We wove straps of overbeaten abaca and then cut the weavings into 2” x 3” pieces for the 2019 Swatch Swap book.
Read moreslush pulp: bespoke drawing paper
there’s tooth and then there’s texture
We’ve been making pastel drawings for a while now. We wondered how we could bring the drawing and the sculpture together. Making our own drawing paper seemed a start.
Read morebamboo ribs, abaca skin
abaca and bamboo artwork held up to the light to show the translucency of the paper
We have made several of these bamboo and abaca structures and we’re still learning. We’re inspired by Peter Gentenaar’s amazing works.
Read moreHow we work
Table top sculpture made using 3 pieces from our paper objects inventory combined with a split bamboo frame.
Our working method is discontinuous
We're sculptors who work with paper. We make paper objects that we find visually alluring, but seldom think of them as sculpture.
These objects become a wonderful, reusable stash of found objects that we just happened to have made ourselves. We put them together with other elements, paper or otherwise (usually wood, foam board and wire), to create our sculptures.
casting on edge
Crumple some copper sheeting with a rubber mallet and set it on edge. Drape a long sheet of wet paper over it. Dribble in some pebbles in the valley to sharpen the peaks.
Read moreBlowouts - water spray on freshly pulled handmade paper
black and white cotton linter blowout couched onto a peach backing sheet
We deckle boxed a sheet of mixed black and white cotton pulp. After removing the deckle, we lay some weighty, interesting shapes on the sheet (in this case some steel clamps.) Then we remove all the pulp still showing by blowing it out with the spray from a water hose. The weight of the objects keeps the water pressure from displacing them and disturbing the pulp beneath.
Read moremaking puffers
Detail of a work incorporating a “puffer,” see recent work
Putting a patch of low shrinkage cotton fiber onto a high shrinkage ground like abaca produces a wonderful puffing effect. The post follows the creation of the puffer shown above.
Read moreHeftier coils - part 4
some non-silicon sealant coil cores ceremoniously curing outside the studio
The next step for our coil evolution - making them heftier and more resilient to studio and composing wear and tear. Without losing the linear drawing in space feel, we also want to make them more sculptural.
Bathroom/window sealant became our medium for cores. We tried several. The one we went with cured the fastest, retained a nice rubbery feel and was the strongest when tugged on.
Read moreThese Coils change planes - part 3
Up to now, the coils have stayed on one plane, fabricated and dried on a flat table top. When we used them in compositions, we liked that when they were under load they lost their flatness and twisted into 3 dimensions.
We decided to make them 3 dimensional from the get go. Recently, we had some bright white rope piled on a work table. We wondered how we might make a coil act more rope-like and loop about in space.
Read moreCoils racing around flashing - part 2
Carving grooves in pink insulation foam board to cast coil designs seems clever, but impractical.
Our next idea is to use strips of aluminum flashing held in position with kebab skewers. They may have a miniature race track feel to them, but they work really well.
Read moreCoils in the groove - part 1
Afternoon, November 29, 2018, waiting on a coil to dry.
We use a lot of hidden wire, velcro, tape and nails to attach our paper objects to each other, but we don't like hiding things. We prefer making connectors part of the work.
So we rolled overbeaten abaca into coils and figured out how to cast them into linear forms. An attractive length of stiff abaca "rope" seemed useful for cobbling things together.
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