I was able to peel off the paper I made yesterday, from the glass sheets in the studio I'd slapped it off onto, add it to the previous day's work, and here's a post of iris/abaca paper.
It worked out as I'd hoped, a lovely golden color, soft to the touch from the inclusion of abaca, and with some fiber shreds here and there. It's lovely. The last sheets to be made, as the pulp in the vat gets used up, are usually lacy, and very transparent, and I like them a lot. I wish you could reach in and handle them! this paper is a lot more sturdy than it looks.
Post, that is stack, of paper, seen from above. About 20 sheets, forgot to count them. As you see, paper making is labor intensive! two days' work here. I still have more pulp to use up, so there will be more in the next few days. The advantage of hot weather is that the paper dries pretty fast. Most of the pulp sheets are in fact water, so even when they look pretty sturdy when you first turn them out, they thin down to fineness when they dry.
I have another bag of iris cuttings from this year, which I'm keeping in the outdoor storage which gets hot in summer, in a big paper bag, to use in the fall when the foliage has dried naturally. This will give me a different color of paper. But I like the abaca in it, so I think I'll do that again. I also have cotton linters (that's the second cut of cotton after it's on the cotton plant, after the seeds have been ginned out) which is bright white, comes out crisp as paper, and might also be a good experiment to mix with iris pulp.
And I'm thinking of using some of the plant dyes I've made as inks. They will be fugitive on the paper, being natural not synthetic, but will be great to try. Except that black walnut and turmeric will probably stay bright forever just about.
PS on the brain artwork: Cynthia C. supplied me with the web address of the project, whereupon I sent them an image, and heard back in about thirty minutes, amazing. Very excited, asked me to fill out questionnaire (this is a neurological research experiment as well as an art project), and talked about an exhibit next year in Amsterdam. They'll keep in touch with me before then. So we'll see. Who knows what might happen. I'm up for it!
Iris paper making is under way. For technical reasons, I got to work early, in case builders had to be working here and needed to be on the patio when I needed it. They came, they saw, they explained, not a problem requiring ladders they went away. New roof is fine. Fine.
Anyway, I decided to do a little variation on the iris leaves, by adding a prepulped sheet of abaca paper to the mix. Abaca gives a lovely softness to the finished product, and in case the iris paper is crisp, like daylily paper, this might make it more malleable. Abaca is banana tree fiber, clearly a fiber I can't cut for myself and process from scratch. You can send away for it. One sheet makes a lot of paper. For a hobby user, I bet a package would be a lifetime supply.
So I soaked pieces of the abaca pulp overnight in water, ready to blend this morning and add to the pulp vat, i.e. bucket.
The iris leaves I cooked for several hours, left overnight to cool, then cooked again a couple more hours.
Then cut them down a bit, easier when they're cooked than when they're fresh, and blended the pulp. Small handful of pulp, per blender load, blend till pretty well broken down, no chunks of fiber. Then I added several blender loads to the vat, mixed it by hand, and was able to make paper.
Background is sheets of paper interleaved with felts, in a pan to catch the water, middle is the mold I used, foreground the vat, i.e. dishpan, of pulp.
The felts, the fabric you see between the paper pulp, can
be anything, wool blanket, etc., and these are Pellon, interfacing.
Works a treat, washes clean, dries fast, and I've been using them about
thirty years, not worn out yet. The felts, that is, the artist I'm not
so sure about.
I used a mold I'd been given, but it didn't work as well, too thick, so hard to maneuver the pulp -- you shake it around a bit under water to distribute pulp evenly -- and went to my old fave, a picture frame. Just stapled screening over it, used another frame as the deckle, and works fine. Makes a 6 x 8 in sheet or thereabouts.
The deckle is the frame bit that goes on top and corrals the pulp into a rectangular shape, or whatever shape the mold and deckle is, hence the term deckle edge. It's that lovely irregular edge to handmade paper.
So there's a post of paper now sitting outside, having been pressed down to get a lot of water out -- papermaking is strenuous, involves a lot of carrying water about -- and I'm trying the experiment of leaving it in a post, that means a stack, to dry. Hot weather, and it might keep shape and not cockle as it dries. At least that's the idea.
So now I get to wait and see. Great fun to visit your paper when you think it's dry and see if it's ready to peel off the felts.
I had a lot of liquid left after cooking up the pulp, so I've frozen it for use as dye.
Still have a lot of pulp left to use, so if this first try works out, there will be more. Incidentally, you see that this is taking place in the kitchen. Perfectly safe. Blender is strictly for papermaking, pots, containers likewise. And the materials are totally nontoxic. You could probably eat this stuff without a problem. If I were using synthetic dyes, unknown ingredients, etc., I'd work away from the kitchen.
People tend to email me with concerns about safety, so I put in these notes to head them off! Gentle reminder: I've been making art for over 70 years, teaching it for 45 years, and have been insistent all the teaching years on safety in the studio. But it's nice to be concerned, it's appreciated. And yes, I do know that natural doesn't mean nontoxic, very respectful around plant life for that reason.
Handsome Son has grown up with fridges and freezers stuffed with (nontoxic) art materials, and with inquiring whether there's any actual food in the freezer...at the moment the chest freezer is duking it out between papermaking supplies and food. His own art materials at his home are more like pens, Fimo, etc., no refrigeration required. But since paper materials are organic, they need to be preserved to avoid rotting. Once they're paper, they're stable indefinitely.
