Sensing Place, Finding Refuge Through Fiber Art Collage
Fiber Art Workshop with Jacqueline Mallegni at Willow Pond SLO, May 29-June 1, 2025
“Perhaps my shadow and the arid climate are designing a new dance with wind. A place to settle, rest and create.”
As the flurry of spring gives way to the arrival of summer we welcome Jacqueline Mallegni to Willow Pond. On May 29th paper artist, papermaker, and sculptor, Mallegni, will guide a 4-day workshop retreat diving into fiber art through collage and materiality. Artist students will explore the nature of textured paper combined with foraged materials, thread, ink and dye.
Jacqueline Mallegni is a papermaker and paper artist with a sacred connection to her medium as it relates to mother nature. Her evolving artwork continues to reveal to her a sense of being, capturing moments with light, shadows, and structure. The process is always changing, through layers of curiosity, grief, and by telling the stories of her surroundings. Jacqueline’s journey with paper made by hand began with kozo fiber in 1989 using a traditional Japanese paper-making technique. She soon fell in love with the tactile nature of the process, the porridges, and the precious fibers within the medium that speak to the trees and mark a notion of place and time.
“Patterns in nature, textures, and seasonal changes have always played an important role in my art practice where inspiration and internal wisdom are transformed into sculpture.”
Jacqueline creates mixed media sculpture with rattan, handmade paper, cast flax and silk fiber sometimes embellished with mono-prints infused with indigo, sumi ink and handmade ink/stains from plant material. Jacqueline's process begins with paper, and she explains that paper isn’t a substrate, it’s a medium.
“'The thread of my creative process always begins with paper. Making and the art of transforming tangible fiber to an intangible pulp, returning to a tangible form, is very alluring.”
This workshop is suitable for a wide range of skill levels and artists ready to permeate collage panels with a sense of place from the natural surroundings or from an idea or story that is ready to be told. Inclusions such as thread, photos, decorative paper, plant fiber, ink, plant-based stain, and indigo can be applied for surface embellishment and depth. Artist students are invited to bring a collection of their own collage materials, and forage for more.
Lunch is served each day and paper-making supplies will be provided. The workshop is designed to alternate between focused instructional demonstrations and uninterrupted time for art making between sessions and allowing students to immerse themselves in a meditative, creative process.
About the Artist
Jacqueline Mallegni is a papermaker, paper artist and a coastal northern California native, who has lived in New Mexico since 2010. Her art practice focuses on three-dimensional fiber sculpture including Japanese style handmade paper, wood, ink, indigo, thread and plant fiber. She is inspired by wild landscapes, seasonal changes and the interrelationship between people and the planet. As an exhibiting artist since 1997, her work has been presented nationally and internationally in galleries and art trade-shows and her sculptures have been featured in several publications, and through artist residency fellowships. Mallegni’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. She was born in San Francisco, California, and she lives and works in the high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Jacqueline is a member of IAPMA (International Association of Papermakers & Paper Artists), Surface Design Association, Hand Papermaking Magazine and the New Mexico Women in the Arts.
