I first made paper in January 2002, at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (later the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions) in the Mason Gross School of Art. Most of my work as an artist has been on, or of, paper, yet I’d never made paper until my visit to the Brodsky Center. Anne Q. McKeown, a master papermaker with the MFA from Yale, presided over this area. My first thought was of making a little book with handmade paper pages, but I was enthralled by a small paper piece Anne had made to show me, consisting of strips of abaca fiber and linen over cotton, in which lengths of string had been embedded. Pulling the strings out created torn edges in the paper strips that resembled the torn pages in my altered books. I tugged at one string and then another, enjoying the process. Then it occurred to me to use lengths of string to form words in script. But what was there to say? I dropped the vernacular “as if” into the conversation with Anne at some point and immediately realized I’d found my phrase: “as” to be torn out from the sheet; “if” to remain as a string capable of being pulled. Anne and I worked out a procedure for making the edition: first a layer of black cotton, then white string spelling out “as,” in cursive, then a layer of overbeaten abaca, then a red string cursive “if” (except for the dot over “i,” made from pigmented overbeaten linen), and a topmost layer of white overbeaten hemp. I let the ends of the strings emerge from the left margin of the sheet. Once the proofs dried, I tore the white string away, revealing the sheet’s black interior. The red string remained, dangling from the side of the work, inviting viewers to give it a little tug.
AMPERSAND made at Reading Road Studio in 2019 was a collaborative effort with Helen Frederick and assistants, who led me to discover the joy of pulp painting, focusing on text and fonts, by means of a felt transfer process combined with colorful pulp work.
