(Un)consciously Creating

The process of making paper can be very gentle, tactile, and soothing. It requires you to really feel the fibers of the materials you're working with, from tearing up sheets of compressed fiber into postage sized stamps, to beating up your pulp, and to hand-stirring the pool of pulp sitting in your vat. It requires you to form a relationship with your materials, so you can know when they’re ready to do what you want them to. After pressing sheets of pulp onto pellon, you have to give it all the time it needs to dry thoroughly. If you don’t, you risk destroying the sheets when you attempt to peel them off. However, if you patiently follow through the process of forming sheets, the possibilities are endless, depending on the tools you have available to you. A pair of scissors may seem like the most basic, ordinary crafting tool you can own. However, the act of cutting up your materials is more transformative than you may think! Once you cut up your paper into your desired shapes, you can collage, sew, glue, weave, and/or sculpt them together. You can create cutouts and layer materials together, or leave cutouts as they are. The possibilities are endless!

I also found the paper-making process to be so pleasantly therapeutic. Through it, I found a way to channel the hardships in my life. I created my handmade scroll drawing during the 2020 presidential elections, which was a time where I was really anxious about the direction this country is going. I needed a way to channel my anxiety surrounding this topic because it was beginning to consume my thoughts. To make the scroll above, I had to spend lots of time preparing pulp, since some of it would be dyed with red, orange, or green. The process of making a large scroll with a small mold & deckle would take a while in itself. However, that was exactly what I needed; a distraction. The process of drawing the symbols provided another channel for my negative emotions. I used the colorful blobs as the basis for my drawings; since I was freely drawing I used the texture and colors on the actual paper to guide me. The drawings on the scroll represent my stream of consciousness. As I previously mentioned, it was made during a time of anxiety, so some of the symbols represent that, whereas others are repetitive lines or shapes I drew because drawing repetitive patterns is soothing to me. I also found ways to draw faces into the textures of the paper.

The process of just letting myself draw without a plan wasn’t something I always did before I made this piece. A lot of my work is very calculated. However, at the time I was too anxious to calculate anything, so I just let myself draw freely. The use of color and line them had a very liberating effect. An effect that allowed me to free up the blockage of ideas and motivation that were cooped up due to all of the anxiety I had. While drawing, I felt like there was still something lingering; something that I still had to do. So I took out a pair of scissors and cut slits into the paper. I wrapped string around some of them, drew around some, and left some to speak for themselves. The removal of material may seem like a mundane task, cutting pieces out seemed to have an alleviating effect on my mood. Looking back, I think it helped me feel better because I was bothered by the extra negative space on my sheet, but I also didn’t want to draw more symbols on it than I already had. The cutouts provide visual interest, without overwhelming the piece.

Art has always been my go-to activity to relieve myself of daily (and extraordinary) stressors. It’s my way of letting loose and unwinding at the end of a tough day. Or it could be my way of connecting to others through a collaborative piece or at a mellow painting picnic. It’s just one of those things that feels so natural to me; creating art must be my purpose. My handmade scroll is an exemplar of that. When I felt like I had no other way to detangle my thoughts, I immediately turned to art without hesitation. And it was exactly what I needed.