Papier-Mache Art Bowls 8: Further Experiments

A mixed bag produced this past week, with some mixed feelings. Not every piece came out as well as I'd hoped.



This time out, I tried using a little more glue in the papier-maché matrix of white glue and water. I am still trying to find the exact right proportions of glue and water—and frankly doing it by feel and eye rather than measuring cups—and I think I may have erred on the side of too much glue this time out. I'll show the results of this possible error, below.

I made this group of decorative papier-maché bowls early enough in the afternoon, on a warm day, that I was able to put them in the sunlight to dry for part of the afternoon. Drying them in the sunlight made for good results with the black paper bowls, but the other bowls still needed to dry out overnight.


Black Bowl and Vase

These two black bowls, or rather bowl and vase combination group, came out fine. They are a reproduction in heavy black torn paper of the bowl and vase I had made earlier out of a similar weight of torn purple paper. (I have since gifted the original purple bowl and vase to a friend.) I am now contemplating doing a series of bowl and vase combos, like these, in a rainbow of colors, as a set. It could be an interesting large set, with possibilities for arrangement and display in various groupings.



I think the particular success of these combos is the vase, which, if you put some small stones in the base, is very stable and doesn't tip over. I imagine one could put small stones in the accompanying bowl as well, and put dried flowers or some similar decorative touch in both, and use them as a designer centerpiece. The unique aspect of such a decorative set, of course, is that you made the containers, as well as the arrangement. There are several possibilities here yet to be explored.

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For another new group of decorative papier-maché bowls, what I experimented with was making an original illustrated paper to use. I have been experimenting already with making bowls illustrated with my paper prints of my own photographs—for example, the Stone Circle Nest Bowl—but I've been using existing prints from my back catalogue. This time out, I wanted to try creating a paper specifically intended for making into a papier-maché project.


Crocus flowers, Beloit, March 2011

This photograph of blooming crocus is my personal favorite photo, and possibly best photo, this year so far from my garden. Since spring was in the air, I decided to use this image as the basis and inspiration for a larger, designed art bowl.

So I took the crocus photo and ran it through Photoshop, creating a distressed-paper look that I intended to appear, when finished, like hand-made paper incorporating the flowers into its texture. It's an illusion made entirely in Photoshop, of course, but it looks like some of the handmade papers one can find at fine paper stores such as Hollander's, that mecca of book design and decorative papers in Ann Arbor, and that was my intent. Here is the result of this paper-imaging experiment:



I then laser-printed several sheets of this designed paper, and used it to make the larger bowl I had envisioned. I had enough left over to also make a smaller, square bowl.


Crocus Paper Bowls

Both bowls use the Crocus Paper on the exterior, leaving the interior plain. I envision these bowls being used as containers for cut flowers, later this spring, as part of a decorative table display.


Crocus Paper Bowl II

This is the smaller of the two Crocus bowls, and perhaps the more successful. The problem I mentioned with the glue earlier is visible here, on the bottom of the bowl. There was so much glue in the matrix, that the two Crocus Bowls took a long time to dry, and when I pulled them from the mold, each was mottled on the bottom. Imprints from the plastic wrap I use to line to molds were clear in the base, making for a roughened texture I hadn't anticipated. That isn't so visible here, in this photo, but one can still feel the wrinkled texture. What is visible here is the shiny, almost plastic-coated appearance of the base of the bowl, after the bowl had completely dried. It actually looks okay on this smaller of the two bowls. It might also make the bowls slightly more waterproof.


Crocus Paper Bowl I

The larger bowl, approximately nine inches in diameter, had similar issues with extended drying time, wrinkled texture caused by the glue, and shiny appearance. In addition, the plastic wrap tore the paper in a couple spots when I removed the bowl from the mold, leaving a couple of visible imperfections. Maybe it's just my perfectionism striking a muted tone against my expectations, but I was a little disappointed with the end result here. It looks better in the photo than it does in the hand, to be honest. it doesn't look bad, it just wasn't quite as good as I had envisioned.

