Today is the last day of our project, From Foraging to Forging Communities. We are open from 1 PM at Satellite Project Space (121 Dundas St), and if you have a chance, please come by as we are still making paper sculptures in the afternoon. In the gallery, we have a slide show projection of images that document the project from beginning to end. So come check out how the paper you are working with came to life. 
 
We end our project today with a reception and artists talk at 4 PM.  At the conclusion of the artists talk, the artwork, brought to life by participants through collaborative labour, will be dispersed into the community.  Everyone is invited to participate in the de-installation of the artwork and take home handmade paper. Make sure you take a moment to photograph yourself with the sculptures, as they lend themselves to a great photo op. 

Children often come with clear ideas. We learned that Maya likes donkeys. When she shared her idea of how she intends to make a donkey we could see that she knows a lot about donkeys. She had very specific ideas what it should look like and paid attention to details that make a donkey a donkey, like the tail, nose, mane, and tilt of its head. 

​While making her sculpture, she also mastered the use of the glue gun and sewing machine. She was not alone in learning new skills. We have tools and skills to share, so if you want to acquire new skills or how to use a variety of tools, this project is an excellent opportunity as we assist everyone in the learning process.

As more figures and forms are made in the gallery, our participants pay more and more attention to how these sculptural objects are arranged in relation to one other. The ladder was moved around quite a lot to find the perfect place for a small, airy spherical form. 
The large head with fluffy hair, named Mary on Wednesday, that was too heavy for the reclining figure, found its place on the wall: push pins hold it firmly in place. Her body is evolving with pleated skirt, bent arms and delicate hands.   ​

We are open today 2-7PM. Everyone is welcome to participate. No previous experience is necessary, and this activity suits all ages and abilities. You can come with clear ideas or no ideas at all. In the latter case, you will be surprised how easily and quickly ideas emerge by just picking up a sheet of paper and starting to use the tools. 

Our first day of creating paper sculptures from the handmade paper was fun. We've seen many different approaches on how to build a figure. The first image we show here is a small, delicate figure constructed with exceptional craftsmanship by Dallas, one of the regular participants in our project since the first foraging walk. Her figure inspires a story; it has rich details that prompt multiple interpretations.

​The other images in this post show the construction of larger figures; they are work in progress. Our gallery space was filled with laughter yesterday as we tried to figure out how to arrange them to strike a pose without losing balance or collapsing.

Since June 27th, we have turned Satellite Project Space into an active workshop of paper making, as part of our community engaged ecological art project, From Foraging to Forging Communities. In the last two weeks over 200 Londoners joined us in the many stages of paper making, starting with foraging walks then turning the collected grass and cottonwood into 935 sheets of handmade paper.
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This week, July 13-17, we invite the public to create collaborative three-dimensional sculptures with the handmade paper through stitching, weaving, sewing. The sculptures created will reflect each individual’s ideas of what community means and the installation will evolve throughout the week as more and more people participate. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to partake as this activity is suitable for all ages and abilities.
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There are many ways we can manipulate the look and feel, texture and surface, of handmade paper during the papermaking process. The three most common methods are embedding, impression and inclusion.​

Embedding is a process of sandwiching materials between sheets of paper. We embedded items such as strings that will be useful for knotting together several sheets of paper next week.

An impression is a form of de-bossing. We can place an object, a leaf for example, on a wet sheet of paper and press it down. It causes a depression in the material leaving a depressed (debossed) imprint of the contours of the object in the wet paper. We remove the object once the paper has dried and the dry paper will keep having the imprint of the leaf.

Inclusion is adding small objects, like flowers, leafs, grass or twigs to the pulp to form attractive, decorative elements in the paper. We can add them directly to the pulp in the vat before pulling the paper. This method will always result in random arrangements. It is hard to navigate the mould and deckle in the water to capture an interesting object in such a way that it would land at the desired spot when we lift the mould and deckle out of the water. Inclusions can also be carefully arranged on a freshly pulled sheet of paper for a more controlled application.

It is delightful for artists like us to see how people have expressed their personal aesthetics using inclusions in the papermaking process producing a rich variety of decorative papers. Some spent considerable time creating meticulous arrangements on the mould once they pulled their paper. Others sprinkled the vat with flowers at a particular area and directed their mould towards it when they pulled the paper, experimenting with a half controlled, half random way of the inclusion process. Some approached the process with great abandon; whatever they caught from the pulp mixed with flower petals, seeds, and grass, was their source of delight. People brought inclusion materials from foraging walks, but also from their gardens and kitchens to decorate with.
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The pictures here are only a small selection to show what the inclusion process can produce. We have hundreds of beautiful sheets of paper in the gallery, each of them is the expression of the personal aesthetics of individual members in our community. We can hardly wait to see how next week these sheets will be gradually transformed into a three-dimensional art installation at Satellite Project Space, expressing the many ideas and creative approaches Londoners bring to the project.