I created a page on my website where the results of my bookpaper stencils can be seen, but I thought I would go into my process of creating finished work in this series. ?My previous work with graphite and grease pencil has already been covered in the
previous post.
While I relax in the evening, I will have several pages pulled from books ready to work on.
I’ll sit and explore some folds and basically create simple origami rectangles and triangles and pile them up.
Then I take each one up, and as I examine the directions of the folds with a very open sense of what the possibilities are, I’ll begin tearing lines, changing directions, follow an internal labyrinth. ?The idea, I suppose, is to never go directly to a destination, but to shift position; turn just before I think of turning, or slightly after. ?The paper also has a way of telling my fingers what to do. The layers of paper shift a little, slide out of place enough so that I need to flatten the folds again and begin from there. ?I don’t throw away the pieces I remove, and have lately been reserving them to be put back, leaving the little torn journey to delineate the composition.
When I feel like I’ve reached the end of the inherent possibilites, I’ll slowly open the page to see what new shapes appear. I flatten them with an iron, but as everything you do to a piece of paper is recorded on it, the folds themselves become a part of the overall composition.
Lately, I have been ironing beeswax into the flattened stencils, and that creates a transparency that I very much like. The printed page shows both sides now, and the interplay of the typeface is significant, becomes more of a texture than of a narrative.
The next stage is often to scan the stencils before I mount them for presentation, as the digital version can be further manipulated in so many ways. When combined with my graphite drawings, the choices are increased dramatically, as they can be enlarged or made smaller, or transparent- I can cut out the textured print and expand it beyond the boundaries of the page.
I use an archival spray adhesive lightly on one side of the stencil and place it on a printed background. The background can have a printed color or texture.
To complete a given piece, my mixture of copal, damar and beeswax is brushed lightly over the whole, and heat is applied until the paper takes up the medium and becomes wonderfully translucent, the printed inks appear in subtle relief. For presentation, the print is then mounted to a larger sheet of rag paper so that it has a large enough margin to be handled until framed.