As a technical point, you can see from the group photo above that I lined the inside of the larger Crocus Bowl with black paper. This is the same heavy black paper that I used for the bowl and vase combo above. Inside this larger bowl, I made a spiral of small black triangles that spin out from the center and halfway up the wall. This was done mostly for structural support, to give the bowl some extra heft. As a structural element it's quite successful; as a design element, less so. The spiral itself looks pretty good, reminding one of organic plant forms, but the black paper darkens the bowl's appearance from the outside, because the printed Crocus Paper is not completely opaque. Fortunately, the black interior will be mostly unseen when the bowl is filled with objects, for example cut flowers. I think that next time I try this structural support idea inside a bowl I will use either more complementary-colored paper, or pure white watercolor paper. That will give a lot of strength without color-shifting the bowl's appearance.

So, these were experiments with, in my opinion, mixed results. In some ways, the purely black bowl and vase are the most satisfying pieces this time out, because of their simple purity of color and design. The Crocus Paper bowls were an experiment in making an illustrated image bowl, with more mixed results. I've learned from the process, though, and will probably try to make better objects later using this same Crocus Paper. What I think works here is the original design and illustration, the concept of custom-making an image intended to be made into papier-maché. The execution was not as good as I had envisioned, however, and I'll do better next time, having learned from my errors.

I readily admit that this is the artist's expectations in play, here, and others may find these "imperfect" objects to be beautiful and pleasing just as they are. When you're experimenting, you have to expect a few "mistakes" and "failures" to occur, as an artist. Then you learn from the process, get better at what you're doing, and experiment anew. No artist ever gets it right every time—and the audience almost never gets to see the mistakes made during the creative process, or the process of learning to work with new materials. I'm being pretty open about my feelings about my art, here, as a way of both recording my learning process, for myself, and as a way of passing on what I've discovered along the way. Thus, I'm documenting the process as much as the results.

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As a lagniappe, I am offering for download, for free, the original full-resolution print-size JPG version of this Crocus Paper here. (Just use your usual browser download procedure to download the JPG file to your desktop.) You can use this as a stock image for a poster or other piece, or for your own papier-maché projects, or even as your computer screen backdrop. Please, if you do use this Crocus Paper image for a project you've designed and/or illustrated, send me a JPG of your work, just for my own pleasure. I always enjoy seeing what people come up with. Thank you.

Papier-Mache Art Bowls 7: Experiments

Last week, restless and not ready for bed, I prepared some materials and made a new batch of papier-maché art bowls. Most of these were experiments with new or different kinds of paper, and they did not all succeed. I made five new pieces from several different kinds of paper. Some of them were fresh experiments working with paper types I had only tried once or twice before, with mixed results.



The five bowls shown here were all made in an evening. I tried to use a little more glue in the glue-water mix for the papier-maché matrix, which I think was a good choice. However, some of these papers were problematic when gotten wet in the medium. More on that below.


Blue & Gold Bowl

This is my favorite piece from this session. It was the most successful art bowl of the evening, I feel. I used up some remaining decorative Black Ink papers I had used to make a couple of other art bowls before (like the green bowl here). The crinkled gold-foil paper as well as the blue and purple hand-made fibrous papers were all part of the Black Ink allotment. I need to order more of this exquisite, stunning paper, as it works well for these kinds of more purely artistic projects. I mostly cut these papers into small squares and triangles. The gold paper was especially lovely as a contrast on this otherwise- dark-colored bowl. It really pops.

I really like this blue and gold bowl. I've put it on my mantlepiece next to some other successful previous pieces.



This golden bowl, seen here from above and below, is the next-most-successful piece of the evening. It uses more of the decorative Black Ink paper, this time in the gold, yellow, earth-tan, and clay-grey ranges of color. Some of these lighter-color papers show the fibers and patterns clearly of the materials they're made from, including small leaves. I used the crinkled gold foil paper on the inside and outside of this bowl, to increase its brightness, and I think that worked well. Imagine a quartz crystal in this bowl, lit by the sun, brightening a room with its reflections and refractions.


