What do kitchen produce (okra, cabbage leaves, herbs), the garden (cornstalks, flower petals, seeds), fiber (hemp, linen), clothing (blue jeans, tee-shirts, sheets) and the office (waste paper) have in common?

 All can be used, and are used, by Laura Murphy to make paper. She describes herself as "gregarious, driven, passionate (but with long bouts of introversion) who loves to learn". She loves teaching and, especially, teaching by doing. She also loves to garden and paper making is a by-product of gardening. She uses plant leaves, seeds, grass, asparagus fern, flowers, herbs...whatever strikes her fancy. Her greenhouse serves both to grow and dry the ingredients used for paper, flower arrangements and potpourri. 

Laura and Crystal Mascarenas, friend and fiber partner taught themselves how to make paper and then made a tutorial complete with photos. It's now the number one reason people visit her site. 

In addition to using materials from the garden, they also use kitchen produce, old clothing and waste paper. Colored materials can be used but if white is all that's available, dyes are called upon to add necessary color. Dyes can originate in the kitchen (beet juice, coffee, tea, dried mustard, turmeric) but fabric dyes and acrylic paint may also be used. Modern machine such as paper shredders aid in tearing the paper so it can be further broken down, but, essentially the technology hasn't changed much since the 16th century.

The tutorial takes the beginner through the process from start to finish and leaves no doubt as to whether a finished product can be achieved. Laura suggests shopping yard sales and thrift stores to find paper shredders, blenders, pans, window screens and even stove splatter guards to make round sheets of paper!

Laura considers herself a painter first but her eye for color has spilled over into all of her art and craft. She's a relatively new spinner and sees spinning as a natural extension of one of her past careers as a hairdresser. Laura considers she's still "messing about" with dressing hair when she's at the spinning wheel. After a twenty-year career as a hairdresser (she closed her shop last year) she finds she's still doing a lot of the same type things. She combs fiber, pulls tangles out, smoothes the strands and colors the fiber. Her hairdresser specialty was coloring and that's still her favorite. Laura loves "watching those colors come back together in a strand of yarn" with the primary difference being, "at this point, the sheep don't talk back".

She's adjunct faculty at Adams State College and teaches Art Appreciation and Art History. Laura adores teaching and Adams is where she met Crystal and where she earned both her undergraduate and masters degrees.  At the beginning of this year, Adams State had an exhibition and people were "blown away by the quality and innovation of the work. Most people don't realize fiber means paper, wood and by-products as well as animal fibers. Everyone thinks it's just knitting and mittens and, while that's certainly an honorable and wonderful thing, it's not the only thing."

Her favorite craft is "whatever I'm working on at the time because I've worked in a lot of different media over the years." For her Master's degree in Open Media, Ceramics and Fibers (Adams State College term for "mixed media"), she had to demonstrate a proficiency in two or more media. She designed and developed two rooms - The Living Room and the Alive Room.  The Living Room installation was of completely found objects, lots of consumer driven goods that were sentimental but factory made. The Alive Room was all fiber ...alive and growing and the 12x15 foot paper walls were dimensional with a free form rug of spinning and crochet. The rug was put down on top of compost and grew grass. See Laura's photo site for photos of her thesis project.

Laura's unique designs and thesis were mentioned by Prudence Mapstone in a recent newsletter (read Prudence Mapstone's article in Fiber Femmes March/April 2007 issue.).

Dale Murphy, her Dad, taught her to knit when she was six years old. His mother taught him and knitting was fairly common among the Swedish folks in rural Wisconsin. Her Dad told her, "if you didn't know how to knit, you were cold. We didn't think it was all that special." She veered away from knitting and, in high school, became a painter "because that's what a serious artist does". Eventually, she found her way back to the tactile arts and notes, "the older I get the more I go back to my fiber roots."

She and her husband, Denny Wallace, moved from Loveland, CO to Monte Vista, CO twelve years ago when Denny got a job transfer. Ultimately, he became a potter and shows with Laura at local arts and fiber festivals.

Crystal taught Laura how to spin a scant six months ago and that friendship/partnership lead them to develop the San Luis Valley Folk Arts Fiber Festival. Their primary purpose in hosting the festival was economic development for the region. At a recent Arts and Economic Development meeting, Laura heard John Hickenloopoer, Mayor of Denver, CO speak. One of the things he said, "Denver turned around its economy by promoting arts and culture and joining hands instead of working against each other" struck a chord in Laura. She firmly believes in the concept of arts and crafts having a direct, positive impact on all our lives. It gave her great joy to hear Mayor Hickenloopoer validate what she's always believed and known to be true.

  Developing creative economies appeals to both Laura and Crystal and

their recent festival suggests they were quite successful. While the festival was small in terms of the thirty or so vendors, reported sales were quite good and much better than expected of the few hundred visitors.

Crystal purchased a used Ashford spinning wheel off e-bay, refinished it and raffle tickets were sold at $2 each. They anticipate proceeds from the raffle will eventually go towards funding an Adams State College Fiber Department scholarship.

Laura grew up in Louisiana about eight blocks from the flight line on an Air force base in a very concrete environment. She now finds solace in the process of taking something from its raw state to a finished product. Laura finds it deeply satisfying no matter if it's alpaca fiber turned into a hat or tomatoes planted from seeds then canned and, eventually, cooked into sauce. She also enjoys studying and teaching about the history of politics, art and the art market. She comments, "women have been excluded from that market because only recently has fiber been thought of as an art form...perhaps since the 1970's. There was a segregation of art and craft and women disappeared and nothing was heard from them for three or four hundred years."

Laura likes where she is and what she's doing right - working on the festival, her art and crafts and promoting economic development in her area. A number of artists and crafters were really frustrated with way local events were being handled and decided to get involved. They now serve on various boards including the Chamber of Commerce board, Urban Renewal and Economic Development Board. They take an active part in the conversation about regional changes and the fact things are changing, slowly but surely.

She married politics and art by showing people what's in it for them and how their lives can be improved. Laura states, "You have to listen. I do better when I don't assume that everyone's priorities are my priorities. Everyone needs to put a roof over their head, feed their children and the arts research I've uncovered show the arts research is a very healthy way to stimulate an economy.

Three vendors have already signed up for the 2008 SLV Folk Arts Fiber Festival so others believe in her dream as well. When Laura and her volunteers were tearing down after the festival, vendors thanked her for hosting this venue and giving them an opportunity to stimulate their personal economy and the region's economy.

"I just felt so humble and it was one of those moments when you know you were in the right place. All was right with the world at that exact moment. It was just a great feeling, not euphoric exactly but "right". I never thought I'd like teaching but it's very similar to having just finished with the festival. My students bring empowerment. There's that moment when you watch them and they discover they can do what they didn't think they could do. It's profound. It's empowerment and it's what makes us bigger and stronger. We're bigger than we thought we were."