Often mold drew images; sometimes water glued the sheets together and in separating them they tore, creating strange shapes, activating my imagination. With this loot I went to my "studio," an old greenhouse. I cut, tore, glued, and painted, creating real and imaginative forms. I discovered the adaptability of paper and the possibility of shaping it as if it were a dough, like clay. This crude papier-mâché allowed me to use my creativity for all-around experimentation. I started teaching printmaking techniques in 1974 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata; then in 1978 I began to teach in Milan at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. In addition to printmaking I taught artist books, creative writing, and papermaking. My devotion to paper has followed me to the present, and I have been able to engross and inspire many of my own students toward a passion for printmaking and paper. Together with my students, we have created many works carried out with "homemade" paper pulp, recovering and recycling scraps of handmade paper sheets and failed prints. Once, two female students used a silkscreen measuring 35 x 50 centimeters (14 x 20 inches) to fabricate sheets from paper pulp, and they embossed their body parts into the pulp while still wet. When the paper dried, they reconstructed the entire body in the town square, like a big puzzle. Several times I have been invited as a visiting professor to Europe, Latin America, Asia, and beyond. Today I always travel with an empty suitcase, because on every trip I try to buy local paper, from Tibet to Peru, from East to West. Works on paper have a wide range of applications, from intaglio to relief, lithography, screen printing, collage, and more. In the paper works of the four artists highlighted in this article, including myself, we use techniques of printmaking while remaining faithful to the search for our own language. Our work is the doorway through which we cross to engage in a sustained dialogue between thoughts, research, and materiality. Paper becomes the noun, the secure base where a fascinating world of images and content meet. Memory takes possession of pulp and it transforms into sheet, taking on life. Then, overcoming the apprehension of the sheet, the surface becomes a place to tell a tale, to create a discourse where the work reads like musical notes and whirls the dust of memories to the edge of the border shared with imagination, where the truth is a mirage that appears and disappears. Roberto Mannino's work tells the long story of human life on earth challenging the sky; in his images lie the dream that becomes a reality. They seem to be impressions of ancestral objects found, where life is still present as a memory to retain. They are mysterious objects unearthed from archaeological excavations or underground caverns, bringing out the magical dialogue with nature. Paper pulp in his hands becomes an integral part of the elements populating the earth. In Mannino's work we see the ritual of nature, where the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth—are ideally linked to the dynamics of the magic of the Cosmos. They are a source of inspiration for the artist and points of reference for rituals and planetary representations. Some of his works about tactile perception seem to be modifications of internal objects creating an ambiguity of physical and metaphysical structure between man and the object known. In all his work the theory of human knowledge and its limits is evident. Mannino notes, "I have worked for years in engraving and woodcut, researching the graphic values linked to the density of the dark obtained with elaborate cross-hatching passages, exploring overlapping effects from various plates and techniques (woodcut embossing, handmade paper \[chine-collé\] insertions, engraving on photopolymer plates) to challenge the viewer perception. Some of the final states of my prints resemble textiles in their richness of textures." Empedocles said, "We know the earth with earth, water with water, fire with fire, love with love and hate with hate." In Mannino's works there is the lightness of air and the concreteness of the earth. He works the paper pulp as a sculptor models clay. What fascinates is the mastery he has with the materiality of the paper, to put into service ideas that never prevaricate. He acts as the Demiurge in Plato's Timaeus, endowed with creative capacity—a generator and maker of the universe and the cosmic principle of order. In fact Mannino prefers to intervene in the wet phase of papermaking, shaping and guiding the restraint in the drying phase, allowing him to intensify the structure and the surface, thus giving birth to new materials and new images. Stefano Pizzi searches out old papers printed with images in the style of the early 1900s to build an enduring dialogue between the past and the present. They often become frames to validate, with irony, the content of his image. His work is linked to nostalgia, not so much for the time that once was, but for our own time. The use of recaptured images triggers a back and forth from the melancholy of recovered time to the disconcertion of waiting. On the topic of paper, Pizzi muses, "All papers have character; I love certain types of industrial paper, brown packaging paper, tar paper, or the mustard-colored recycled paper once used mainly by butchers and today is used as placemats in trattorias. They really come to life as the background for work done with oil pastels, similar to the paper that bakeries use as a base for cakes, shaped round and filigreed in lace: ideal for ironic as well as poetic compositions!" In his pictorial fables time flows through the fingers like sand, which indeed he uses as a pictorial material to bring out the roughness of the paper. What fascinates me about Roberto Stelluti is his great technical ability and the freshness and purity of his images. Executed in intaglio, Stelluti's images are drawn with fine metal points that run confidently on the surface of the metal plate, removing the satin ground. He is expert in biting the plate in acid before going to the press; that too holds its secrets. With a method dating to 1820 employed by artists such as Morandi, Stelluti often uses Bible paper for a more precisely printed image, simultaneously Stefano Pizzi, Colibrì \[Hummingbird\], 2014, 100 x 70 centimeters (39.4 x 27.5 inches), mixed media on Asian paper. winter 2016 - 35 Roberto Stelluti, Le Fanciullacce di Pescelupo \[Italian name for the plant known as Nigella damascene–Ed.