Golden Bowl

The interior texture is a little more organic, a little more interesting. The ragged edges of these sorts of hand-made bowls intrigues me, in terms of design and pattern. From this oblique angle one can also see more clearly the layering of sheets of paper, with colors and patterns showing through in translucent areas. I like the gradations of colors in this bowl, topped off by the reflective gold.

This decorative paper, like the mulberry paper discussed below, is thin and very easy to both crumple and tear when wet. I barely dipped these papers into the papier-maché matrix, just enough to get them wet enough to stick together. The quick dip works better with some paper types than others. Also, because of the paper's thinness, each of these bowls made from these decorative papers uses multiple layers of paper to reinforce the bowl's structural strength. Each is at least three layers of paper thick. This was a slight problem during drying, causing some differential pulling of one sheet on another, and I had to press or smooth down some wrinkles while the bowl was still half-wet. But once dry, these bowls are very light yet surprisingly firm to the touch. Bowls made from this paper, using three or four layers total, hold together surprisingly well, when they've finished drying. While still wet, though, they are very soft, and if you try to take them out of the molds too soon, they can get mushy, lose shape, or just have pieces fall off. So, don't try to get them out of the molds too early; patience is necessary.


Blue in Gold

Since the glass and plastic bowls I have been using as molds are slightly different in size, I thought to try some gradations as well. This is how the Blue Bowl looks when nestled inside the Golden Bowl. I think it's a striking effect. I might try to make a set of bowls later that are designed to nest inside each other, each revealing something striking when pulled off the pile.



This larger, deep-dish bowl is made entirely from natural mulberry paper, dyed in neutral earth tones.


Mulberry Bowl, red aspect

I designed this bowl, in my head, before laying it out in the mold, to show these asymmetrical, opposing colors within a symmetrical form, so that depending what angle you look at the bowl from, it looks completely different.


Mulberry Bowl, blue-green angle

The mulberry paper dries up firm and strong when you use several layers of paper, although as with the decorative papers above, if you take it out of the mold too soon it will collapse into mush. The mulberry paper when wet is incredibly soft and fragile, almost like tissue paper. It tears easily, and crumples easily. I ended piling up several layers of different-colored sheets, most of them translucent when dry, so that background colors do show through and affect the bowl's surface colors. (This is more noticeable in natural light than in the artificial light used for these documentation photos.) I like the translucent effect, which allows you to modulate and shift the colors slightly, depending on how you layer the sheets.

I'd call this bowl a qualified success. It's an interesting shape, and I like the color patterns that resulted, but it remains somewhat fragile, if firm, when dried, and the darker colors are almost too subtle except when viewed in direct sunlight. Still, I think this was a good experiment. I learned a lot about the limitations of this kind of paper; mostly, that when using it, when must layer it, or provide a stronger paper matrix in between the inner and out shells, to provide structural strength.


Origami Bowl, falling apart

This origami-paper was the failure of the evening. Live and learn. Origami paper is thin yet stiff, to promote crisp folding. When wetted in the papier-maché matrix, it behaved a lot like the mulberry paper, like tissue paper, easily torn and crumpled, so like the mulberry paper, I barely got it wet, just dipping it in quickly. This turned out to be a mistake. The origami paper is actually rather fibrous, so it did not cling together nearly as well as the other kinds of paper used during this session; in fact, since I was using both very small whole sheets and cut squares from larger sheets, which were of different textures, and some of which have heavy-ink printing on them, before the bowl was even dry, it started falling apart. I didn't get enough glue in the matrix, and I didn't get the sheets bonded with matrix enough to hold them together. As you can see in the photo here, several sheets just plain fell off. (Perhaps once everything was dried enough, I might have tried gluing the bowl back together, just with white glue; but that feels like cheating.) In the background are some unused sheet, and my previous attempt to make an origami-paper bowl, which was likewise only a partial success.

I might try another origami-paper project later, but I think I will try next a flat-plain mold, and use the paper as top layer over some firmer paper as support layer. More like a framed artwork piece, rather than a bowl. That would allow one to do a more graphic, purely design-oriented piece in two dimensions, albeit with textures and layers of paper that could be used to give some relief-sculpted effects.


