Philadelphia is home to the largest urban park in the country. However, Fairmount Park is spread out along the northwest corridor of the city, extending its reach far from the center of town. My West Philadelphia apartment is in a neighborhood that is greener than most, but the back "yard" of my building has been completely covered by a blue tarp for the two years I have been here. While urban farms and community gardens are on the rise with the revitalization of inner cities and the movement towards fresh, local food sources, we found a more immediate source of papermaking material in the full-block empty lot up the street from Michelle's apartment. There, mugwort and the rapidly growing Paulownia tomentosa, or princess tree, run rampant. I think of Michael Pollan, in The Omnivore's Dilemma, getting down and looking at the grass from the perspective of a cow, noting the range of species within the pasture that had looked, at first human glance, to be all the same. I view the empty lot, and indeed the entirety of the city, with a heightened awareness of the variety of plant life that thrives even between the sidewalk cracks. Could I make paper from that? As papermakers, we need to be plant people as well as paper people. Just as we propose the necessity of printers and book makers to understand paper, we papermakers need to know plants well, not just how to harvest and process them, but what impact our harvesting has on the plant and on the environment. As book and paper artists, we are always asking ourselves: do the materials speak to the content of the work? So, for the Book Bomb project, we decided to explore making paper from urban fibers, foraging from empty lots in Philadelphia, the sixth largest city in the United States. Through the wet summer of 2009, Paulownia tomentosa shot up to heights that towered over Michelle and myself and extended its reach through the chain link fence that blocked off a nearby lot and into the space of the sidewalk. By removing this plant, we considered ourselves to be guerrilla weeders, clearing the sidewalk for safe pedestrian use. Paulownia tomentosa is a native plant of western and central China that was first introduced into the United States around 1840 as an ornamental plant. It is still sold today, as well as being grown in plantations and harvested for export to Japan. Jimmy Carter, who grows the plant commercially, cautioned about its rapid growth, "Don't put your face over it or you may get a mouthful of leaves." This aggressive invasive thrives in disturbed areas, spreading both by seed and by root and grows up to fifteen feet in a single season. The lot we skirt was once the home of a bar and of a junkyard that was at one time labeled a Superfund site. Now a sign proclaims, "Luxury Townhomes Coming Soon!" Paulownia tomentosa has astringent properties, and is excellent at removing impurities from the soil. As Michelle and I breach the chain link fence and The author shimmies between chain link fencing to access invasives. Photo: Michelle Wilson, 2009. Michelle Wilson, left, and Mary Tasillo, right, gathering Paulownia tomentosa leaves from the sidewalk side of the fence. Photo: Robert Wuilfe, 2009. Mugwort stems cook in soda ash. Photo: Michelle Wilson, 2009. take our saws to the tree, we wonder if it is better to remove this invasive to allow native species to spring up in its stead or let it continue to cleanse the contaminated site? We decide to harvest. Our reasoning: if the lot is about to be bulldozed and paved over with new construction, our action brings a second life to a plant that would just be destroyed. With the current deflated real estate market, I suspect we will have access to the fibers-run-rampant until the economy turns a corner. 14 - hand papermaking In producing the Book Bombs Philagrafika print series, we used Paulownia tomentosa for its tenacity, serving as a metaphor for survival against the odds. We harvested both the large, thick leaves and the inner bark, cooking the leaves in soda ash before beating them in with abaca pulp. Peeling the inner bark from the thicker branches required some protection of the fingertips from the numbing effects of its astringent properties. The inner bark awaits future papermaking experiments. Mugwort does not grow nearly as tall as Paulownia tomentosa, but it covers a lot of ground. From the same lot, we harvested mugwort, and cooked the stems in soda ash. We removed any remaining tough woody pieces of stem and incorporated the mugwort into a beater load of abaca pulp. Mugwort is native to parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa and has medicinal uses. It is also thought to induce vivid dreaming. It is with this in mind that Book Bombs utilized mugwort paper for the third and final print of the Philagrafika series, invoking our dreams for a world where no one must out of necessity, but everyone is welcome to sleep on the park bench of our public spaces. While we are scavenging, making use of plants that ended up in places they do not quite belong, we are also recycling, making use of fibers that are otherwise destined for the dump in a society that produces so much trash that we must ship it across state lines. A third source of fibers for our paper is cotton. While you do not find cotton growing from the sidewalk cracks in Philadelphia, it is plentiful in the form of t-shirts, old socks, and rags. Michelle and I processed old sheets and clothing into paper. Paper's identity as textile fiber comes to the forefront as we blanket benches with our printed paper, perhaps providing warmth in our hopes that the park bench can be a safe and welcoming space. Mugwort invades the sidewalk's surface. Photo: Robert Wuilfe, 2009. As Michelle and I processed fiber, we discussed what passes for cooking food in contemporary society. These days, Michelle pointed out, you are really cooking if you bring chicken breast back from the grocery store, chop it up, and add it to your soup. Before supermarkets, cooking started with a trip out back to kill the chicken. Michelle reflected on never having killed that chicken. This is, I commented, like always making paper from half-stuff. Do we see ourselves as stewards of our local native ecosystem, and our art practice as an integral part of how we care for our surroundings? I propose a slow papermaking movement. Many papermakers have been part of this movement for a long time now, processing by hand fibers grown or gathered from the local land. Creating local plant-based art does not require going back to the land in the traditional off-the-grid sense. It simply requires a reframing of the world around you. If we look around, we see that we can hardly escape plants. They will take back the land, ripping up concrete, given half a chance. The trick for us as city dwellers cohabiting with all this plant life is to begin again to see ourselves as situated within a natural environment. Then we must take the time to observe what we see, to learn what plants are around us, and what uses they have. We must talk with our neighbors, and with those who have developed plant expertise. Only then can we make informed decisions about which plants to gather and best practices for harvesting. What steps must we take to avoid spreading invasive species further as we handle them? This is not only a recipe for better plant-harvesting practices. This is a recipe for better living. Slow down; observe your surroundings; listen to your neighbors. This is slow papermaking, and you can practice it wherever you live. The author examines the stems from the Paulownia tomentosa leaves, piled behind her. Photo: Michelle