Folio Series: Life Study #1

While studying weaving at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University), I became interested in non-woven fibre surfaces, and explored feltmaking deeply, using a process that also drew on methods of making bark cloth. Only after graduating was I able to investigate papermaking, but since the early 1990s this has been the medium at the heart of my practice. Folio Series: Life Study #1 and #2 are therefore early examples of what has been a decades-long involvement with the transformation of fibre materials into paper pulp, with all the intriguing possibilities that it reveals.

An aspect of paper that interests me is its long association with communication and ideas, yet, depending on how it is made, paper can also have a skin-like presence. Preparing certain pulps with high shrinkage makes it possible to mark and shape the surface as it forms itself. In the Folio Series: Life Study pieces, their folio format invites comparison between the two “pages”. While both sides are made the same size, as the paper goes from wet to dry, each page tells a different story, one determined by the elements incorporated into it.