Night Life

Pulp painting refers to a process of applying finely beaten pigmented cellulose fibers onto freshly made paper to create imagery. Sometimes this is done by applying a paint-like mixture of the pulp and other times it is sprayed using a hand drawn/hand cut stencil and/or silkscreen. Pulp painting can only be done right after a sheet is formed, while it is still wet (and before it is pressed), allowing the imagery to be part of the paper instead of sitting on the surface only.

All works are mounted onto archival 100% cotton rag museum board and matted with acid-free archival 100% cotton rag mat board. Some are framed and others are mounted/matted only. They are priced accordingly. Feel free to contact me for custom frame options.

THIS PIECE IS FRAMED

Much of my work is motivated by a life-long curiosity about the sea, which may explain my affinity for Asian hand papermaking processes used for this piece:

The paper substrate was made with water and cellulose fiber from the inner bark of paper mulberry saplings (from my yard). After cooking and hand beating the fiber, the sheet was formed by generating a series of “waves” (water and fiber) across a screen. Fragments of the same mulberry fiber were teased into various configurations, arranged on the freshly made sheet, misted with pigmented pulp and removed revealing an illusion on the paper’s surface: a myriad of microscopic sea life made visible by light reflecting through the translucent paper—in much the same way light refracts through transparent zooplankton in the ocean.

Working in this way connects me the same sense of discovery experienced in Florida’s aquatic environments.