I’ve always loved the idea of connecting people through art events. Over the years I’ve organised and curated a few big art projects; from a sculpture event using potatoes to community theatre productions and an international mail art exhibition about death.
My latest Dear World project has been a way to visualise that connection by creating large and small worlds from paper pulp. It’s like painting, but with cotton clothing that has been beaten into a liquid pulp.
The saying “We are all connected” gains extra significance when you can see a visual image of the world and how we all share the same planet earth.
I started creating paper worlds during 2020 when the world was in lockdown and people were separated from each other. It was my way to bring the world closer to me when I couldn’t travel.
I was inspired by the ‘blue marble’ image of the planet taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972. It showed our blue planet in space, so fragile and beautiful. From space you can’t see political borders, only the green of forests and blue of the seas and rivers.
Later in the year I made ten ‘travel videos’ using the image of one of my paper worlds as a background. The series was called “Where in the World” and I would spin a globe (that I borrowed from a friend) and tell a story about creating a ‘memory in a postcard’ using collage. You can see the one about the Harry Potter train trip here.
It makes me smile when I look at it now and see how one idea of a paper world has developed into a full community project to help people take action on climate change.
It’s surprising what roads a passion can take you along. You might start with a small idea, a ‘what if’ kind of notion, then the project develops an identity of its own, circling back and forth, spiralling finally into the core of your original impulse.
For me it is about connection; people, the environment, our more than human co-habitants, the invisible forces that propel all life forward into an ever evolving multiverse of wonder.
Seeing children and adults sitting down with tiny spoons dropping coloured pulp into circles to create their own worlds confirmed the democratic potential of art when it is accessible to all and is connected to something bigger than only one person. It gives my art projects a purpose, an imagining of possibilities.
We are such tiny specks of life when seen from space, but oh what potential we have as humans to create beauty with our hands and hearts. I felt honoured to be able to bring this project to life with the help of a team of other artists.
This project is supported by Ingrained Foundation, Vicki Brooke and Arts Northern Rivers. All photographs by Sally Singh.
Artists Rob Saunders and Judy Oakenfull helping people at the Dear World small worlds making table
Artist Annique Goldenberg pressing the wet small worlds to dry. Written tags hanging on the wish tree behind her.
At the end of the day with the finished wet world poured onto a sheet on the ground.