Start Somewhere

Handmade paper torn into circles, the start of a thematic idea of paper and water

I have a new project on the go. It’s about paper and water for an international exhibition in Shanghai. I want to create something new, but know that the seeds of the new are buried within the old.

Where to start? I ask myself this question every time a new project presents itself. I thought of all the handmade papers I have in my paper drawers. Which will suit the purpose and what form will the work take? That’s two big questions that I was stumbling over. I remind myself “One thing at a time...”

I thought of the exhibition theme of paper and water, how water weakens paper yet also the way sheets of wet paper can bind together to create an even stronger sheet. The first time I fused three types of papers and pulp together was during my time at the Cave Paper studio in Minneapolis in 2013.

I can still remember the thrill of trying out this wet paper pressing technique in the freezing cold of a Minneapolis spring. Making paper in a snowsuit in the Cave Paper basement where the water in the papermaking vat was icy cold.

I learnt so much in that three week session. Then carefully rolling up the papers I had made to bring home with me, along with bookbinding cloth and huge sheets of kozo paper I later helped create at the Paper Book Intensive at Ox Bow, Lake Michigan. All of those papers carry the stories of their making. 

I thought of paper and its connection to water, how circles and their relationship to one another are the basis of Venn Diagrams which overlap to create new colours. I rummaged in the kitchen for different sized plates to use for circle templates, carefully putting the plates on the paper and wetting around the edge of the circles to easily tear them into big and smaller sized shapes. I figured they would look good together on a neutral backing sheet.

I had just the thing, a sheet of off white handmade paper I bought at a paper-making studio in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2011. I randomly placed the circles on the paper. It was a start, a work in progress as yet unresolved.

The next day I thought of circles and the calming sounds of water draining from the mold (a paper making screen) during the process of forming a sheet of paper. Aha! I still have the mold with that cymatics pattern embossed on it which I could use to create a cyanotype image .

Multiple ideas started all tumbling together. It’s what I call ‘chaos’ time, experimenting to see what emerges from this vortex of swirling thoughts. Water and sound were the subject of my honours artworks nearly ten years ago. Strange that I keep being fascinated with the subject of cymatics, which is described as the “study of how sound and vibration create visible patterns in a medium like sand, water or other materials”.

I brought out the book I have by Alexander Lauterwasser, Water Sound Images: the Creative Music of the Universe and opened it to a page of multiple sound images. There is one circular shape which has a hazy pattern like fibre wafting across it. I then thought of the dried kozo fibres I have which could be used to make wafting patterns.

I soaked the fibres and start teasing them apart. You can see the fine threads that go into the making of beautiful kozo paper. The fibres are themselves like a lacy sculpture. 

I’m not sure how I will bring all these ideas together but I have a month or so in which to create artworks for the exhibition application. It may sound like chaos and confusion, but you have to start somewhere and for me it is a circle, the basis of all geometric patterning.

Cyanotype image on paper of a cymatics pattern embossed on my papermaking mold. Kozo fibres pulled apart in my hand.