In 1980 I discovered papermaking for myself while in undergraduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington. At the time I considered it a fleeting fascination. Today, almost twenty years later, handmade paper has ingrained itself into my personal vocabulary. After accompanying me through all stages of my development and following me to a large number of relocations it has arrived back with me at my home in Bloomington, Indiana where I have set up my own modest paper facility.

While I was innitially drawn to papermaking as a printmaker with the intention to control surface structure, size and shape of the papers I printed on, I ended up with an affinity to just the opposite : having to leave the surface and its structural components to its own will and then later molding myself into what the paper presented me with. There is an enormously inspirational element for me in this process of yielding to the surface, and today I accomodate this factor into the larger content of my work. So as an image idea presents itself to me I plan the corresponding handmade surface for it as a sort of choreography of the medium and dance with its deviations which it will inevitably present me with. Later I incorporate these deviations into the image and most of the time they seem to present themselves - amazingly - as welcome components to my larger intentions.

Handmade paper supports the contradictions which I am so interested in in my work : it provides for a rough, tortured surface or awkward semblance of a frame into which the image then gets molded in contrasting refinement. While the roughness of the paper undermines the exactness of the drawing, the realism of the image conflicts but also melds with the paper. The result is to be an uncomfortable yet familiar configuration.

Perhaps the biggest attraction papermaking has held for me is its reference to the body, in particular to human skin and its surface. Handmade paper stretches, shrinks covers, hides , reveals; it almost 'behaves' like skin in its potential for luminosity and movement. And much like it is made of dead fibrous material it has the potential for looking like dead skin... In this expressive function handmade paper has become both underlying foil for my compositions and medium in its own right for my work.

As I mostly work in large sizes in the 5 by 6 feet range I forge my paper on the floor not in the traditional post couching and pressing manner. Using a 11"x16"' screen I 'patchwork'-couch onto a large blanket (or several blankets) until the piece has the desired consistency. Enclosures of objects certainly remain possible on this scale and are a part of my work. I use a waterhose for manipulating the shape and edges of my sheets, spraying the edges until they have the desired shape and texture. The pieces then get blotted off and air-dry on the blanket. I sometimes move the paper off the blacket when half dry and stretch-dry it pinned up on the wall when I want a particularly tortured surface. Sometimes I use embedded string to force the direction of a stretch.

My pulp of choice is flax because it most resembles the color of human skin. It is also tremendously versatile and has the strength to support large sheet sizes while remaining somewhat fragile, translucent and vulnerable in its look. Because of the high cost of flax I 'stretch' it with a well-beaten unbleached Abaca for making very large pieces.

Handmade paper is the supporting medium to all of my drawings, sculptural and semi-sculptural pieces and comprises most surfaces my books are made of. It has become particularly interesting to me for the bookmaking process as it can incorporate structural elements (such as string or other embeddings which can function for the binding itself) and pictorial components which include text itself. In order to gain more flexibility for incorporating text designs into the book format I have devised a watermarking technique which I would like to describe in detail here.

Alternative Watermarking

The alternative watermark method which I have devised for my specific bookmaking needs is essentially a stencil technique.The principle is the same as the traditional wire-on-screen watermark : the pulp becomes thinner wherever it lays upon the wire. When held against the light the design stands out as more translucent than its surrounding area. In my alternative method the wire is replaced with contact paper and the couching process is adjusted to accomodate the more capricious demands of maneuvering this material.

The impetus for this working method came from my need for a more flexible design material with a more expedient application. My interest was mostly in letterforms and long texts. I wanted to be able to work with page formations which would fill an entire sheet of paper with text and which could easily be removed in exchange for a new text formation. The traditional wire bending and sewing technique would have been infinitely cumbersome for this context. After some experimenting with glue on disposable screen overlays the contact paper stencil emerged as a glowing solution. The following is a description of the contact paper stencil as alternative watermarking method.

Preparation :
The design or text is drawn on the backing of a sheet of contact paper and then carefully cut out with a utility knife. The backing paper is then peeled off and the design firmly attached to the screen of the papermaking mould. As the design is attached to the screen it will be flipped around to read right to left (when later couched it will reappear to read in the famiar left to right mode).

Couching :
In this working method a sheet of watermarked paper actually consists of two double couched sheets. The stencil actually creates an area of 'holes' in the sheet because on the screen it prevents the pulp from attaching to its surface.When couched down and backed by a plain sheet couched right on top, these 'holes' will be thinner and thus appear more translucent than the surrounding double layers. This is the same principle on which the traditional wire watermark is based. If both sheets are of the same color the design will only be visible with light behind it and the result could be legitimately called a watermark.

Thus, when making a watermarked sheet I work with two screens. I start with the plain screen and couch down a thin sheet. Having a surface for the second stencilled screen to adhere to has proven to work well because I couch it with very little pulp. It is essential that the pulp is thin because only then will it assemble itself neatly around the stencil assuring a precise definition of the design. So, the plain sheet is couched first then the stencilled sheet is couched right on top of it.

Processing details :
I proceed by building a stack according to the need of the project, then press the stack in a large bookbinders press and finally transfer the sheets to blotter paper to restrained drying under weight. I find that a rather long and refined fiber such as medium to finely beaten abaca or flax with the addition of a medium amount of internal sizing has given me the best results. The moulds I work with are western style wove moulds.

Problems :
- An obvious drawback to this method is the tedium of of drawing, cutting, peeling and attaching the stencil. For the cutting of an intricate design such as a full page of lettering I advise a lot of good stretches and a thorough shoulder massage scheduled for the end of the day! I have been told that computer software exists with which designs can be transferred to a cutting instrument which then would do the job for you. I believe the source because grave inscriptions, for example, are made with stencils, so there are industrial applications to this idea...
- Attaching the peeled off design on to the screen may pose a problem since it has be adhered in reverse order from right to left. This may be especially confounding when dealing with text. What helps here is working with a mirror - an old trick used by printmakers.
- A lot of care needs to be invested in attaching the design to the screen. Rub the stencil onto the screen with your fingernails until the pattern of the screen weft shows through. If the stencil is not firmly attached to the screen it could fall off during the couching process and will not readhere unless the screen is bone dry. This could prove to become an incredible nuiscance when you are in the middle of couching an edition.
- Should your stencil sheet be too thin, lumpy or uneven it is a good idea to kiss it off as soon as you notice. A weak stencil sheet will result in an unprecise watermark and essentially a lost sheet. Double couching the stencil is not a solution because it is virtually impossible to couch a clean registration.

Advantages :
In spite of the above problem spots I am finding that the advantages of this process clearly outweigh its drawbacks. Aside from the obvious advantages in flexibility and application here are few additional points of interest :
- As with many sheet formation techniques this stencil method may easily be used for editioning. This will be especially interesting for the bookmaking process.
- Couching a watermarked sheet can be done with two sheets of different colors. The result would not conform to the term "watermark" in the strictest sense but the creative potentials become immensly widened by opening the process to color application.
- Similar potentials are embedded in couching with sheets of different textures or different pulps. Full or partial air drying pulps with differing shrinkage properties could enhance such variations.
- There is immense aesthetic and technical potential in further integrating watermarked sheets of paper into other media. Because of their editioning properties watermarked sheets would work well incorporated into the printmedium or photographic processes. Because of its need to interplay with light a watermarked sheet of paper invites a bridge between the 2D and 3D realms to installations, scultural forms, or even performance. The inspiration on the interactive level is what has made the watermark so interesting to me in my approaches to the visual book. Click on the following for a further example of this technique:
- Artist's Books.