Making Paper

In 1986 I saw a very innovative type of art made from sheets of unusual paper, sewn together with thread and decorated with antique ceramic shards, feathers, leaves and other objects of uncertain identity and mysterious origins. These beautiful and sensitive abstract compositions were called assemblages and were encased in shadowbox frames made of Plexiglass.

René, the woman who constructed them, became a friend and mentor. On a visit to her studio, while I was admiring an assemblage with a sculpted paper fish, she presented me with a few handfuls of pulp balls and instructed me on how to use them. “Just reconstitute them in water and push them into a mold.”


















Her mold was a rusty fish-shaped jelly mold. The wet paper picked up the rust color adding just a touch of antiquity that blended into the tail area. I took the pulp balls home and followed her directions but I didn’t have any kind of mold. The only thing around, with an interesting texture, was a pair of pink swimming scallop shells.













The shells were purloined from my dinner plate a few months prior, on an overnight stay at the Sooke Harbour House, a seaside restaurant/ bed & breakfast. It was a ‘young’ restaurant then and has since become a world-class destination, winning many awards.

















I would have taken more than two shells from the plate of twelve but I was worried what they’d think about the weird lady staying in the Blue Heron Room who didn’t return any of the shells on her plate. “Maybe she ate them!”


















When I came home I tried casting recycled paper. The wet paper pulp dried and literally snapped off from the shell. Every minute detail was transferred.














After a little research I found several products to use for mold making and started my new career: paper shell maker.


















I made mauve shells, pink shells, green shells and blue shells. Then pink & mauve shells, green shells with a touch of blue, and so on. Happy, happy, shells! Now what?















Greeting cards! Each one an original signed work of art with it’s own title. Over the next four years I turned out hundreds upon hundreds, maybe thousands of shell cards and sold them. Little shell cards alone financed my first computer. Another friend asked me during a Christmas open house (where I was selling shell cards), “Have you ever thought of using a larger format?” No. It never occurred to me. I was having too much fun pumping out cards.












Frame the shells, add a few embellishments….quite arty! They were as popular as the cards. Over time other themes and objects were tried in the framed format and people I knew stopped referring to me as a crafter and began calling me an artist. I remember feeling uncomfortable with this metamorphosis and it took me a long time to accept the new title.

One of my recent workshop students asked, “How do you really know when you’re an artist?” I suppose my answer is, “When people tell you that you are.”