Viewing page 50 of 132
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
[[Image]] In Lynda Benglis' Gujarat, 1980, cast handmade paper and pigment, 34 inches high, colored patterns were cast into the pulp. COURTESY EXETER PRESS/PAULA COOPER tion with Garner Tullis at the Institute for Experimental Printmaking, "Candles" conveys the essence of Zucker's vision without straining or trivializing it. The issue in these handmade-paper prints is the emphatic physicality of the image as surface, material and gesture. The versatile nature of handmade paper holds special attraction for painters. Kenneth Noland says he has been "handling the stuff of paper" since 1976, finding it to be "something I could handle in the same way as wet pain and raw cotton duck." He has executed numerous series of handmade-paper prints based on the familiar geometric schemata, such as circle and stripes, of his paintings. The theme of the handmade-paper series "Circle I," "Horizontal Stripes," "Diagonal Stripes" (all 1978) and "Pairs" (1982) is the organic quality of handmade paper. Noland's deep-seated concern - found throughout his paintings - with eliminating any separation between color and surface is given fresh and definitive expression in these handmade-paper projects. This is because of the degree to which pigment and pulp coalesce, creating color that is physical and not just an illusion on the surface of the paper. Max Gimblett, an abstract painter from New Zealand who resides in New York, has also turned the strong bond-ability of handmade paper toward his own ends. Stressing the concept of shape-in-shape and the indissoluble union of color, form, and space, Gimblett's unitary approach to painting is echoed in the series of handmade-paper pieces he did in 1980 of solid-color squares, triangles, and circles. The translucency of paper is of current interest to New York artist Eve Eisenstadt, who has previously explored other aspects of the material. Her first encounter with handmade paper was in 1975, when she was still working primarily in clay at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Eisenstadt says she thought of paper at that time as a "pliable, mud-pie medium," like clay. In her early explorations of handmade paper at Twinrocker, she even treated it like clay. "I wove coils of paper and placed them like coils of clay," she says. She used the coils of paper in large-scale modular installation pieces. But as she found herself becoming more interested in painting - this remains her major activity - her approach to paper changed. In working in paper now, Eisenstadt notes, she finds herself "painting with pulp" and "dealing with the same images" as in her paintings. After forming thing black and white sheets of 100 percent linen, she marks off various strategic sections, using templates, then colors the composition by hand, applying as many as 15 different-colored liquid pulps from squeeze bottles. Silk threads applied randomly are embedded in the surface. In her 1982 untitled handmade-paper series featuring a cropped, aperspectival view of a box - architectural and geometric themes are the artist's favorites - this method results in subtle, luminous, yet forceful images. The thin, layered paper surfaces seem to reach out to the viewer with their shimmering colors and shapes from a dreamlike pictorial space. "Trying to look at papermaking as a painter," says Virginia Jaramillo, has led her to devise her own method for building compositions at the sheet-forming stage. Limiting her material to beaten natural pulps - including 100 percent linen and various combinations of linen, cotton and earth pigments - she skims the surface of the filled vat with a screen, in a motion she calls "skinny dipping," to get "the paper as thin as possible." Relying on her knowledge of the "weight and gravity" of different pigments, she shakes the screen to drain the excess water and line up the colored pulp according to the intended composition. In the "Foundation" series (1982) Jaramillo's ability to articulate lively geometric compositions is tellingly displayed. Stressing contrasts in texture and shape, these works project images that are strong on character. Painter Robert Natkin, who has worked at Twinrocker, has produced several series of unique pieces - monoprints, really - related to his ongoing "Bern" and "Apollo" series of paintings. He has pushed the issue of using colored shape as layered surface, a major concern in his paintings, to the structural, optical and physical limits in handmade paper. Painting with pulps on a base sheet and then using screens, Natkin has covered a range of paper sizes, from a moderate 47 by 35 inches to a monumental eight by three feet, the faces, vibrant and dense, are patchwork patterns of colored shapes in multiple, overlapping layers that appear to shift, fade in and fade out before the eyes. In recent example, Natkin has taken to painting sections of the surfaces after they have dried, to heighten tonal intensities. Besides executing papers for other artists, Kathryn Clark is an artist in her own right. Her approach to the sheet corresponds to her general interest in books as art objects. Thin veils of colored pulp and collage elements in multiple laminations and in dynamic, painterly compositions tell visual tales about abstract shapes and textures, her sheets taking the form of illustrated pages. A complement to printmaking and painting, handmade paper is no less receptive to sculpture. As demonstrated in Tom Holland's "Mariposa" (1982) and "La Mell" (1983) series, it can be made to serve the special structural requirements of wall reliefs; these works are related to the artist's painted fiberglass and aluminum wall reliefs and 84/ART NEWS
