Cultivator is pleased to feature Melissa Potter’s project, Dung Paper with Annabelle and Loretta, during Bray Grove Farm’s Spring Farm Day. This presentation coincides with Susannah Papish’s exhibition, Ova Amina.

Please rsvp and join us on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27th from 2-5pm for art, conversation, light refreshments, and a day on our small holistic farm. Bray Grove Farm is located 70 miles southwest of Chicago in Grundy County. To confirm your attendance and receive directions and parking information, kindly email joanne@cultivatorarts.com. Please note the address shown here is a mailing address, the event is at another address.

For my Cultivator project, I created sheets of handmade paper from composted dung sourced from Annabelle and Loretta, Bray Grove Farm’s mules. Each mule produced a distinctive paper differing in color and texture offering a “portrait” of their digestive systems, diet, and temperament. The waste herbivores produce is essentially raw cellulose—the foundation of paper—and is used around the world as a source material for micro-industry and waste remediation projects. Dung Paper with Annabelle and Loretta introduces the public to a surprising form of reuse and a tree-free alternative to one of the most environmentally toxic methods of industrial paper production. It also offers a window into their digestive systems as a different kind of farm labor.
– Melissa Potter

Melissa Hilliard Potter is a feminist interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work has been exhibited in venues including White Columns, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, to name a few. Her films have been screened at international film festivals, such as the Cinneffable and the Reeling International LGBT Film Festival.

Potter has been the recipient of three Fulbright Scholar grants, as well as funding from CEC ArtsLink, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Soros Fund for Arts and Culture, all of which enabled her to build two papermaking studios at university art departments in Serbia and Bosnia & Hercegovina. In addition, she collaborated with women felt artisans and activists from Georgia through her project, “Craft Power,” with Miriam Schaer.

As a curator, Potter’s exhibitions include “Social Paper: Hand Papermaking in the Context of Socially Engaged Art” with Jessica Cochran and “Revolution at Point Zero: Feminist Social Practice” with Neysa Page Lieberman. Her curatorial and recent hand papermaking projects, including “Seeds InService” with Maggie Puckett, have been funded by the Crafts Research Fund, Clinton Hill Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation & Jane M. Saks, and the MAKER Grant.

A prolific writer, her critical essays have been printed in BOMB, Art Papers, Flash Art, Metropolis M, Hand Papermaking, and AfterImage among others.
https://www.melpotter.com

www.cultivatorarts.com
joanne@cultivatorarts.com

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