From These Words Grow Flowers

“What if a postcard sent through the mail filled minds with poetry then filled gardens with Florida’s native wildflowers? Would blossoms then remind readers of words for years to come?

From these Words Grow Flowers, a project for the 2021 O, Miami Poetry Festival by Ingrid Schindall of IS Projects, puts poems reflecting on growth and the specificities of life in Miami on postcards made of paper with embedded native wildflower seeds. The poems can be read then planted in the ground to create a future flower bed. It’s as easy to plant as burying a note beneath a shallow layer of soil, gifting flowers to yards, vacant lots, grassy medians, flower boxes, or anywhere else with a bit of dirt, sun and water. Printed in English, Spanish and Creole, these multi-lingual cards will be available at limited O, Miami events, mailed to specific neighborhoods to create wild insect corridors and available at pick up spots in Miami Dade County.”

The text above was the proposal that I sent to the O, Miami Poetry Festival in the fall of 2020 with the great hope of becoming a full-fledged handmade paper/poetry project that would reach a multitude of Miamians and inspire new impromptu gardens. After a pitch meeting with the O, Miami team filled with garden and plant-related puns (shoutout to Melody Santiago-Cummings, Melissa Gomez, Caroline Cabrera, and Amancio Paradela), the project had the go-ahead!

Now it was just a matter of setting up a papermaking facility at IS Projects, preparing enough paper to make 1,500 postcards, sourcing 15,000 Florida native wildflower seeds, selecting nature-related poems from O, Miami’s archive of thousands of locally written poems, creating a compelling postcard design, making the paper, letterpress printing the design, cutting down and quality checking the cards, and getting them in the mail. Below is a run-through of the elaborate process that lead to thousands of seeds making their way through the mail to hundreds of homes in Hialeah Gardens and into the hands of poetry enthusiasts throughout Miami Dade County. The process of this project inspired Johnny Zhang, creative videographer and IS Projects enthusiast, to document the steps required to bring From These Words Grow Flowers to life and I have the incredible fortune to be able to share this project with you, not only in a thorough retelling via written word, but also through a beautifully shot, artfully edited, and outstandingly amazing video.

The first step in creating handmade paper postcards is preparing the pulp, in this case from 20 pounds of recycled cotton paper off cuts saved from various commissioned and personal projects. I cut up and weighed the paper scraps at IS Projects and would under normal circumstances take the fiber to the Jaffe Center for Book Arts to use their Reina Hollander Beater for turning the recycled paper into usable pulp. Unfortunately, covid lockdowns meant that FAU’s library and paper studio were inaccessible. So, I called up Beth Sheehan and Kyle Holland at the Lost Arch Paper Mill at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa and asked for a favor. A short 12 hour drive later, Johnny Zhang and I were in downtown Tuscaloosa in a much more wintery climate than we are used to. Beth and Kyle generously assisted with soaking, beating and straining the pulp to prepare it for our journey back to Fort Lauderdale. Beating 20 pounds of fiber took about 8 hours and required 20 sessions in the 1 pound capacity beater. With a car loaded with hundreds of pounds of wet pulp, it was time to get back to the studio and finish the paper studio preparations.

IS Projects took over the space above the studio in June, 2020 with the intention to create a few individual artist studios, a new book arts space, an etching set up, a place to display our artists’ book and zine collection, and (hopefully, one day) papermaking facilities. So in February of 2020, when the project was getting underway, we began putting together the missing pieces for a (very simple) paper studio. The studio had already acquired molds and deckles, felts, pellon, vats, cardboard, and blotter from a previous donation so all that was left was the heavy stuff. My mom, Debby Schindall, and I built all the necessary wooden structures after a long day at the home improvement store getting wood cut. Then Alexandra Riesco diligently sanded and sealed the pieces over the next week. The upstairs maybe-one-day paper studio now had everything needed to actually make paper including a shop press with custom press boards and a restrained drying system.

The wildflower seeds came from the Florida Wildflowers Growers Cooperative based in Crescent City, Florida. After an informative conversation with Curtis from the coop, I selected about a dozen seeds to test based on their ability to sprout in South Florida, the size of the seed, and how nice the flower looked. I started with a sprout test to determine the vivacity of seeds and examined the size closely to ensure it would be able to be embedded in the paper without creating too much of a bulge. The quickest to sprout and heartiest to grow of the flowering seeds were selected to be a part of the project. The flowers selected were: Beach Sunflower, Spotted Bee Balm, Butterfly Milkweed, Black-Eyed Susan, Purple Lovegrass, Slim Goldenrod and Leavensworth and Lanceleaf Tickseed.

The amount of variations out there for each step of the paper making process is as many as there have been papermakers throughout history. The process used for this project was to set up a table with the vat and pulp outside on IS Projects’ second floor balcony in the one slightly shaded spot on the deck and make paper until there are no pellon (synthetic felt) left. I pulled sheets and taught Alexandra Riesco and Amber Frank how to make paper and they helped with the long and damp process of making over 400 sheets in batches of about 60 at a time. The wildflower seeds were mixed directly into the vat with the pulp so we placed importance on making sure the paper was fully dry in 24 hours so the seeds wouldn’t have time to germinate in the paper making process. I planted test sheets of seed paper before moving forward with the full scale production and those test plants are still thriving in my garden today.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the project was working with the O, Miami team to select poems to adorn the postcards. We looked through dozens of poems from the O, Miami poetry archive and selected 4 that reflect on growth, nature and Miami. The chosen poems are in English, Spanish, and Creole to engage Miami’s diverse population and O, Miami’s multi-lingual audience. The poems are planted in a bed of flowers for the design of the front of the postcard and the back shares planting instructions and the types of flowers included in the sheets. The designs were translated onto a modern type of printing plate then letterpress printed. Letterpress gets it’s name from literally pressing letters into paper so the text and imagery has a tactile quality on top of the already unique feeling seed paper.

Though out the years of running a fine art print shop I have observed a special sensation that people get when touching a piece of paper that was made with care. Once fingers touch handmade paper it demands closer inspection. My vision for this project is for these small, somewhat understated postcards to stand out not only in their lack of flashy pictures but also in the feel of the paper amidst a pile of coated flyers, simple letters, and coupon mailers. To feel the paper in hand and experience that little jolt that comes from inspecting something unfamiliar that follows with calming poetry and a call to the garden is an experience that I want to share far and wide. I want to extend my deepest gratitude to O, Miami, their team and their supporters, for making this wish possible. Deep thanks to IS Projects’ team, especially Chachi and Amber, for getting messy and tolerating my sudden onset obsession with plants, and also to Johnny Zhang for driving to Tuscaloosa in the winter in the midst of a global pandemic and documenting this passion project from start to finish.

If you received a postcard in the month of April and have flowers to show for it, please reach out and share your experience!

If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading!

Sincerely, Ingrid