I am fortunate to live near the Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta. I take workshops there, meet artists at the gallery openings, and learn about new techniques. In January 2003 I met Lynn Sures, the curator of an exhibit of collegiate art, at the museum. She answered my questions about the technical aspects of pulp spraying. Our conversation gave me the confidence to pursue a large-scale work. I used handmade paper as a scenic element in a production of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul, at the Horizon Theatre in Atlanta, which opened March 28th, 2003, a Southeastern premiere. A variety of themes related to paper are carried through the play. An old guidebook is the catalyst for a character’s journey to Afghanistan, a land foreign to her. The play explores language, poetry, religion, and politics between cultures. History, expressed in written and oral traditions, is part of these characters’ struggle to understand and communicate.  The design collaboration for this production began in December 2002 with the full design staff. Guest Director Vincent Murphy (Artistic Producing Director of Theatre Emory, at Emory University) wanted to tell the story in a metaphorical setting, stripped of realistic trappings, evoking a rugged Afghan landscape weathered by time and history. The playing space concept was an archeological dig or river of history, a landscape representing elements that are natural and manmade, ancient and current, eroded and attacked. He envisioned a theatrical, nonrealistic setting that could instantly change from interior to exterior and also take us back in time to experience the history of the location.  My initial ideas evolved into the versatile obelisks and handmade paper wall hangings of the final design. I began to see images of ancient paper documents as scenic elements on the floor and surrounding space. I used scraps of handmade paper in my scenic model and sculpted the obelisks to scale in paper clay. A photograph showing handprint marks left by fifteenth century Moors in Spain inspired the backdrop on one wall of the set. But the director felt the shape of this wall was too solid, too defined. So, I removed the wall from the scale model, tore it into three rough shapes and placed them back on the model. At that moment I began to see these shapes as large, solid sheets of paper. The sheets became ancient walls marked with the handprints of loved ones and lost lives. The actors would connect to these unseen characters by touching the handprints. The negative space below the wall pieces became the surrounding mountains. The thick paper pulp created a surface that suggests skin, hide, ancient scrolls, and walls of earth, with its rough texture and delicate edges. The stage floor was painted to look like a large sheet of paper, torn and separated, revealing black voids between the pieces adding to the sense of erosion and passing time that we wanted to convey. The use of paper brought the themes of language and communication to life. The obelisks were shaped from white beaded foam blocks and slabs mounted on rolling bases. I carved holes suggesting windows and the hollow, eroded space inside old dwellings. Deep lines were carved to suggest the cracked scars of the natural landscape. The obelisks were primed with a pinkish sand–tinted paint before applying the paper pulp. The paint provided a base color in case the paper was damaged during performances. Floors and walls were covered with plastic to catch moisture and pulp overspray. We restricted the paper sheet forming area to the least used space, so our workspace was limited, and we had to share it with the actors during evening rehearsals. The cotton linter paper pulp was tinted by hand using aqueous dispersed pigments and retention aid. The pulp was sprayed by air pressure through a texture hopper. This method was used for coating the sculptures and forming the sheets. I ordered a fifteen-pound beater load of Cotton Linter #29 from Twinrocker Handmade Paper, beaten medium coarse. Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) was added for strength and adhesion through surface bonding. Hand painting by brush and spray gun was required to bring out highlights, shadows, and details in the carved grooves and depressions. I wanted the paint colors to blend easily on the paper surface. In hindsight, the color bleeding was not necessary and difficult to control. Also, I now know that the same pulp, sized, is easier to tint and allows a deeper range of tinting. In the future, I hope to use more blends of tinted pulp to build up the highlights and shadows in my sculptural work. The texture hopper was set up with the 1/8” diameter air tip and 3/8” diameter opening on the orifice plate. I set my three horsepower compressor in the 50-60 pound air pressure range. These settings provided sufficient airflow for the pulp while controlling the spray pattern to a medium spread. The pulp was diluted with just enough water to allow it to flow evenly through the hopper. It had a nice Cream of Wheat consistency. (I imagined I was mixing gruel for a production of Oliver!) Applying pulp to the two obelisks and the three sheets was completed over a five-day work period. I was fortunate to have an assistant help me mix the color, load the hopper, and compress the sprayed pulp with sponges. Theater artists are renowned for using materials and processes against their original intent. This production was no exception. Some of the methods described here run counter to normal papermaking procedures, but they were necessary because of the short theater production timeframe. While these methods probably did not create archival paper, they worked fine for the limited, seven-week duration of the production.  