper
with Peace Paper Project Founder Drew Mattot

Thursday, April 7 from 3pm to 4pm
VOC Arts Annex at The Collective Sedona
in the Village of Oak Creek

Background on the Peace Paper Project
As the portable, global, creative machine rolls into Sedona

For two thousand years, humans have created paper by hand from old rags and organic fabric. They do this to represent wealth, to carry spirituality, or to convey messages. And every fiber that goes into the making of paper has a story to tell.

Peace Paper Project uses the ancient tradition of hand papermaking as a vehicle for personal expression and cultural change. The organization, founded by Drew Mattot, has pioneered a portable process that can be shared and used to address current social issues and connection to place. For Peace Paper, the process is no longer just a craft—it becomes a beacon for socially engaged art.

The process of making paper is a direct manifestation of resilience, as it requires breaking something down in order to create something new and beautiful. Through direct collaboration with art therapists, Peace Paper has brought papermaking to veterans, abuse victims, displaced refugees, and populations in need of healing. From clinical settings to community art centers, the bold paper-makers use art as an expressive tool for better understanding the world and our place in it.

Over the past five years, the Peace Paper portable studio has been shared with urban centers and student unions and foreign city governments. It has helped people make statements against abuse and provided catharsis for those involved in the horrors of war. It has even addressed the impact of invasive plant species and our own impact on the earth.

Peace Paper Project is now an international community-arts initiative that has instilled traditional paper making activity in over two hundred workshops around the world.

The effort has helped launch twenty-three new papermaking programs and studios in the same model—building arts programs that use the art of paper as a form of healing and community engagement. Join us at the VOC Arts Annex later this week for a Peace Paper Workshop in Sedona, and learn more about how this project has strengthened communities through teaching, sharing, interventions, training opportunities and the celebration of a 2000-year old art.

Sedona Arts Center Media Alert

Sedona Peace Paper Workshops

Community Papermaking Comes to The Collective in the Village of Oak Creek