Stone Circle Nest Bowl II

This final bowl from this session is a re-creation of the first Stone Circle Nest Bowl I had been requested to make as a donation for a fundraiser. It's a bit larger than the original, and a bit more consciously formed. I should have known that, following Buddhist aesthetics, "first thought, best thought" would apply towards recreating this photo-illustration type art bowl. I think this bowl looks fine, but it just doesn't excite me as much as the first version did; some of that, no doubt, is that first discoveries always quicken the interest more for the artist. Really, there's nothing wrong here; the finished piece just feels a little less spontaneous. I'd say this art bowl is a partial success, maybe not perfectly as I had envisioned it, but really not bad at all.



The angular shapes here are good, though, and the original concept—wherein the bowl's exterior gives no hint of the "reveal" of the nested circle stone within the interior—still works fine as a discovery moment.



I ended putting some rounded stones in the bowl, taken from a California beach on the Pacific Ocean from my last roadtrip. I think i will keep stones in this bowl most of the time, perhaps changing the arrangement of stones periodically. That also makes the reveal of the stone in the illustration itself more dramatic, when you pull the real stones out of the bowl.

So, overall for this papier-maché session, a few more experiments in different kinds of paper, shapes, materials, and concepts. Partial successes in most cases, with one failure, and one very beautiful result which I'm very pleased with.

Papier-Mache Art Bowls 6: By Request

This time out, something a little different: I was asked to make and donate a couple of papier-maché art bowls to a silent auction, as part of a fundraising event.

This was for the same cabaret fundraiser for which I also played incidental music. The silent auction was an idea added to the Cabaret during last year's event, and at that time I donated a couple of photographic prints, which went well, and raised some good money. Looking back, I've donated a lot of art to fundraising events over the years; I keep getting requests, which one may take as a compliment, since someone obviously likes the art. The fun part about silent auctions is that people get into bidding wars for the most desirable items; which can raise a lot of cash. This year I donated photographic prints again, but the organizer also discovered that I had been making papier-maché for the past few months, and asked me to make and donate a couple of art bowls, as well.

So, in a way, this was my first papier-maché commission: art bowls made by request, to be donated and sold.



I made three bowls, even though only two were requested, but they all eventually went to good homes. I usually make three bowls of size at a time, or two larger bowls; I find that once I get set up to make papier-maché, I get on a roll, and keep going till I run out of media and ideas. As with making a lot of my other art, and with making music, I started out with only one idea, and the rest were improvisations. I don't make a distinction between improvising music, improvising poetry, or improvising art-making. Very often, I start out with only a vague idea, or in some cases a clear but incomplete idea. Usually, even if I have an idea at the beginning of a session, I end up improvising, and fairly often those unintended pieces are the best ones.

The one idea I set out with was to make one bowl have a musical theme—since this was, after all, a fundraiser for a musical group, Perfect Harmony Men's Chorus. So I used some of my printed music papers, which you can find at many good craft stores in their scrapbook departments, to make the outer shell of the bowl. (Not too different from the Bowl of Music I had made a few months ago as a Xmas gift.)


Stone Music Bowl exterior

But once the outer shell was made, I didn't know what to do with the inside, so I improvised. I used some of my previously-printed photographic images, which I find fascinating as a useful recycling of my own visual art, and also as a way of breaking out of the two-dimensional plane of most visual art, especially photography. What emerged during the making of this art bowl was something approaching the shamanic: my own photo-illustrations of feathers and stones, originally made by arranging the materials directly on a scanner. Many people don't think to use scanners as photographic imagers; but you can think of a scanner as a camera with a large plate and very narrow depth of field. Placing objects directly on the scanner can yield very interesting results. So, this first bowl, with its exterior of musical themes and its interior of earth-based imagery, became something more than its parts. It became a two-themed bowl in which the interior and exterior, seemingly disjunct, synergize to become more than the parts. (Haiku often work this way, with two different images finding a metaphoric unity via parataxis.)


Stone Music Bowl interior

Those stones in the center of the bowl are actually part of the photographic image. The illusion of there actually being stones nested inside this bowl is intriguing.


