paper makingPaper-making is something I’ve explored for years, as part of a wider set of explorations with textures, colours, recycled materials and layering of natural materials.
I’ve made endless papers myself and used this in projects for many, many years, with both adults and children. I adore the experimentation in paper-making as a process and the different combinations of textures, colours and patterns that can be achieved. It’s an incredibly hands-on and tactile process and appeals to the kinaesthetic senses within us. Its also a wonderful way of combining natural materials such as leaves and petals with papers and fabrics. We all use paper daily but the process of making it is something we can be extremely removed form, so it’s a wonderful way of exploring the techniques of making something we are very familiar with. Because you trap fibres / snippets of other materials into the paper you can create work that gives little hints at something – like a shadow of a thought or a blurry memory. I tend to recycle papers when I make paper with groups as well as using plant materials – and all this means you are left with remnants (almost ghost-like elements) of the materials you began with. Handmade paper can be like pieces of a jigsaw that you can never put back together… but because of that you are left with lots of questions, ideas and thoughts as you see all sorts of half-hidden things buried in the papers… |
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