Switch Grass Paper

A papermaking studio in the works

Switch Grass Paper

A papermaking studio in the works

Our Story

Aya Nakamura and Megan Diddie are Chicago based artists who became friends at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As their studio practices evolved, they started incorporating handmade paper and pulp into their work. Megan Diddie attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for graduate school. During this time, she worked as a graduate research assistant at Fresh Press Laboratory, a papermaking studio founded by Eric Benson and Steve Kostell. Fresh Press explores different materials for papermaking and sustainable design practices. After graduate school, Megan introduced Aya to the studio and they began traveling together to access the equipment. The journey to the studio from Chicago is two hours one way. During these long drives, they began talking about how they could bring papermaking to Chicago. Switch Grass Paper is the idea born out of months of conversations about papermaking, prairie, land immersion, and art.

Our Story

Aya Nakamura and Megan Diddie are Chicago based artists who became friends at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As their studio practices evolved, they started incorporating handmade paper and pulp into their work. Megan Diddie attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for graduate school. During this time, she worked as a graduate research assistant at Fresh Press Laboratory, a papermaking studio founded by Eric Benson and Steve Kostell. Fresh Press explores different materials for papermaking and sustainable design practices. After graduate school, Megan introduced Aya to the studio and they began traveling together to access the equipment. The journey to the studio from Chicago is two hours one way. During these long drives, they began talking about how they could bring papermaking to Chicago. Switch Grass Paper is the idea born out of months of conversations about papermaking, prairie, land immersion, and art.

What's Happening Now

Switch Grass is currently on break as we plan for 2025. 2024 was a busy and productive year for us. We hosted 7 public workshops across Chicago with the Chicago Parks District and the Chicago Public Library, and we hosted 2 private workshops in Megan’s yard in Bridgeport. We will be researching funding opportunities to support more public-facing workshops in the future. Please feel free to reach out with suggestions. Workshop announcments are made on our Instagram page.


Read more about our journey on the Switch Grass Blog page.

As artists working with handmade paper, we have experimented with it to see what it can do. We have made books and sculptures from it, created shaped molds to give it new form, and embedded materials into it to add layers of meaning. We envision Switch Grass as a studio that empowers us to explore, share knowledge and connect.

Do you have a papermaking project or run workshops in Chicago or the Chicago area? We would love to connect with you and highlight your project on our website. Please reach out to be linked here.

Do you have a papermaking project or run workshops in Chicago or the Chicago area? We would love to connect with you and highlight your project on our website. Please reach out to be linked here.

Contact : switchgrasspaper@gmail.com