Stone Circle Nest Bowl exterior

And that illusion led me towards making this next art bowl. I used prints of a photograph I had made, in 2005, of a land art sculpture I had made at Pescadero State Beach in California, one of my favorite, most personally magical places, which I revisit every time I am in the region. I had wandered down the beach cliffs, slightly inland up the river channel, when I was drawn to make a land art sculpture. Neither the first nor last made at Pescadero.

These land art sculptures are a response to the energy of a place, and are made out of earth and plant materials found on-site; they are ephemeral pieces, not intended to be permanent, and are quickly destroyed by weather, the tides, and the other elements. What remains is the photographs I make at each site, recording the ephemeral piece. For example:



Stone Circle Nest, Pescadero, CA, 2005

For this art bowl, I wanted to recreate the sense of the circular stone discovered at the center of a nest of rocks. I wanted the viewer to turn the bowl around, seeing many layers of piled stones, and discover the central stone, at the center of the bowl, as the bowl's focal point. Once again, the illusion is that there is an actual stone in the center of the bowl, even though the stone only exists as part of the photographs used to make the bowl.


Stone Circle Nest Bowl interior

I feel like this was a very successful piece. If you saw this bowl sitting on a shelf or mantlepiece, at first all you would see would be the jumbled rocks making up the outside form of the bowl. Only when you picked the bowl up and look inside would the single circular stone in its nest be revealed. This bowl, like the others here, went quickly at the silent auction fundraiser; but I like this idea so much that I might have to do another version of this particular art bowl for myself, later.



Finally, this art bowl made of beautiful decorative paper. This uses some of my favorite paper, made by Black Ink, which is marbled with gold foil, and laced throughout with metallic fibers. In truth, I was hesitant to use up this paper for this bowl till I knew I could get more; I used to be able to get these Black Ink papers at a local craft store, but they are no longer available there. Fortunately, one can order more packs of this paper online (just search for Black Ink decorative papers). This turned out to be the art bowl that was most popular at the fundraiser, and went quickly.



This decorative paper is very thin. It is quite fragile when wet, so using it in papier-maché can be tricky. What I did for this bowl is set down the exterior layer in the mold, then use a complementary color of mulberry paper over that. In fact, this bowl is made up of four layers of paper: the decorative paper on the exterior and interior, while sandwiched between those are two layers of colored mulberry paper. The sandwiched inner layers give the bowl good structural strength, and make it quite firm when it has dried.

I was very satisfied with the look and shape or the result. The bowl is stronger than the last one I made from this kind of decorative paper, yet it also retains the paper's inherent beauty. I may have to order more of this paper soon, and try this again on a larger scale.

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Because I was on deadline to get these bowls done for the fundraiser, I used a drying trick that I haven't used before, and am not likely to use again except under similar time pressure. I made these bowls the night before the event, down to the wire, and only one of them (the Stone Circle Nest Bowl) had dried by morning light. So I finished drying the other two bowls in the microwave.

Warning: This is a trick, if you ever use it, that you must be very cautious with, and use only very conservatively. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have used this trick at all. The metallic fibers in the decorative paper are not suited to be microwaved. And you don't want to dry a bowl too quickly or thoroughly, like pottery in a kiln, because rapid drying can pull the paper out of shape, distort it, crackle it up. Instead, you want to just nudge the drying process along.

So what I did was put each bowl in the microwave for no more than 8 to 14 seconds at a time. This is enough to heat up the residual water in the matrix, which causes it to evaporate at an accelerated rate, drying the bowl faster than normal, but not altering the matrix or burning or warping the papers. Then I took each bowl out and let it continue to air-dry for several minutes, basically until it had cooled off. Then I repeated the process till the drying was done. In the end, it took an hour to carefully dry each bowl, using the microwave, whereas normal air-drying would have taken most of the day. Like I said, if you ever do this, be careful and conservative with the process. Don't overdo it, and don't rush it, which can damage or distort the final product or cause other problems.

Papier-Mache Art 4: Some Experimental Variations

This current set of papier-maché art pieces was frankly experimental. I tried out a few ideas I'd been thinking about, with mixed results. But it leads me to think in new directions, and even the "failures" from this session have given me fertile ideas for future art-pieces.



