All in Paper
When the waiting feels unbearable, you can take action to get (other) stuff done. It’s a tense time waiting to hear back if your applications have been accepted or rejected. When you come at the issue from the sidelines, a lot can be accomplished during that waiting time. Being on tenterhooks can work to your advantage.
How do we create change in the world? I believe it can start with an idea, and imagining, a dream of how we want life to be. Enacting climate change can seem like an overwhelming concept with so many things out of balance. Yet the image of our ‘blue marble’ planet of swirling greens, blues and white reminds us how precious our dear world is and how we must advocate for its protection.
How to hold the duality of both grief and joy as a human and an artist? It’s a question I ponder each day, especially when life can feel overwhelming. I’m looking at my latest body of work which is not only about drowning, but resurfacing. Or in philosopher Donna Haraway's words "to stay with the trouble".
Art connects directly to emotions. Art is personal. Your own essence somehow finds a way into what emerges in your art. The rising tide of powerful emotions playing out in the world and within ourselves affects us all on some level. It surprised me when it appeared so forcefully in my recent work, leading me to reflect on the nature of art itself and why we need it in our lives.
When creative joy feels elusive, how do you discover it again? It's a recurring challenge to keep your practice alive, vibrant and engaging. Sometimes it feels like all is lost forever, yet I’ve discovered that creativity needs activation, not through thinking but in the doing. When you let your hands lead you, your heart and mind get activated and eventually join together in joyful creating.
I’ve been thrusting my hands into buckets of coloured pulp and mixing up watery solutions of green, grey and blue. It’s my papery painting dream, without the stress of fixing an image with paint. With paper pulp the fibres interact with each other, the colours blend and I can let the materials do what they like to do together.
Art has a way of revealing larger truths. I’ve been using a technique of conceal and reveal on some new artworks which has led me to think about how this reflects the state of world matters; political, environmental and humanitarian. I’ve become an excavator, discovering what stands out amongst the busy-ness of visual stimulation.
What to do when you are feeling overwhelmed? When your art (and life) are feeling stalled by the chaos of the world and you can’t find your way into creating joyfully. It’s times like this that I reach into my store of visual memories, like the image of bunting strung between the houses in a Mexican village. Colour and movement can provide the spark to keep hope alive.
Beginning a new project can feel daunting. Where to start? For me it’s what I call creative chaos time, where ideas tumble around until I can find a single thread to follow. It’s a time of experimentation, trying out materials and methods until the project begins to fall into some kind of cohesive state.
What happens when you bury paper in the snow? It’s probably going to fall apart. But an ancient practice of burying the raw material fibres of washi paper in the snow renders the paper it makes beautifully white. It’s called snow bleaching.
