WHEELCHAIR PaperMaking
Radiant Ancestor Woman, handmade paper, recycled paper, cotton linters and fiber plus yarn. Akua Lezli Hope, 1999.
Readying for the 2007 swapThis has been exciting.... well challenging. Everything that could go awry has, but it looks like I may yet get it done!
I had hoped to beat some material in my Cherub which I had hoped my friends would retrieve for me months ago.
Helas, the door to my pantry storage, too long unopened, didn't open. And they have their own lives to lead and other delays and obstacles emerged to keep me separated from my tool--- that I am totally dependent on others to retrieve.
Okay, I said to myself, I know blenderable plants but where, in the constraints of my apartment environs and mobility-challenge could i find some?
AHA! well, from what I eat and see: the retired flower man who makes gorgeous bouquets.... try to remember to ask him for the spent lilies.
Save every banana stem.
And corn, well, it appeared in the on-site store,
so I had a couple of shucks. And onion skins and garlic skins.....
Cooked all of that in washing soda, procured on my second supermarket outing--- what a liberation!!!
And rinse and rinse and rinse.... Missing my tools so very much, especially my paint strainer bags I asked the maintenance man if he had any....
Nope but here-- he gave me a yard of fiberglass screening so the rinsing was made possible.
Blender--- ahh--- moving neighbors kindly gave me two blenders--- so one to dedicate to plant stuff... and yes, remembering an old discussion, too sharp, usefully cutting but not much of the other magic as in my sigh worn blender tools back home in the now wrecked Studio K.
But tools nonetheless. And so pulped and rinsed fibrous plant fiber....
And a day to decide what to add, more for extension ( more pulp) than completion (as a test pull showed this would yeild a page unaltered) ....
but another glitch, the moulds lent out, to have been returned weeks ago, have not been returned....
Again reprieve, in a box packed by wonderful friends, is a 8.5 by 5.5, far from my favorite size, but as i think about, probably best, since balance is a challenge...
and then today today an email.... my friends worked and worked on the locked door and have the CHERUB! It should arrive tomorrow or Friday, so just enough time to do the cloth-based pulp I envisioned!!! (Bless them! Thanked Them!)
I already know where it will go--- on the shower chair. LOL! A gesture of... not defiance but ... adjustment
From my before, I have stainless steel drop in drain screens and so know there is protection.
this will be my first papermaking since November 2005 and I am excited!
Sunday morning,my neighbor banged on the door at 9 am , scaring me until i remembered who might be at my door and that he is a.... less than pleasant person sometimes... see he was supposed to open the community room for me from noon to 5.
Anyway, I made two trips, set up, called another neighbor to carry my bucket of pulp and when i pulled one sheet, the linen wasn't quite processed enough.... and since I couldn't lock the room, it meant bringing everything back upstairs.
I was disappointed... beat it for a couple hours more even though I didn't think I had enough energy to set up again in the bath
room after my shower ( a small production for me, now) ....The near pulp is exquisite, purple with strings and strands of the undigested linen....
But though it did not drain with a whoosh, it drained quickly and flocked aggregiously, (sob) because if I were home, I know exactly where under the stairs on a shelf leading to the basement is where my huge steel bowl sits and baggies with CMC, powdered pigments and PMS or is it PNP? Anyway just a touch of both would help. And there are no frozen stalks of okra to bail me out, either....,.
So, while my plan was to have some lovely purple linen chewed by my Cherub, it was not to be. Not enough time.
However, I've sent my other swatches by priority mail (click n ship also includes email notification) to hopefully skirt the delay that Independence Day would add to the post as the package makes it way across the country.
Joy in the making, Akua
My goal is to reuse, recycle, and repurpose materials in ways that sing, reach, engage, speak.
Akua Lezli Hope