A papier-maché bowl made from full, untorn sheets of Japanese origami paper. I used most of an origami packet for this bowl, about 7 or 8 sheets total, all decorated in traditional Japanese blue-and-white textile patterns, from the sort of cheap cotton clothing worn by peasant field workers and fisherfolk.

I decided to see what would happen if I did a bowl out of whole sheets of thin decorated paper. I happen to have a lot of origami paper on hand, which I mostly like because of the way such papers are illustrated and decorated. I get design inspiration from some of these patterns. I do a little origami, but I'm not very practiced at it, and not very good.

Visually I like this bowl very much. Because it's whole sheets, rather than torn or cut strips, there are folds and ripples in the fabric of the bowl. It's a little thick, a little unwieldy. So the shape is a little amorphous, a little weird. It was an interesting experiment, though. I think I might try another origami bowl later, but with the sheets cut into strips. You can still create a field of visual pattern like on the origami paper, but without the folding and rippling effect in the paper itself.



A second bowl made during this experimental session consists of torn strips from laser-printed illustration resumés I printed some years ago. I had made this illustrated resumé as a marketing piece for my design and illustration work; it consisted of a collage of several of my Photoshop art pieces, along with name and address. To make this bowl, I tore up several of these sheets, discarding the address texts, and layered the torn sections inside and out. I tore along a straight-edge, creating a deckled paper edge kind of look, but making clean edges that preserve the images. So this uses the images on that old resumé piece to make a bowl. Since I chose visionary art for that piece, the images on the bowl remain remarkably coherent in affect. The look and feel is coherent. So I think this bowl is successful as an art piece, even though it's 100 percent recycled older art.

And now for something completely different:



For this, I used a brownie baking pan I got at the dollar store. I've found several plastic bowls and serving trays and pans that will serve me as papier-maché form molds at the dollar store. I'll be experimenting with more of those soon.

Meanwhile, in this cake pan I had the idea of making a paper matrix that might serve as a deckled frame for other art. I think this idea has real possibilities, for mounting photographs within shadow-box style paper frames, for example.

I used two images I had made some time ago in Photoshop, orphans of the Spiral Dance series of visionary art, that probably won't make it into the final version of the series. But these two work well side by side, and make up a more unified piece. So this paper-matrix framed two-image piece is a new piece of art in its own right; I'm thinking of a title for it, and I'll probably actual sign and title it later on.

This experiment is only partially successful, structurally. As it dried, it warped, and was no longer flat. But I solved that with foamcore backing. I have some foamcore, bought at an art supply store, that has adhesive on one side; the idea being to mount art permanently on the foamcore, after which it could then be framed or matted or whatever. I mounted this piece on a sheet of the adhesive foamcore, which flattened it out and also raised the edges more into a box shape, more like a frame with depth to it. And with the foamcore backing giving it structural solidity, it now looks more like the unified piece I had intended; and it will possible to mount it on the wall, now, as a finished piece.



The reason the paper warped here, I believe, is that I used too light a weight of paper. A heavier, more bonded paper, like a medium-weight watercolor paper, might be less likely to warp upon drying. This paper was also too light when soaked in the papier-maché glue medium; it actually tore a couple of times when I was laying it down in the mold. So I'll use a heavier paper next time, to see what happens. White cardstock might actually make a good matrix medium for this kind of papier-maché frame.

Another thought, about the art to be put inside the frame. I am thinking I could mount a pure photo directly in the center of this kind of frame. But I could also do collage. Both by tearing and reassembling a single image into a collage, but also by making several adjoining images separately, and putting them together in collage form. David hockney has done this with Polaroids and other photos, in very interesting ways, that I have found inspirational. I actually thoght of doing this kind of photo-collage in this papier-maché frame first, but I decided for this initial experiment to just use whole images, albeit with torn edges, just to see how they would look.

I don't think this experiment was a total success; although I was able to "repair" it using adhesive foamcore, as a I said above. I've learned a couple of things already from the attempt, however, and will try to take it to a more finished level on my next attempt.

