uld be alarmed by this prediction. Industrial anthropogenic activities have irreversibly changed our planet, leaving a new one in its wake. The altered environment requires innovative methods of artmaking. In response, I have been exploring one such method: seawater papermaking. >>>
<div style="display:none;">    While I learned papermaking in Chicago, I am originally from Southern California and want to share this medium with the region, but the climatic history and future of the area is riddled with droughts. How, on our warming planet, can papermaking be a sustainable practice in regions lacking adequate access to fresh water? Seawater papermaking offers an answer to depleting fresh water sources, and a rejection of traditional ideologies of artmaking. Seawater papermaking is not for artists disturbed by imperfections or non-archival results. This is a method best suited for environmentally inclined, adventurous individuals and small studios that accept the limitations and implications of using this increasingly abundant resource for papermaking. Using seawater for hand papermaking introduces a number of important considerations. One is the physical composition of the water itself. Seawater contains a number of different elements, organisms, and pollutants, and its makeup is different depending on its proximity to continents and ice. Papermaking studios often filter their freshwater. In my own practice, I do not strive for purity and perfection in, and to some degree, control of my finished product. I often collaborate with natural processes like growth and decay in my work. It is because of this ideology that I can accept seawater papermaking as a viable method on this new and challenging planet.2 Interestingly, seawater pH is on average 8.2 (slightly alkaline). The pH of archival, acid-free paper is 7 (pH neutral) or slightly alkaline. 3 Based on pH alone, seawater is not a bad option for archival papermaking. However, humans have fundamentally altered the ocean's waters with marine pollution and increased amounts of atmospheric carbon.4 Due to industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, chemicals, particles, microscopic organisms, and an acidifying ocean, seawater composition is in constant flux. While this is a challenging drawback for some, using seawater for papermaking can raise awareness of these oceanic changes, prompting increased environmental awareness, and ideally protection. 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. Despite all this I was determined to give it a try. For my attempt I selected a day with an extreme low tide around noon. To my delight, the tide rolled out, exposing scads of tide pools deep and calm enough to manage sheet formation; there was no need to battle the waves this time. Using pulp made from local cattail seeds and inclusions from the sea (shells, seaweed, and sand, for example), my assistants—the talented Elizabeth Puckett, Erin Bartleson, and Colin Whitbread— and I formed sheets using a small deckle box. The damp, hard sand provided an ideal surface and a good amount of water tension for couching off the drained sheets. We allowed them to dry until sunset after which we stacked them together, alternating paper and pellon, and brought them indoors to continue drying. This experiment could have been vastly improved with a press with which to remove excess water from the sheets and to restrain them while drying. Additionally, cattail seeds are not the ideal fiber for paper made without a press. The resulting sheets are truly experimental, defying their own objecthood, and just barely holding together to form what we call a sheet of paper. In future experiments, I plan on using more suitable fiber and and appropriate equipment. Formed sheets couched on the sand, January 2011. Courtesy of the author. The transient quality of tide pool papermaking complements our future of increasing extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, and droughts. In regions where extreme weather will make static structures and behaviors more vulnerable (and insurance policies more expensive), studio-less artmaking practices will develop out of necessity. The wandering, small-scale artist will thrive in the throws of climate migration. In this new world, adaptability will triumph over sedentary tradition. Of course tides, surf conditions, and the appearance of tide pools vary greatly and cannot be relied on as a consistent "studio." Therefore I have started researching the logistics of plumbing seawater indoors. This raises serious concerns, as the corrosive power of seawater on pipes and equipment can be financially damaging, but there are certain industries that have this figured out already. Desalinization plants, nuclear power plants, and some aquariums have the infrastructure in place. Call me a dreamer, but perhaps a seawater studio could be built in collaboration with these industries, aligning activist art practice with established technology to address mutual ecological concerns. It is my hope that readers who are interested in collaborating on this effort, or in sharing useful information, will contact me at maggie.puckett@ gmail.com. ___________ notes 1. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007 (Geneva: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007), http://www.ipcc.ch/ publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms3.html (accessed November 21, 2011). 2. For more on this new planet "Eaarth," see Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (New York: Times Books, 2010). 3. "Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide," The Royal Society Policy document 12/05 (London: The Royal Society, June 2005), http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/ publications/2005/9634.pdf (accessed November 21, 2011). 4. Ken Caldeira and Michael E. Wickett, "Anthropogenic Carbon and Ocean pH," Nature 425 (September 2003): 365.

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