The first trick I employed was preparing the obelisks’ vertical surfaces with thick wallpaper adhesive to ensure the sprayed pulp would stay in place. This avoided the pulp slide I imagined might happen if the diluted pulp did not stick to the painted surface. The adhesive also made the paper more durable and better able to withstand the wear and tear of performance. The pulp was sprayed on the wet adhesive and allowed to drain for approximately one hour. We pressed the pulp by hand using cellulose sponges to compress the fiber and absorb excess moisture. We sprayed a second layer to add strength and to make the surface thicker. I used a hopper full of a second color of pulp, burnt sienna, which I randomly sprayed to add spots of color for surface variation. This layer blended nicely with the yellow ochre base pulp. I also filled the hopper with layers of both pulps, parfait style, and allowed the colors to blend randomly as the pulps moved through the hopper. It was great fun watching the pulps change color as they emerged from the sprayer and I found this improvisation very inspiring for future work.  Over-sprayed pulp was rescued from the floor and applied by hand on the sculptures to hide seams and vary the thickness. Hand sponging occasionally removed divots of pulp when the sponge was very wet. These holes were easily replaced by handfuls of the salvaged pulp. We used Horizon Theatre’s giant, 48” industrial fan to accelerate the drying time. The surfaces were dry to the touch after overnight exposure to these winds. Despite the accelerated drying conditions, we saw no pulp cracking on the obelisks. After viewing the obelisks in rehearsals, we realized that some of the corners were too straight. They did not have the proper age and decay in relation to the adjoining sides. I sliced away some foam to round out these exposed corners and applied fresh sheets of pulp by hand to the exposed edges. Touch-up painting completed the transition. In the end, the paper pulp provided a lightweight texture over the foam block obelisks, which could be moved easily and gracefully as the scenes changed to different locations. The inspiration for the paper wall started with a sample of handmade paper that had a nice wrinkled texture. However, when I experimented with forming the paper between sheets of loose, thin plastic to duplicate this texture, I found I could not dry the large sheets quickly on the plastic and maintain the texture. A vacuum system or other pressing mechanism on such a large scale and with limited time was out of the question. Theatrical creativity kicked in again. I decided to form the sheets on paper dropcloths. I found cheap, disposable paper dropcloths (available at paint and hardware stores) a valuable asset. The thin paper provided a perfect, absorbent backing for the sprayed pulp. A plastic sheet is laminated on the backside of the dropcloth. The plastic was easily removed after the pulp sheets were dry and I could paint on additional wrinkles by rag rolling. The dropcloths were taped to the floor so that the air pressure from the sprayer would not send them flying across the stage. The first spraying was allowed to dry for several hours. As with the obelisks, we compressed the pulp by hand using cellulose sponges to absorb excess moisture. A second spraying added strength and thickness to the sheets. Again the Horizon Theatre’s giant floor fan accelerated drying time. The sheets were untaped at strategic points to allow shrinkage while drying overnight. I welcomed the buckling and splitting that might occur on the fan-dried paper. We were not disappointed upon returning to the theater the next morning: the paper was dry to the touch and some wonderful large ridges had formed. I repaired one extreme split by applying thinned wallpaper paste and a thick layer of fresh pulp. The finished sheets were reinforced on the back with cotton cheesecloth glued to the weaker areas with flexible PVA glue. I tore off excess paper around the edges to form irregular shapes and to reduce the sheets to their final size. I also added some tears and holes. The largest sheet was approximately five feet wide by nine feet high. Side lighting emphasized the natural sags and wrinkles of the loosely hung paper. Two sheets hung from the wall; the third sheet was sprayed directly onto the wall. To do this, I masked the wall using wide strips of the paper dropcloth, creating a stencil for the paper pulp. I applied thick wallpaper adhesive directly to the wall and then sprayed the pulp in two layers, as with the other applications. The stencil was removed to reveal a sheet with a shape similar to the hanging sheets. Several tech crewmembers then added their handprints, of various sizes, to the wall hangings. All of the paper scenic elements were protected with RoscoFlamex C26 flame retardant. The easy choices for texturing the set surfaces for this production would have been to use conventional texture coatings for the obelisks and perhaps painted muslin for the wall hangings. We wanted some production value for the scenic elements since the action is performed in a very bare, intimate space. The papermaking techniques were a great choice for a unique tactile experience as the cotton pulp nicely imitated both natural and manmade textures. These surfaces were seen and felt by both the actors and the audience members, who entered the theater and crossed the playing space to take their seats. After the show, some of them lingered at the wall, touching the paper and pondering the handprints. This unexpected interaction showed how handmade paper became a successful element in joining the audience, the actors, and the story.