Meanwhile, we keep experimenting, and seeing what happens. I'm still learning the materials, too, after all.

Papier-Mache Art Bowls 2

More fine-art, completely impractical but pretty, papier-maché bowls made using the gluten-free paste formula of one part white glue to two parts water. I've been experimenting with different kinds of paper. A few of these bowls are made from my old laser-prints, pulled from my archives of old prints. A few others are made from heavy cardstock or other kinds of paper. The precise mix of glue to water is variable, and somewhat flexible; in experimenting, I've found that heavier paper stock needs a higher ratio of glue to water, such as 1 part glue to 1.5 parts water, while the lighter papers do just fine with a more dilute paste. It depends a bit on paper weight, but also on how firmly you want the papers to adhere. In a couple of experiments with heavier paper, I have found that I had to glue a couple sections when the piece was dried. Just touch-ups, to be sure, but had I used more glue originally, it might have stuck together better.

I've discovered that the best way to work with molds for making the bowls—whether the mold is a glass bowl, a cheap plastic salad bowl found at the dollar discount store, or another kind of mold such as a vase—is to use plastic wrap. Vaseline leaves a residue that is hard to get off the paper, and using no lining of the mold can mean that the paper affixes itself to the mold too readily. You line the mold with plastic wrap, then make the papier-maché form around or within the mold. When the piece is dried, the plastic wrap makes it much easier to remove the finished piece. I tried making a bowl using one of the cheap plastic salad bowls, and the paper stuck to the mold rather too well. It also made for some odd textures on the finished papier-maché, a few areas of high polish that don't look very good.

The tall cylinder was made by wrapping a thrift-store vase with plastic wrap, then wrapping that in papier-maché cardstock. It needed to completely dry before I could unwrap it from around the vase. Also, the plastic wrap around the lip had moved, so the paper was glued to the glass, and I had to use a knife to unseat the paper piece before it would come off cleanly; which it did immediately after running the knife edge around the lip.

I actually really like this tall cylinder made from the vase mold. I think it's a unique shape, and has some real possibilities for future projects. It might even be interesting to combine the tall cylinder with a more typical bowl shape, in a grouping, or as combination pieces.

I am also thinking about what series I can make using the same shapes but different papers, different images. variations on a theme; or conceptual variations that tell a narrative over several bowls in sequence.


watercolor paper bowl

I tried making this bowl using heavy watercolor paper, with the intention of drawing or painting on the bowl after it is formed, or doing brush calligraphy on it. In other words, as a blank form for future art-making, in bowl form. This paper was rather hard to work with. It required longer soaking in the glue-water mix, before it softened enough to be formable. When dried, the bowl made from this paper is incredibly firm, stiff, and strong—much stronger than most of the bowls made from other kinds of paper.


fractal paper bowl

Made from laser-prints of fractal art made in Photoshop. I've made several kinds of fractal art in Photoshop, and have designed some wrapping papers using fractals in repeating tiles. For example, here's some older wrapping-paper design I made some years ago using fractal art:

  

I plan to make a larger bowl, eventually, using a wider range of fractal imagery. It might be a little hard to look at, though, when it's all done.

These are still "sketches," for the most part. The bowl I think is the most lovely is the one made using the blue and gold-threaded decorative paper. That's a finished piece, compared to most of the others.


Decorative paper bowl; the best one so far, I think. (I need to find more of this rare and beautiful paper.)

Papier-Maché Art Bowls

Another new direction for my art-making. I've been thinking hard about how to break out of the two-dimensional limitation of most visual art, especially the photographic print. I have several ideas that combine photographic prints with sculpture, with multimedia, with multiple displays of parallel work. That combine imagery with form, that break out of the two-dimensional frame into the realm of sculpture, and of multimedia.

I've always liked paper arts. I've long been interested in hand-made paper, art books, and hand-printing. I haven't pursued this interest very deeply before now, although at times I've wanted to make my own paper; and I think I may be able to explore that craft this winter. I have been setting up a crafts worktable in the basement, to be able work on several projects as time permits, from woodcarving, to paper arts, to candlemaking, and more.

