Editor’s note: This profile article is adapted from “The Unique Art of Sarah Brayer,” an essay in the book Sarah Brayer: Inner Light, published on the occasion of the exhibition “Sarah Brayer: Inner Light,” at Tofukuji Komyo-in Temple, in Kyoto, Japan, April 28–May 5, 2021. To see a video of the exhibition and the book, go to the artist’s website, sarahbrayer.com.
In 1986, Kyoto, Japan–based artist and printmaker Sarah Brayer returned to the US to make color aquatints with master printer Kathy Caraccio in New York City. On a hunch that Brayer would enjoy working with poured paper pulp, Caraccio sent her over to the nearby hand-papermaking workshop Dieu Donné. The process of working with pulp gave Brayer a freedom of movement and color that she had not until then experienced. She was hooked. Her forms became more fluid, and her works larger and more expressive. Pouring paper to make images introduced an element of chance to her practice, challenging her imagination as well as her technical skills.
When Brayer returned to Kyoto, she immediately sought out a workshop in which she could experiment with washi. Her local paper dealer directed her to the papermaking factory and studio run by his family in the 1,500-year-old Imadate town, now known as Echizen City. Brayer has worked there continuously, the only Western artist to do so, since 1986. She is assisted by a female team of master papermakers who help her move the giant screens that are essential tools for her large-scale works.
One advantage of making art at the papermaking factory has been the possibility of creating on a much larger scale than a printing press allows. The papermakers have equipment and expertise to help her make paper for fusuma (sliding paper doors). Fusuma measure 180 x 90 centimeters (70.87 x 35.43 inches), the same size as the tatami mats in Japanese houses. By combining several such panels side by side, Brayer can make expansive compositions. Biwako Blue (1988), a poured, kozo paperwork mounted as a screen, was the first large-scale landscape work she made in Echizen. To create the work, Brayer made large paper patterns to control the flow of the kozo pulp on each panel so that the composition flows consistently from one panel to the next after drying. She made numerous colors and poured them over a dark paper ground, which acted like an under painting and made the colors appear more vibrant. “What attracts me to washi,” Brayer noted, “is the texture and ‘voice’ of kozo and mitsumata fibers, whose feather-like qualities can be layered.”1 Brayer continued to make paper using the fusuma-size papermaking screen, but eliminated the frame and left the paper’s natural edges to make architectural murals instead of sliding doors and screens. In 2008, Brayer created Blue Surge, a seven-panel piece for a floating glass wall installed in a restaurant in Oakland, California.
A unifying concern of Brayer’s work is light, often embodied by but not limited to her moon imagery. In Approaching Storm (2011), made with poured linen pulp, flax pulp, and pigment at Dieu Donné in New York, Brayer poured extra water onto the paper, flooding it so the pigment bled into softer shapes that would suggest clouds full of water. She captured the sense of drama of the light in the water before an impending storm.
Working in two different studios—one a traditional Japanese papermaking factory and the other an artist workspace in New York—has been a central element in Brayer’s creative oeuvre. Brayer explained, “Working with flax and pigment and the Western method allows me to use vibrant color and bleed outside the edges of the rectangle. This I find exciting. With the washi fiber that I pour in Japan, the scale of the screen is larger than life and the fiber is more textured and feathery, so I can create a ‘world’ the viewer can step into. Working in both methods in different locations allows me a flow, by constantly changing the parameters of my work.”
Experimentation is central to Brayer’s process. Her exquisite craftsmanship and her mastery of her materials allow her to push past boundaries and invent new forms of expression. For a series of paperworks called The Red Thread,2 Brayer recalled, “When I discovered I could adhere a translucent layer of tengujo washi [gossamer-thin kozo paper] onto a poured paperwork, it opened another realm of dimension, and expanded the possibilities in the medium. Paperworks could become three-dimensional and the thin veils could be free to move in the wind.” To create Tiger’s Eye (2013), the first in The Red Thread series, Brayer ironed on some tengujo washi over moon panels she had made several years beforehand. The static electricity held the paper in place and added a sensuous line from the fold of the washi. She decided to let the pieces float on top such that she could roll the work and send it in a tube. She began using silk as an underlay and inside the forms to give them dimension. In another work from The Red Thread series, Red Petals (2016), Brayer incorporated an ink drawing into the washi as she was making it. The graceful calligraphic line contrasts with the more forceful lines of the red threads, but in the end they imbue the fan-like petals with tension and coherence.
Brayer merges drawing, printmaking, and papermaking in many of her works. For a recent edition Midnight Moon (2020), part of her Luminosity series, Brayer began with handmade mulberry paper in which the fibers swirl in suspension. After drying the washi, Brayer hand painted with indigo and ultramarine pigments to depict a deep night sky filled with stars. After the washi was dried and hand-painted with indigo and ultramarine pigments, it looked like a deep night sky filled with stars. She then hand painted the crescent moon and penumbra with phosphorescent pigment to add a presence to the work in the dark. When exhibited at Komyo-in Zen temple,3 the work was shown with shifting light that echoes the natural world’s day/night cycle of light. Brayer remarked, “The century-old wooden meditation hall permeated with sounds from the garden, including wind and singing birds. I could hear viewers gasp as the works revealed themselves in the darkened setting. It was especially moving since Kyoto was in a semi-lockdown and people gathered at the temple to be surrounded by art in a stunning temple setting.”
Though certain themes and imagery persist in her work, Sarah Brayer does not hesitate to introduce new ideas and forms, and she continues to experiment freely with traditional methods of printmaking and papermaking. Her fertile imagination and consummate craftsmanship distinguish her as one of the leading artists of her generation.
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NOTES
1.
All quotes by Sarah Brayer in this article are from e-mail correspondence in January–February 2022.
2.
The title of the series refers to Red Thread Zen, in which passion is used as a road to enlightenment, as represented by the red thread-like forms in Brayer’s compositions.
3.
Komyo-in means “place of light or illumination,” an ideal setting for Brayer’s paperworks.
