From Winter 2010, p5, El Retorno by Laurence Barker

Although paper will forever be intimately linked with books and prints—it being nothing less than the prime vehicle of the last two thousand years of human knowledge and culture—from a fine arts perspective, it has since outgrown that exclusive domain and, in addition, has become a stand-alone art medium in its own right. After my seminar with Douglass Howell in the summer of 1962, my interest and purpose, logically enough, was to provide paper for Cranbrook’s Printmaking Department. But in the following years the whole development of paper art—art that is initially designed at the vat level—became the work of many artists from a variety of disciplines.

From Summer 2009, p4, Chemistry in Paper: Professional Paper Collaborators Discuss Their Profession by Genevieve Wood.

Collaboration in the oftentimes unpredictable paper process, taking place in an ephemeral state somewhere between the changing phases of water, is by definition about cultivating innate human sensibilities in relationship with the surrounding physical world. Within the wet process there is afforded that readily available moment to give over into alchemy. On multiple levels paper is about improvisations, transformations, about the magic in the space between things, and is ideally suited as one more means—in a world where the metaphors of language continually fall so short—of speaking from within that space between to express the inexpressible.

From Summer 2012, p34, Hand Papermaking in the Time of Climate Change, by Maggie Puckett

Another consideration is how to get the seawater to the studio. My initial response was to bring the studio to the seawater: bring a deckle box into the surf on a day with light wind, use the time between waves to dunk the box, hog it with a handful of pulp, and then quickly lift the box out of the receding surf before another influx of water. Success by this method would depend upon tides, location, surf conditions, and my papermaking nimbleness. The process would border on the absurd, becoming a performance of art in nature, with nature having the last laugh.