Amanda's Bio
Amanda Degener, a leading figure in the field of hand papermaking and paper arts, educates through writing, publishing, and traveling to teach and exhibit her work in the United States and in places such as Japan, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Korea, and Taiwan/China. At the invitation of Tsing’hua University in Beijing, Degener established a hand papermaking studio in the Book Design Department and occasionally travels to teach there.
At Minnesota Center for Book Arts Degener was first artist-in-residence (1984-1987) and first Artistic Director (1997-1998). Amanda Degener worked at Hand Papermaking, a biannual magazine which she co-founded/co-published (1985-1992) with Michael Durgin. She began Cave Paper casually in the 1980’s then officially co-ran it with Bridget O’Malley from (1994-2017). Degener was part of Cave Paper (1994-2020), a mill known for its durable papers, made from flax and cotton; often dyed with combinations of black walnut hulls, indigo, red iron oxide or persimmon. Cave’s papers are desired by artists, bookbinders and fine publishers worldwide as indicated by an increase in production from 1990 (400 sheets per year) to 2019 (10,000 sheets per year). In 2020 Cave Paper moved to Tucson AZ where it is owned and operated by Zoe Goehring.
Degener is now a full time artist and also making books under the name HMPeditions.