I was introduced to abaca at Dieu Donne Papermill, where I learned almost everything I ever wanted to know about papermaking. I was intrigued initially by abaca's translucency, but it was at Penland School in North Carolina a year later that I learned firsthand about its sculptural properties. After a demonstration one day by the instructor Jennifer Morrow, I tried embedding a few pieces of wire between sheets of wet abaca paper, which I then pressed and left to air dry. When I came back the next day, I was amazed to discover that the sheet had actually stood up on its wire legs, taking on a three-dimensional form. That sheet of paper sat in my studio for a couple of years before I figured out what to do with it, eventually turning it into a lampshade. The shrinkage properties of abaca have continued to surprise me and eventually led to the production of my films, The Secret Life of Paper and Water Paper Time, in which videographer Gretchen Hogue captures the astounding properties of abaca in time-lapse photography on film. One of the threads that runs through my work is light, expressed through the translucency of the fibers I work with; the creation of lamp, lantern, and other sculptural forms that are enhanced by illumination; and an interest in watermarking. I recently developed a watermarked paper for a limited-edition book project. I envisioned a paper that would have an all-over alphabet pattern in the form of a watermark, but visible without illumination. Sue Gosin described a method, in a past installment of my Hand Papermaking Newsletter column, that I thought could help me achieve the paper for my project. I also consulted a couple of colleagues who work a lot with pigments. I decided to create heavily pigmented sheets using little retention aid, so that the pigment would run to the edges of the watermarks, thus highlighting the design. And to my delight, I succeeded on my first try! The surprise came a couple of months later, when I tried to edition the paper. I made several attempts to reproduce the watermark, but to no avail. The majority of the problem came from my lack of keeping good notes. Honestly I did not expect to get it right the first time, so I did not keep a record of the fibers and pigments that I had used. Plus, generally I am not in the practice of replicating what I have done before, always eagerly moving on to the next project. I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure this out, with little success. Throughout the process, I consulted colleagues about my dilemma and got a chuckle out of this advice from Nick Pears: "I'll make some suggestions but also I'd advise you always follow the advice given to me by an old papermaker I used to work with—‘Think about how to solve your problem and try your best shot. When that doesn't work, do the opposite.'" This reminds me of another surprise I had when I was writing Papermaking With Plants. As I interviewed colleagues about their techniques of working with various plant fibers, I was astonished at the number of ways people approach the same step in the papermaking process, from collecting fibers to beating pulp, from pigmenting to sheet forming, and from pressing and drying to finishing paper. I soon discovered that there is no definitive way to do anything in papermaking. And this, I presume, is why it has kept my attention for so long.
