Before I made paper, I wondered about paper. I was lucky to have an art teacher when I was young that taught me to use watercolors, and over the years and into my undergraduate degree in illustration, watercolor became my most comfortable art making tool. Even today, my most grounding exercise is sitting down with my pallets and spending a couple hours painting with watercolor. As a medium, watercolor shines best when it works closely with the substrate, and over time I wondered why the best papers were so expensive. I wanted to use the 300lb Arches paper, cold pressed and thick, an art piece in its own right. I struggled to find information about how it was made (this was before use of the internet was common!)–– something made it different than the pads of affordable paper—and my attempts with a blender did not work. Somehow, I did not cross paths with a papermaker until I started working at Magnolia Editions, and on my first day I was asked if I wanted to make paper.
Making paper is an incredibly physical act. It requires an intentionality and focus that I find so important in my practice. There is also risk––so much can go wrong––but when it is right it can feel magical.
I chase that feeling, the convergence of material and thought that borders on the mystical. I love the meditative repetition of pulling sheets, the revelation of opening a dry box to see how each unique sheet turned out. I find so much meaning in materiality as well, and the alchemical process of choosing all my materials, from the ground up, adds much to my work. I always think about Hemingway’s theory that if the writer knew something, even if he didn’t write it down, the reader would still feel it even if it wasn’t in the text. In a like manner, I believe that a viewer of an art piece gleans much from intentional material choice, even if it isn’t evident visually. Handmade paper is different from what we are used to. Even a plain white sheet with the deckle cut off sits differently, catches the light in its own way, presents text differently that challenges the expectations of a viewer/reader. I am always looking for that catch, the hiccup in the continuum, when it comes to my own work.
Several years ago, I discovered the capillary action of unsized paper and the chromatographic process of black ink in a solution of water or other solvent. I love the process and surprise in working this way. It has again that feeling of magic and discovery. It rides the line of chaos and control. I have to let go and let the materials do what they will. And then the “real art” happens, I always say. There is discomfort in this, but also more satisfaction when it works. I make this inky wonderland paper often, playing around with all the many variations, trying to use the same materials over and over again to develop some kind of predictable technique.
This creates a huge surplus of this material in the studio. The new book We are Porous was born out a desire to both use and share this paper with a wider audience. I see it as an ongoing series. I am going to call each varied edition “an expression.” Each will be bound and placed in a box with a printed label. My hope is that it will be both beautiful to experience as a stand-alone artist book and interesting for other papermakers to see how the series develops over time. The pages of these books to me seem simultaneously like small glimpses of the known world and tiny forays into the unknown.
Heather Peters is a book artist and papermaker who runs a papermaking and fine art studio out of Los Angeles called Society of Hermits. Innovating with fibers and pigmenting techniques, she incorporates handmade papers into her artist books.