Someday I would like to make an art book. I want to make the paper myself, print my written words on the hand-made paper, sew the binding, make the covers. In other words, a completely hand-made art book, containing original images and poems. Obviously, like most art-books, a limited edition. A lot work to make, and not intended to be mass-produced.

My artist friend A. had the idea to explore papier-maché recently, which I felt immediately enthusiastic about. I sought out some gluten-free recipes online for making paste—most papier-maché is, like wallpaper paste, a combination of flour paste and water—the most effective one being made from white glue, like the famous Elmer's Glue-All seen in many schoolrooms, mixed with water. (Two parts white glue to one or one-and-a-half parts water.)

That very night, lit on fire with the idea of making a paper art bowl—decorative, artistic, not for food, certainly not waterproof—I made two. I have a stash of really good art papers, most of them designed to run through a printer. I've made some laser-printed art-books with some of this paper, publishing a limited run a few years ago.




I tore this purple paper stock into strips, and made two papier-maché art bowls. I have a set of three or four blown-glass bowls made by another artist friend of mine, when she was working in the University of Wisconsin glass lab. I used two of these glass bowls as molds. I followed the instructions of one of the papier-maché recipes I had found, and lined the mold bowls with petroleum jelly. This worked well, but had the downside of leaving some traces of petroleum jelly on the bowls, which took a while to get off, after the bowls had dried.



To make a paper bowl like this, you tear paper into strips, soak it in the bonding material (the white glue with water, or paste) for a minute or two, till the paper is pliable, then form the strips into the mold. After making the paper bowl in the mold, you can sop up the extra wetness with a paper towel. The bowls need to dry for a minimum of 24 hours, typically, before they can come out of the molds without falling apart. Once out of the mold, it usually takes another day or two before they're completely dry. Once dry, they are quite firm, strong enough to hold shape, even strong enough to be containers for other materials. (Not food!)



All in all, for a first effort, I'm very satisfied. I'm still learning what I'm doing. I expect to do several more simple bowls, while I learn what I'm doing, then move on to other forms. Perhaps some plates, platters, and other forms that have relief could make interesting molds. I have seen some square Japanese plates, for example, that might make very interesting forms. Maybe even something like a wall sculpture.




Next, I made two more experimental bowls, made from strips torn up from old photo-prints of mine. I have several boxes full of laser-prints on paper, made from my photographs and digital art. Most of these I made when I was working at various graphic arts jobs which happened to have printers that they let me use. Laser prints, while quite crisp and permanent, are on standard printer paper, not photographic paper. That means I can't really sell them as photo prints. So what am I to do with them? Why, recycle them into other art.

So I made two more bowls from these laser photo prints. The interesting thing about using the photo prints this way is that I can make different images inside and outside; so you can make a themed piece of art using more than one static image.

I tried lining the molds with plastic wrap rather than petroleum jelly this time. This worked very well, as the finished bowls popped right out of the molds after drying, and the plastic wrap left nothing behind, unlike the petroleum jelly. A day more of drying, and the bowls look very good. Abstract yet representational.

One of this second group of bowls uses photos I've made of my small collection of vintage typewriters; the outside of the bowl is typewriter keys, while the inside uses photos of other parts of the typewriter.



Bowl of Type

The second bowl uses photos I've made of nudes in nature—part of an ongoing series of photographs of the nude male form in natural settings, which I began in 2000 and still continues. The photos used for this bowl were made over two or three years of camping in northern Minnesota. The different models were all friends who agreed to pose for me.



Bowl of Eros

As i said, i view these as experiments. This is brand new art for me, although I have been intrigued by paper arts for several years. I've seen lots of beautiful paper-arts pieces over the years, which can be sewn as well as glued, containing swatches of fabric, of woven paper, of feathers, and other materials. There is potential here for making something more shamanic, as well. I find myself also moving towards abstraction rather than representation; even the bowls made from paper would be cubist, or refracted, not perfectly pictured. Layers and nuanced complexities and resonant associations of image, word, meaning, context.