Papermaking always relaxes me. I find solace in the quiet calm of the paper studio. After being inspired last week, I decided to take a break from printing to just play.
This piece was inspired by a book a friend lent me called The Archive. In it is an excerpt from a book called The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away by Ilya Kabakov. In it he talks about how all of us have accumulated piles of paper either on our desk, or in the kitchen, or on our coffee tables. Every once in a while we take the time to sort through these papers and organize them into sub-categories: receipts, mementos, bills, garbage, etc. But what if you honestly couldn't differentiate between what was important and what was garbage? Then everything would be of the same value.
I always have these little piles of papers around my room, so I brought a bag of them into the studio and used them to illustrate this point. Text from the book will later be printed on top of the finished paper.
Started with a thick base sheet of cotton linter and flax noils.
Started layering accumulated papers from home.
Laminating found papers between sheets of handmade paper, then repeating.
Continued until layers were nearly indistinguishable from one another.
Finished product soon to be posted.
