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Residency at the Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades, Spain, a living museum of papermaking in Capellades, Spain. April - July 2012.

 

              

 

For more information and photos of the museum and antique mills of the surrounding region, please click here.

 


 

Please scroll down to see works produced during, or influenced by, the residency:

 

Let go (per teresa a roma), handmade cotton/pine paper allowed to drop to the floor while still wet and left to dry

 

Let go (per teresa a roma) installation view of Devotion/Destruction: Craft Inheritance, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs.                                              Curated by Rebecca Pristoop. Photo by Anna Lise Jensen. 

 

 

              

A daily activity during the residency: fresh batch of handmade paper hung to dry in the top floor drying loft of the antique papermill.

 

 

              

My own handmade sheets of paper hung to dry, some are only hung by one corner and allowed to drop.

 

 

              

The dropped sheets left to dry on the terra cotta floor.

 

 

              

Let go (per teresa a roma), detail and installation view at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects. Photos bottom row: Anna Lise Jensen

 



     "...The word "crumpled" usually elicits an image of a discarded piece of paper. But "crumpled" can be used to describe more than just paper (as in [Cheryl Ann] Thomas's work), and paper is more than just a surface for unsuccessful poems and sketches. As Alyssa Casey reminds us, paper begins life as a pulp - an aqueous mixture of macerated plant fibers. This soggy matter has the potential to be sculpted, cast, turned into sheets of paper, or even left to find its own shape. For Let go (per teresa a roma), (2012), Casey used a cotton/pine pulp to mold flat sheets of paper. She then hung these wet rectangular panels from a drying line on the top floor of a paper mill in Spain, leaving one edge of each sheet unpinned. With open windows, and the pull of gravity, the damp sheets fell to the floor, finding their shape in relation to the rush of wind, the irregularity of ground, and the degree of dryness upon impact. The organic folds and crinkles in each of the five objects in the series speak to the when, where, and how of their genesis, visualizing their formation and engaging the viewer's somatic experience.

     Moving beyond the functional, each work in this exhibition takes shape as an abstract investigation into craft practices. Through prolonged relationships with material and process, the artists in Devotion/Destruction: Craft Inheritance make visible the physicality of de/construction and the visceral effects of their actions. Through their work, they also carve a space for the re/consideration of the socio-historical constructs of traditional craft production."

 

      - Rebecca Pristoop, excerpt from her curatorial essay accompanying the exhibition, Devotion/Destruction: Craft Inheritance at Dorsky               Gallery Curatorial Programs



     "...Alyssa Casey’s works are luminous paper structures, masquerading as fabric forms hanging on the wall and placed on the floor. Friendly, luminous and winsome they beg to touch even though forbidden. The viewer sees a soft object and is once again fooled by the materials. Comfort may be found in discovering the paper is made with cotton and pine wherein your senses again become engaged in a deception that pleases with the fresh and familiar..."


      - Jeannine Bardo, from "Devotion/Desctruction", review of Devotion/Destruction: Craft Inheritance at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs

 


 

Records del Molí: exúvia, balcó decadent, and maça in pietà, handmade paper casts of the architecture of the papermill:

 

  

Paper casting to make exúvia (left) and balcó decadent (right)



exúvia (Records del Molí), 2012                                                                       53 x 45 x 15 in                                                                                               Cast handmade abaca paper 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                               maça in pietà (Records del Molí), 2012                                                              36 x 55 x 23 in                                                                                             Cast handmade abaca and cotton/pine paper  

maça in pietà (Records del Molí) references the classical pietà of art history with the cream colored component of the work representing the sacrificed body. Handmade of abaca paper, this cream colored component is a cast of an obsolete hammering mechanism once used to cut and crush the cotton and flax fibers for papermaking, centuries before modern beaters where invented. The white component beneath is a mold formed sheet of handmade cotton/pine paper that - when freshly formed and still damp - I sat with draped over my arms until the sheet had dried. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

balcó decadent (Records del Molí), 2012                                                           45 x 20 x 12 in                                                                                                 Cast handmade abaca paper 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

Llibre, handmade abaca paper 

                                      

Llibre, 2012                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         9 x 9.5 x 7 in                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Handmade abaca paper

  


 

Per ludovica a roma, handmade recycled tracing paper, installed on an antique writing desk.

This work was produced immediately after the residency, while working with Roberto Mannino in Rome.

 

Per ludovica a roma, (Installation view), 2012                                                                                                                                                                                         8 x 5.5 x 3 in                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Handmade recycled tracing paper, made in Rome Installed on an antique writing desk. 

                       

 

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