Day 2: We Straight Washin' This Shiz

this is what the studio looks like from my table looking forward. behind me is the giant sink and lots of counter space, which we used the h out of today.

this is what the other side of the studio looks like.  there are stairs to the left, if you can see them--they lead to upstairs (duh) where there is a kitchenette ant student lounge with lots of couches. 

today started with dry cleaning, which is when you take a special kind of chemical sponge and wipe and blot and throw it at the paper to get off all the dust and dirt and other sundry surface shiz.  It is important that you get this stuff off before you wet wash because otherwise the dust nonsense can enmesh itself into the paper and then it will just always look shizzy.  It took... about an hour and a half? to wipe down every page, trying especially to get off the obviously groudy parts while not accidentally rubbing up the print or abrading the paper.

So then it was time to prep it all for wet washing, by laying the pages out flat between sheets of this polyester nonsense which felt basically like interfacing you use for sewing.  Then you spray down every page with a blend of water and ethanol so that it won't freak out when it gets submersed in water.  Oh, before this happens you spot check the paper, by dropping a little drop of water and then ethanol on it to see if it makes the ink bleed or whatever.  Mine was totally fine though, woo!

Then you fill a tray with water and just straight dump that paper in it!  I still can't really get my mind around how this works and doesn't result in a pulpy mess--it has to do with how the paper and ink is treated and chemicals and um other things that I don't question yet, because I am new to this nonsense.  Anyway, you let it sit for a while, then dump out the water and fill it again and put the paper back in and let it sit, repeat repeat repeat until the water stays clear. 

So my AWESOME teacher Renate who is The Shiz (and also just got made HEAD of conservation at the Folger Shakespeare Library where she used to be assistant head) is working on this new crazy town way of washing paper, that involves less putting individual sheets into a tray and more of putting ALL the sheets into mesh folders and hanging them from rods over like a file-box of water....I am sure that that doesn't make as much sense to read as it does to experience in real life, and you might not understand how freaking awesomely bad-a this is.  Basically, instead of spending HOURS doing like 6 pages at a time in the tray, taking like 20 minutes per batch, I got to do like 100 pages AT ONCE in a way that is WAY more compact and involves less trying to dump dirty water out of a big freaking tub into a tiny sink and spilling everywhere....anyway, I had done 2 batches of washing the regular way when she then came and said I should try her cool apparatus for the remainder and I was SO HAPPY and it is great.

This is Renate, who changed the water in her cool thing for me the first time so I would see how to do it.  CHECK OUT HOW DIRTY THE WATER IS.  I had to fill it with water about 4 more times before it came out clear, and I did not mind one bit.

This is how you lay the paper to dry traditionally, so this is part of those first 2 batches I did the regular way. You lay the pages all out on thick crazy absorbent blotting paper and then cover it with another layer of blotter and cover THAT with a thick thing of plexiglass so it dries flat. The pages I did in Renate's cool thing she wanted me to dry differently--we rigged the poles the paper file things are hanging on between shelves of the drying racks so they're hanging to dry, instead of laying flat.  She hasn't done it like that before, so they might dry all warped and crappy, in which case she said that is why I am going to be here 5 weeks, I  will have plenty of time to redo things.  This is me scowling.  But also it's true, and very very cool, so I guess I don't mind if it gets totally shizzed up :)

So, all in all it was an incredibly long, frustrating, productive, and awesome day, and now I am going to sleep like dang.