I first encountered Thich Nhat Hanh while listening to an interview with ecologist, poet and artist Paulus Berensohn on the Book Artists and Poets podcasts by Steve Miller, coordinator of the MFA in the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama. Berensohn was speaking about the function of craft in the 21st century, explaining that its role was to keep people connected. The act of using materials from the earth, Berensohn said — fibers, wood or clay, transformed through the process of a craft — enables people to perceive relationships between nature and each other.
“If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow …” — Thich Nhat Hanh, Ibid.
Berensohn read these excerpts from “Peace Is Every Step” toward the end of the interview. I was moved to tears, realizing that Hanh had written something I had felt but never consciously considered: By working with paper fibers, I am working with material that has once been alive. And through that, I am connected to everything that lives or has lived.
Paper by Peter Thomas, text and illustration by Michelle Wilson, letterpress printing by John Sullivan at Logos Graphics
I don’t know if Hanh ever made paper, but I know his statement expresses my feelings on the process, which I went on to express in my collaboration with Peter Thomas and John Sullivan for our piece above, which appeared in Ampersand, the quarterly journal of the Pacific Center for Book Arts. I loved the idea that I was making, with my colleagues, a broadside for the “Makers” Issue of Ampersand. I found my mind drifting back to Hanh’s statement and what it is like to make paper. Most of my paper is made Western-style, which involves fibers dispersed in a vat of water. A contraption called a mold and deckle, which looks like a frame that fits on top of a screen, is dipped into the vat and collects the fiber over its surface. When the mold and deckle are lifted out of the water, the water drains from the screen, and the fibers settle over its surface. This wet sheet of pulp can then be transferred onto another surface for drying.
“As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, Ibid.
I found myself thinking about trailing my fingers through a vat of paper pulp. The fiber and sheet formation technique can vary, but a constant in the process is water. Water is fundamental in papermaking, from soaking and cooking fibers in preparation to carrying fibers during beating and sheet formation. Without water, I could not make paper. These ideas led me to the image that became our broadside.
In my own work, I am exploring using the fibers of invasive plants, such as pampas grass, ice plant and fennel, as the basis for making paper. I’m only able to do so much, but I like to hope I am using my art to clear space for native vegetation to return. As I’m working, I find myself thinking about how these plants connect me to soil and air, and the species that live in those spaces, everything from birds in the sky to micro-organisms in the soil. In particular with invasive plants, their appearance is due to the human presence in the environment — people either deliberately or inadvertently carried the seeds of these plants to my home in the San Francisco Bay Area. By working with these plants, I am connected to the people who carried these seeds from the places where they originated, and by extension, to the history of human exploration and commerce.
The Clear Lake splittail is one of seven extinct California species commemorated in my recent series “Population Dynamics.”
I always come back to water. The water cycle connects every living thing; nothing can live without water. In the Bay Area, the water I use in a day in my studio was snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada the evening before. So this process also connects me to different places. Additionally, I recycle much of my used papermaking water in my garden, so the paper I make is connected to the food I eat. Furthermore, when I make paper from my food scraps and from the fibers I grow, it becomes a mobius strip of water and process.
The California kit fox is another extinct species shown as a watermark in “Population Dynamics.” I made a watermark for each species by applying “puffy paint” onto nylon window screening.
Making paper is a dance of interconnectedness, to living things, to wind, air and soil, to where I live and to places far away. The tangible result, paper, cannot be separated from the scope of its origins. Before an image or a word is even printed on its surface, a sheet of paper embodies a history of its making beyond any service it might offer as a substrate. In this process, water is my partner.
Michelle Wilson is a papermaker, printmaker, book and installation artist. Her works are in various collections, including Yale University, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. She has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including the X Initiative in New York; the Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts; the 2006 International Biennial for the Artist’s Book in Alexandria, Egypt; and the Joshibi Art Museum in Japan. Her imprint is Rocinante Press.
Nota bene: This weekend, several dozen hand papermakers and paper passionates from the Left Coast (and slightly inland) will convene in Santa Barbara, Calif., for the Western regional conference of the Friends of Dard Hunter. Hunter (1881–1966) was the pre-eminent chronicler, collector and inspirer of papermaking. Michelle Wilson regrets she can’t attend — she is preparing for a month-long residency in Wyoming. Happily, Alyson Kuhn will be at the conference and will report for Felt & Wire.
Poem excerpt set by Parker Biederbeck
