by Jessica McCann

Sunlight filters through the expansive windows of Toronto’s Open Studio Gallery. It is unseasonably warm on this November morning. John Risseeuw—printmaker and master hand-papermaker—drapes his jacket over the back of a chair, rolls up his shirt sleeves, and sets about the task of hanging works for his solo exhibit. It’s called “The Paper Landmine Print Project.”

Risseeuw is a professor of art at Arizona State University. His series of relief prints on handmade paper began as a sabbatical research project in 2001. It calls attention to the scourge of landmines and tragedy of victims worldwide.

One by one, Risseeuw selects an odd-shaped print, backed by mounting board, and affixes it to the gallery wall with Velcro. His art is not framed. It is not displayed behind glass.

“Viewing art in a gallery can be a bit passive,” Risseeuw says. “So when I display the landmine prints, they stick off the wall slightly, into the space of the viewer. It’s a little less protected that way.”

Patrons can get as close as they want. They can read the work, see how the paper and ink coexist, perhaps even extend a curious fingertip to explore the textured surface.

Lots of fibrous materials can be pulped and utilized in papermaking—fabric, plants, even other forms of paper. Risseeuw selects materials for his paper that have a direct connection and relevance to the subject matter. He says it deepens the meaning and impact of his art.

In 2007, according to estimates by the United Nations, there are approximately 110 million active landmines scattered throughout the world in more than 70 countries. Landmines remain hidden and dangerous long after peace has been restored to an area. They kill and mutilate more than 20,000 people every year. Most victims are civilians. Nearly half of those victims are children.

For his landmine print series, Risseeuw crafts paper from “the stuff of tragedy”—currency from countries that produce and disseminate landmines. He also uses bamboo and other plants culled from minefields, as well as representative articles of clothing from victims. It is on this almost animate stock that he then prints landmine imagery and facts—photos, maps, statistics, and survivors’ stories—as well as a summary of the paper’s contents.

Karla Elling is the manager of ASU’s Creative Writing Program. She is also a print artist and a former letterpress student of Risseeuw’s. She describes his technique as an extreme approach that is both effective and surprising.

“Patrons sometimes drop a letterpress relief print they have carefully picked up,” she says, “realizing suddenly what is in the paper.”

Risseeuw earned bachelors and master’s degrees in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He mastered the art of hand papermaking soon after, an undertaking he describes as a “great liberation.”

He no longer had to rely on the art papers he could buy in the store. By making his own paper, Risseeuw gained total control of the colors, thickness, and texture of his print surfaces. Eventually, this liberation evolved into something more.

“Over the years, I did a few projects where I came to realize that the content of the paper could be connected to the content of the piece,” says Risseeuw.

In 1991, ASU’s Pyracantha Press (a book arts press founded and directed by Risseeuw) produced a broadside print commemorating the bicentennial of the U.S. Bill of Rights. The piece was printed on paper handmade by Risseeuw using cotton American flags and blue jeans. The use of actual flags reinforces the significance of the Bill of Rights itself, namely the First Amendment; blue jeans, of course, represent westward expansion, the working man, the counter culture, and virtually everything that the U.S. Constitution makes possible.

“These are, in my mind, two quintessential sources of American fiber,” Risseeuw says with enthusiasm. “I found it really satisfying to do something that complete, that much of a whole.”

That satisfaction, that feeling of wholeness, is also felt by those who experience Risseeuw’s work—even if they don’t fully understand why.

“These are well-conceived, technically-proficient and well-executed works, and people who know letterpress and papermaking can really appreciate that,” Heather Webb, director of Open Studio, says of Risseeuw’s landmine prints. “But what makes his work really interesting is a kind of blurring of the content and the actual materials. There is a connection between them that anyone who views the work can appreciate.”

Social and political themes—everything from equal rights to environmental abuse—often have worked their way into Risseeuw’s prints. Part artist, part journalist, he bears witness to current events through an artful interpretation of the facts.

Risseeuw says that his quest for those facts in the landmine project proved as intense and interesting as the production of the prints themselves. Funds from an ASU’s Herberger College of Fine Arts grant in 2001 enabled Risseeuw to travel to landmine-affected countries.

While in Cambodia, Mozambique, and Bosnia, he interviewed landmine victims, deminers, government officials and humanitarian workers. Some mine survivors and family members of victims donated articles of clothing to represent them in the paper.

The ASU art professor also conducted research from home via email, contacting people in other impacted countries—such as Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Angola. He got materials and victim information from long-distance.

“What struck me throughout this process was how easy it was to collect materials,” Risseeuw says. “The world is so small. It’s not six degrees of separation any more; it’s down to four or three.”

From its inception, the project has had two primary purposes: to educate the public on the problems of landmines and to raise funds for organizations that assist victims and lead demining efforts.

Risseeuw’s first solo exhibit of the work, and his first sale, was in September 2004 at the Phoenix Public Library. Now six years in the making, the body of work includes 15 prints plus seven dimensional cast paper sculptures and has been on exhibit in locations throughout the United States and internationally. In 2006, Risseeuw was honored with a Herberger College of Fine Arts Research and Creative Activity Award for “The Paper Landmine Print Project.”

The project now seems to be drawing to a natural close. Risseeuw’s point has been made. A distinctive collection of prints has been created that will have a lasting impact. And Risseeuw’s satisfaction in that as an artist is apparent, though unassuming.

Still, his shoulders visibly sink just a touch when the discussion veers toward fundraising. While his prints have generated nearly $6,000 in contributions, they’ve fallen short of the charitable income he had hoped to generate.

“I’m an artist. I’m not a great promoter,” he shrugs. “It’s not one of my great skills to lure people to get out their checkbooks.”

Even so, Landmine Survivors Network, Cambodian Handicrafts Association for Polio and Landmine Disabled, and Veterans for America (formerly the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation), are a few of the groups that have benefited from the project.

Risseeuw has been mulling ideas for a conclusion to the Landmine series, a final piece that would bring it all together. Using leftover bits of cloth and residues from the papers he has made for the prints, Risseeuw would like make a few final batches of paper and create a handmade artist’s book about landmines.

Fine press and artist’s books from the Pyracantha Press and Risseeuw’s own Cabbagehead Press are held in numerous state university libraries, including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the University Chicago, California-Berkeley, Wisconsin, Washington, and Arizona. They also have become part of other public and private collections around the world, such as the Library of Congress, American Craft Museum, New York Public Library, the Royal Family of England, and Fudan University in Shanghai.

Such a piece on landmines would, literally and metaphorically, close the book on a project that has artfully merged subject and substance to bear witness to tragedy, engage viewers, and raise funds to help rid the world of landmines and assist victims.

John Risseeuw teaches courses in Fine Printing & Bookmaking, Papermaking, Artists’ Books, and Photo Processes for Printmaking. He is director of ASU’s Pyracantha Press and also runs a private press, Cabbagehead Press. To learn more about his work, email John.Risseeuw@asu.edu, call 480.965.3713.