Grass Paper

• June 23rd, 2005 • 6 Comments • experiments, how-to, papermaking •

I mow a lawn on a regular basis, and wondered what I could do with all of the extra grass clippings. Maybe I could…make paper? Yes! This week I embarked on a “make paper out of grass clippings” project. I’ll gladly share the process and the results, but I don’t think I would do it again. The smell of cooked/soaking clippings makes me want to retch now. I mean it, I almost vomited at one point in this project. Fortunately, the smell of fresh-cut grass doesn’t smell remotely like my project, so I can still enjoy that summer pleasure.

On to the paper!

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1) Collect clippings. I estimate that I used about 8 cups of freshly clipped grass to start. The lawn mowed for them was free of poison, fertilizer and animal droppings. (That might’ve made it smell worse.)

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2) Cook clippings. My goal here was to soften the clippings so that they would break up better. OH MY GOD this part stank. The whole apartment reeked of cooking grass. If you try this, make sure there’s plenty of ventilation. Blech. I added about 1/2 cup of baking soda to help the softening. (Most papermaking recommends washing soda, but baking will do in a pinch. Or if you’re poor.) The grass was cooked for about an hour.

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3) Blend cooked clippings. This part looks truely vile. They should make people on those crazy TV game shows drink cooked grass shakes. Gag. Most of the clippings broke up fairly well; most pieces were about 1/4in-1/8in long. Not bad!

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4) You can go two ways on this one. Either make pure grass paper, or, mix the grass pulp with recycled paper pulp. I chose to make pure grass paper first.

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5a) Grass paper. There’s probably about 5 gallons of water in the tub, and all of the cooked clippings. I slipped the deckle in and ewwwwww the water was extra slimey. A fairly thick sheet was dumped on a drying rag and proceeded to smell like cooked grass. Blaugh.

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5b) Grass paper with recycled pulp. I simply added about 3 cups of pulp I had on hand to the grass tub and mixed together. The sheet pulled from this mixture looked much less like a square mat of pond muck.

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6) Drying. The Texas heat is perfect right now; no humidity, and 90 degree weather. The paper dried overnight.

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This project makes me cringe now. I would gladly try again with dried straw, but my attempts to use something I had an abundance of didn’t work well enough for me. The main problem was the “Gag Factor.” Oh yeah, you probably want to hear about my near-vomit experience? A portion of the clippings I left in a bucket to “cook” in the summer sun. I would swear that something had DIED and was ROTTING for several days in that bucket instead of grass. Cleaning out that bucket was a real treat, I tell ya.Admittedly, the finished result looks quite nice. The paper should get more of a golden hue as the grass dries completely. But durn it, all I can think of when I see the sheets is that awful smell!

 

Picture Time!

• May 6th, 2005 • 0 Comments • papermaking, photo, studio 4A •

What I wouldn’t give for a good ventilation system.

Gahh, there was a minor oopsy when I came in this evening; I forgot I hadn’t fixed a leg on that desk, so the weight of my pulp bin seems to have slooowly pulled it down. I’m surprised it didn’t fall over entirely, which would have left dried paper pulp everywhere. How precarious!

Shellac-ing the paper I’ve been making. This sheet has a hole in it that the shellac has frozen in time. It’s quite beautiful the way it moves in the light, especially with fresh shellac on it. This is the third coat being applied to this sheet.

This sheet is receiving a brand new coat of shellac, as it finished drying a few days ago. Uncoated paper is amazingly absorbent. I need to buy a beater.

Satisfying more of my own photoegotism with a self-portrait. To the left you can see Spindle; behind me is my wiener dog screen I can’t bring myself to wash out. I’m getting too much milage out of it!

 

Wow, two posts in one week!

• April 28th, 2005 • 0 Comments • painting, papermaking •

Quoting Bill and Ted, “Whoa!” Today was such a beautiful day, I HAD to go back down to the studio this evening. My fundage is a little tight right now, which means everything that can be painted on will be painted on. Paper supplies are VERY low, mostly due to my lack of place to store a varied stock. When there’s no paper, what’s a girl to do? Make some, of course!

There have been a couple of pulp balls lying around all winter, so I reconstituted them. While they broke up well, methinks I need to get ahold of a cheap egg beater to break up the smaller chunks. The ol’ potato masher just doesn’t cut it. Despite large paper chunks, I decided to make two sheets for painting on tomorrow. It’s nice and warm and dry outside tonight. In addition, I took some of the wood chunks that are building up around my newest “painting” and threw them in for a third sheet of extra-chunky paper.

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If my vast memory serves (and by looking back ONE post…) I took a photo of the very beginnings of the “painting”. I’m somewhat skittish about taking another one as it’s in a working stage. As I’m no longer in a college environment, my work is more prone to people telling me what my artwork looks like. Spindle, as it’s tentatively titled, had already been subject to being labeled as a recognizable item. May I say, “Arrrrgh!”? Telling me what a non-objective artwork is irritates me to no end. Granted most folks need to know what an object is in order to make sense of it, so it really isn’t fair of me to feel irritated. Nevertheless I am, and so I won’t show any photos of what Spindle looks like. So there. Nyaaaah.

I’m faced with a problem in creating Spindle. Room and time. One, space is at a premium in Studio 4A. This project is somewhat large. Two, I have not had time to find a show space in which to present my large-scale paintings. These works NEED to be in a show. I am convinced that they are successful; Anxiety Beast was the only one to make it into my only show, and it isn’t nearly as delightful as the Industrial Strength Tryptic. I’d love to be able to have a show of the larger paintings…but it isn’t possible right now. Sigh. Perhaps the Summertime will offer more opportunities?