Radha Pandey is a book artist who creates handmade paper from a variety of raw materials. Sometimes you’ll find her using a letterpress to print on her works of art.
How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?
Mostly by accident! My mother introduced me to washi (japanese paper) when I was 5, and the tactile memory of that experience led me to want to learn how to make it myself. Finally as an undergraduate in India, I had the opportunity to go to Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine on a scholarship for 3 weeks to learn this technique with Catherine Nash.
I’ve always been in love with the material, its texture, feel and smell. It seemed like a natural next step to learn more about making it in a graduate program and then setting up a studio so I could continue creating on my own. I have always wanted to do something I loved doing, and not something I was necessarily earning money at, or getting a job through. That was important.
I wanted to share with others the feeling of making something as simple and complex as paper or a book, with your own hands. Sharing knowledge so that people can express themselves creatively is definitely a part of it.
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Do you feel that you chose your “passion,” or did it choose you?
It chose me!
Where do you find inspiration for your creative books?
I am drawn to questions of perception, time, nature, environment, and our relationship with it. I read a lot of scientific research, books of fiction, science fiction and creative non-fiction that help spark all the ideas that I work with. Travel to a new place, or even a well-visited one often helps me trigger ideas.
Tell us more about your planning process for a new book. How does a new work come about?
I start with the idea and go from there. I work on mulitple at the same time, and after a few weeks or even months of fiddling with the idea in my head or in my notes, I take one forward–the one that seems the most fleshed out.
The best is to describe the process for a project. Though each one is entirely different, they follow a similar arc, For Memory of Long Ago, I knew I wanted to work with the idea of water and the multitude of forms it takes.
The first step was research. I began to read about ice, snow, glaciers, snowmelt, climate change—and the colour white. I toyed with this idea for a while. I thought about how snow is perceived as clean because it is white. I did a thought experiment: what if snow was black? Or orange? Would our perception of cleanliness be different? I asked people around me, and wrote down their reactions and thoughts. These conversations helped me deduce perceptions and reactions to certain ideas that seem commonplace.
The second step was coming to a thesis that I wanted to focus on. I settled on exploring firn as the focus of this book—essentially presenting the reader with a visual guide to this phenomenon—with few words, and mostly using paper and its qualities when beaten over many hours, as image. I decided to use the placement of words to affect pace and narrative. The title I chose is the translation of an Old English word, fyrngemynd.
Thinking about how these ideas would translate visually and what form they might take, involves a lot of material tests. I finally made the paper from the fiber that fits my idea, and started playing with it and figuring out the best way it conveys my concept. For me, this was bleached abaca. I beat it for about 5 hours on my Hollander beater. Every 30 minutes or so, I took a little sample for a mini sheet so that I had an idea of the various varieties (thickness and translucency) of papers I could get depending on the hour of the beat. After about 5.5 hours, the highly beaten abaca sheets drained quite slowly. They took about 5 minutes per sheet of 18 x 24” paper. When dried and laid one on top of the other, they looked like layers of snow, or firn. When waxed to increase their transparency, they looked like thin sheets of ice. Perfect!
After the materials mock-up was ready, I tested letterpress printing on it with different types of white hues. I waxed several pages before and after printing. This helped me decide what order the printing and waxing should be in. It also taught me how to control the amount of wax on each sheet of paper.
Cutting the printed and waxed pages to look like an ice core, which is how firn is collected, was a natural next step. Finally, binding the books, trimming them to their final size, and making a box to house each of the 25 books in.
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
The favourite part is actually coming up with idea and finding ways to make it work visually. Once I have that in mind, I start making mock-ups and look for the right materials to experiment with. Once production starts in earnest the challenge changes and I focus on the technical aspects of the edition.
Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?
Nature and our relationship with it. Human perception.
Describe your creative space.
Our studio, Halden Bookworks is located in Halden, Norway. Our studio is on the 5th floor of an old cotton spinning factory from the early 1900s. It is a large, beautiful space with huge wooden beams supporting an attic where we store all our surplus materials and tools, and teaching equipment.
We have built three rooms on one side of the studio. One is where we sleep when we visit (we live 5 hours away), one is an office with an extensive library of books related to print, design, photography, bookbinding, papermaking, videos, material samples and reference guides.
There is a third room which we are in the process of converting into a bindery. And we have a kitchen. In the studio-section of this space, we have divided the floor into a wet space, for the paper studio, and dry space, for letterpress printing, and to hold workshops that are not related to papermaking.
Since We live about 5 hours from our studio. We make the trip there when we have a large project to work on, or a class to teach. Halden Bookworks is open to the public and we run an Artist-in-Residence program, as well as rent studio space.
What are the indispensable tools and materials in your studio? How do they improve your work?
A scalpel. I love cutting into paper, and a surgical scalpel slices through all kinds of paper like a hot knife through butter!
How do you prepare yourself for a session of creative work?
I need to leave the house, or find a corner that is quiet and free of clutter.
Next, I pull out my notebook where I put down all and any ideas that I might think of. This is also my journal, and the place where I collect odds and ends I like–like leaves, feathers, interesting pieces of lint (!), seeds in little packets I can tape inside etc. I go through this first, to look at where my thoughts have taken me in the past. I have one (or more) pages per project or idea.
Starting there, I look at which idea has come the furthest and try and see if anything about that has changed in my mind. Then, I begin. Whether it is by making a mock-up, searching for materials that might work, or doing some reading that might be relevant.
What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?
Try out new ideas or write them out even if they won’t amount to anything. Keeping my hands moving and busy is very motivating.
What is your greatest accomplishment to date?
My son! He is a work-in-progress at 1 year 8 months 😊
Where can people see your work?
On my website: www.radhapandey.com
On Instagram: @pandey.radha
At their local university library (I hope!) You can go to their website and check if they collect artist books. If they do, there is a chance they might have some of mine that you can browse in person!
Interview posted April 2025
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