\], 2008, 496 x 354 millimeters (19.5 x 13.9 inches), zinc etching on paper. creating a colored background enclosing the image on the larger sheet. The pressure of the press will firmly attach the two papers. He explains, "by the early 1980s I chose to place between the printing paper and the ink itself, a small foundation sheet of ivory, sand, or light cream color. This sheet, the same size as my image, would offer a more refined feel to the work I wanted to create, because of a slight coloration to the print which makes the example or the proof more valuable and unique. The term ‘Bible' is used because the paper is used often to print sacred texts requiring many pages. It is a very thin and strong paper." The etching, printed on the lightly colored background, highlights the white margins of the handmade paper sheet. Stelluti's stories are immediately brought out; his imaginative dreams and above all his poetry, often pantheistic, reveal his vision in which everything is permeated by the miracle of life. He tells with passion and sensitivity not only the history of landscape and nature, but the whole epic of life in its antitheses of good and evil, where birth, life, and death have the earth and the sky as a stage. "I tend to exaltation of detail," explains Stelluti. "Etching requires the absolute dominion of one's self and one's means. … A great patience is required, together with the fantasy and the technique, to obtain a necessary balance." In my work, the emotional situations established by my contact with and my use of paper create, along with my technical skills and inventive capacity, a state of challenge within me. Paper of any kind in my hands becomes the primary element, fully responding to such demands, right from the start of a project. The same physical contact with the material becomes a moment of love and creative passion. I consider this relationship—with the sheet and the pulp—an indispensable experience, because it is a more refined way of perceiving my thoughts, transmitting them through the constructive complicity of a body that is not inert, but rather natural and alive as paper is. Paper becomes the ideal place to establish a symbiosis with one's own being and frees invention, establish a symbiosis with one's own being and frees invention, the personal lexicon, giving life to new worlds and letting flow the personal lexicon, giving life to new worlds and letting flow my own narrative. my own narrative. Generally paper does not permit rethinking of traces, tones, Generally paper does not permit rethinking of traces, tones, shades, or cuts, thus the work that follows is true and sincere. shades, or cuts, thus the work that follows is true and sincere. As an active element, paper participates in and supports the As an active element, paper participates in and supports the creation of an image, especially when the changing porosity or creation of an image, especially when the changing porosity or surface imperfections intervene with details of the initial idea. surface imperfections intervene with details of the initial idea. For me these are stimuli instead of obstacles. The details of For me these are stimuli instead of obstacles. The details of the surface of cellulose fibers reveal themselves as important the surface of cellulose fibers reveal themselves as important and live their lives among marks and colors. Paper is versatile, and live their lives among marks and colors. Paper is versatile, opaque and transparent, ductile and malleable, properties that opaque and transparent, ductile and malleable, properties that other materials do not have. The fibers meekly allow themselves other materials do not have. The fibers meekly allow themselves to be manipulated so that I bring the paper alive and responsive to be manipulated so that I bring the paper alive and responsive under my impulses. Indeed it accepts physical deformities, facilitated by the moisture of the pigments that the fibers under my impulses. Indeed it accepts physical deformities, facilitated by the moisture of the pigments that the fibers absorb as the paper swells, twists, is shaped in an imperceptible absorb as the paper swells, twists, is shaped in an imperceptible molecular earthquake that unfolds in a global vision of the molecular earthquake that unfolds in a global vision of the object's transformation into sculpture. object's transformation into sculpture. We are four artists, each unique in values and research. All our We are four artists, each unique in values and research. All our work reveals the intimate qualities that every artist guards, and work reveals the intimate qualities that every artist guards, and which nourish our souls. While maintaining our individuality which nourish our souls. While maintaining our individuality of thought and creativity, we all are "prey" to the enchantment of thought and creativity, we all are "prey" to the enchantment brought about by paper. We put into play the love that we have for brought about by paper. We put into play the love that we have for paper, and our works tell of this long and uninterrupted history of paper, and our works tell of this long and uninterrupted history of life, of love, and of passion. life, of love, and of passion. I wish to note the work of honorary Italian artist Lynn Sures, who lives I wish to note the work of honorary Italian artist Lynn Sures, who lives her art with careful curiosity between fantasy and reality and communicates, her art with careful curiosity between fantasy and reality and communicates, especially through paper, the reason for our life on earth and especially through paper, the reason for our life on earth and why we are here. why we are here.

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