Chicago Pulp Brings Papermaking to the People

By Taylor Moore 

At an office supply store, a ream of 8.5 x 11 copy paper costs just barely $0.02 per sheet. But have you ever thought about what goes into making it?

Artists Aidan Anne Frierson (MFA 2025) and David King (BFA 2025) are continuing the age-old tradition of making paper by hand at their new studio, Chicago Pulp Papermill & Studio, in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. Frierson and King met in a papermaking class taught by School of the Art Institute of Chicago faculty member Andrea Peterson in 2023. Frierson, then a graduate teaching assistant tasked with transforming natural fibers into paper for the classroom, and King, who was new to the craft, bonded over their shared love of paper. 

After the course ended, Frierson continued working outside the classroom with King, whose art transforms paper into three-dimensional sculptures. King and Frierson collaborated to build out and set up equipment to use in King's Oak Park home's basement.

This partnership made them realize they could launch something bigger than themselves—a dedicated space for artists to learn, make, and experiment with paper. Frierson said, “I remember one of the things Dave said to me when we were talking about [expanding], I was like, ‘Yeah, I hope that I’ll get a basement that I can have floor drains in and have a paper studio.’ He was like, ‘Well, maybe one day it doesn't have to be in your basement.’”

Thus, Chicago Pulp was born in November 2025. Frierson brought her expertise as a practitioner, educator, and as the executive director of the North American Hand Papermakers organization. Through Chicago Pulp, she now teaches papermaking classes for people at every skill level. King brought business and trade expertise, having operated his family’s HVAC company for more than 30 years. “It's kind of like a weird marriage—you've got to know each other's quirks … and decide that you're in it and you want to get along and make it happen,” King said.

Hand papermaking is inaccessible to most people. Breaking down a fiber, such as wood or flax, is physically laborious and time-intensive, and processing it requires a large space where it can be broken down, soaked, cooked in soda ash, beaten with mallets or with specialty machinery, drained, pressed with a hydraulic press, and dried. “There's no instant gratification,” said King. Creating the basement studio required overhauling the space, including installing sloped flooring, electrical wiring, and a drain system with pipes running along the ceiling.

But the effort was worth it. The studio is filled with gorgeous light and artwork by the two of them, as well as finished pieces and works-in-progress from students. Frierson and King agreed that the space was bigger and more functional than any other space they’d worked in.

Chicago Pulp is one of only a few businesses of its kind in the Midwest. It sells both pulp—cotton, flax, and abaca macerated and partially soaked in five-gallon buckets—and paper made with materials like denim, sisal, wheat, rye, and hay. The studio also holds intensive week-long courses, drop-in hours for artists, and project-based workshops, including one where students process secondhand denim into paper over the course of a month. Frierson says that Chicago Pulp has had many students return to volunteer their time in order to learn and improve their own artistic practices. 

“Historically, people would be making paper in community spaces,” said Frierson. “Multiple people would be breaking down a fiber together; people would be pulling a sheet together. I think that it really is paramount in the process—making sure that we're not doing any of these things in isolation. … I feel like there's a big reciprocal nature that's rooted in fiber.”■