My first batch of handmade paper! This project began back in March at Southwest School of Art & Craft, but I just got around to taking photos of the finished paper and the test prints I've done on it. I haven't decided whether the paper will end up in a book or as a diptych print edition, or perhaps both.
Beck Whitehead, the Paper & Book Arts department chair at SSAC, was my mentor for this project. She did a wonderful job explaining all of the options for materials and techniques I could use to create the effect I wanted. I used abaca pulp for the base sheet and cut multiple stencils for pulp-painting the circle design in two colors of flax fiber. Where the colors overlap I was shooting for an appearance of rust or corrosion. The sheets are roughly 6" x 9". I ended up making over 100 sheets, but since a lot of these were failed experiments, my edition size won't be that big. I really enjoyed the process; there are photos of most of the steps here:
Below are some of the test prints I've done thus far. I'm combining imagery from biology and nature with maps of both man-made and untamed locations, working with themes of predator vs. prey and wild vs. domestic. I'm intrigued by the contrast of these places and ideas and the bizarre things that can happen when different worlds or paradigms collide.
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