has a wonderful website on the korean art of hanji crafts.
Please take time to read and enjoy her research! Thanks!
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''My work examines the nature of being human, and ways that people create personal realities based on constructs of family and culture. My tools include papermaking, book arts, installation, performance art, and writing, and my recent focus is on making and working with hanji, Korean handmade paper.
I am fascinated by the boundaries between spaces that delineate “in” and “out,” especially after a year of field research in Korea, whose culture has specific borders, thresholds, and customs for each person in its society. I am especially interested in the private experiences of people in social strata that are usually disregarded or rendered invisible. My work looks at how people express these experiences and how private stories can be projected onto the outside world.
Through my study of hanji, I became interested in how certain craft forms have survived in the face of mass production and a culture of cheap and fast excess. Seeing this clash between past and present production values, I have adapted ancient techniques and materials in my art to revive and update tradition, and encourage the survival and evolution of the old ways, while adding layers of meaning to my practice.''
"I was obsessed with becoming a concert violinist throughout high school, but when I landed at Oberlin College and realized that there was no way I could compete without practicing like a maniac, I chose the art track. When I was 20, I took a class in Chinese landscape painting history, and we saw actual scrolls at the college museum. The curator noted that the paper used was from Korea, and that Chinese painters imported hanji because it was the best paper around. I had a lightbulb moment and headed back to Korea that summer to re-learn the language, live with family, and switch to Korean in my conversations with my parents.
Fast forward ten years and I’m a couple years out of grad school, where I got an MFA in interdisciplinary book and paper arts. I was crazy about papermaking. But there was no serious mention in history books or by scholars about Korean papermaking. Upon searching, I found there wasn’t much at all in English or in the US, so I got a Fulbright grant to tap the source. I traveled all over the Korean countryside, visiting paper mills, meeting papermakers and hearing their stories, and apprenticing at a traditional, family-operated mill northeast of Seoul. In Seoul, I learned paper weaving, paper felting, calligraphy, and natural dyeing. I met everyone I could find who knew about hanji and its history, its current state, and how it might fare in the future. It’s not looking great, but there are a handful of people who really care, and I’m proud to be working with them to keep hanji from slipping away."
There are videos showing Hanji master craftsmen at work and history of the craft etc
http://aimeelee.net/paper/hanjib/
Aimee Lee Fulbright Scholar/ Hanji Research
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