Bread & Paper
For me, the gifts of bread and paper come from the heart, via the hands.
Making paper is to buying paper what making bread is to buying bread.
The nutrition may be identical, but the spirit is not.
It is the personal connection to the product that ties us to and establishes the value.
Obviously, you can choose to spend your time in other ways than making either bread or paper. If I could, I would back up a few steps and grow my own wheat and flax, mill it, and form it.
My grandmother was a thick armed woman who kept her muscles in form by baking fresh bread daily. Each morning, the scent of yeast gas filled the air as the loaves puffed up in her warm kitchen. As a small boy my grandmother expressed her love through hand made food, especially her bread. She’d make my favorite, raisin bread, with dried Concord grapes from her vines. Concord grapes are problematic due to the seeds. She extracted the seeds before drying the grapes. I challenge you to find a store bought loaf of Concord raisin bread. As a small boy I spent most of my time with my grandmother, much of it at her apron strings, in the kitchen.
I compare my attention to detail in processing pulp to the care she took in making her bread.
She could have taken the bus to a bakery and bought all the baked goods we could eat. As it was, the baker was a family friend, so it would not have been a disconnect to buy baked goods from him. It would have, however, been once removed love.
My father’s family made things with their hearts and hands. Grandpa was a carpenter, as is my father. Grandma sewed, made soap, and canned what grew on her trees and in her dirt. Part of this was by necessity. Another part was the culture. What they made was, more than anything else, superior to what could be purchased.
I grew up in a home without cake mixes. This is not to say, without cake.
Many people who make paper have no access to a hollander. They, by necessity, use half stuff and linters. These are cake mixes to me. I use linters to aid in drying, only occasionally pulping a torn linter, much like someone might add hamburger helper to a recipe. Linter lacks conviction. Linter is a TV dinner.
Linter is a store bought peanut butter & jelly sandwich on Wonderbread, wrapped in cellophane.
I am a snob who owns a hollander.
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Answer to a question about the source of my fabric.
My hollander makes possible the complete and utter dismemberment of fabric.
It allows me to make the connections between significant clothing and a completed artwork. It fills the void between the two. This dismemberment also brings things together.
My wife, daughter, family, and circle of friends can provide me with only a finite
supply of papermaking material. (Since the events of 2001, I have included in my raw materials those items donated to entities who raise funds to help with disaster relief. I prefer to not mention this.) I have accepted well loved articles from friends who give this clothing to me so I may commingle their items with those of others, hopefully magnifying the positive feelings. I then return the paper to those who have donated their clothing and ask that they do something good with the paper. Athena Tacha made artworks which she donated to a fund raising benefit for the Tsunami recovery effort.
I do not ask that they tell me what they have done with the paper. I only know about Athena’s gift because she sent me an image. There is no accountability to the gift. It flows two ways.
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I did not explain about the destroyed books. I collect and keep rare books. Those fragments of books that have no redeemable story or hope may become poetry. I have given new life to such fragments by renewing the scraps into sheets of paper. The words, paragraphs, and pages are not obliterated, only rearranged.
One virtually ruined book I declined to purchase from a seller in Prague was dismembered in such a way that it held a new story. The story was of religious intolerance. I passed up the purchase so someone could buy it who appreciated the books inherent connection to history. I did not want to be tempted to turn that story into poetry.
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I have a friend in Connecticut who collects antique linen. She passes on to me those articles that are better reincarnated and lack monetary and historical value.