After looking at paper manipulation and construction artists who use a wide range of approaches to making and working with paper I wanted to decide on the best way to approach making paper, so that the material qualities (fragility, strength, fragmentation and opacity) I want to explore are used to make the most effective whole sheets of paper.
I found the trickiest part of making this paper was combining the the lichen ( fallen, that I had collected and dried from the New Forest) so that it retained its structure but also spread evenly and interestingly across the paper. I attempted a variety of approaches to do so.
The least successful was placing the lichen onto the paper once I had formed the paper sheet, this was because the licken was not embedded enough into the paper and tended to spring out, furthermore this was a very controlled way of making the paper and I would prefer this stage of paper making to be more natural and unpredictable. I had also tried to control the paper pulp much like a paper mache medium and layering the lichen between the pulp, this was successful to get lichen that dangled from the paper but the down side to this was that the paper was too thick and had lost its opacity and became too ridged to manipulate.
The most successful approach was to submerge the licken into the paper pulp and as I drew the frames to the surface the lichen formed a more natural pattern embedded within the paper that had the fragility and opacity that I wanted.
Moving Forward I want to explore ways of creating tone with the paper and colouring the pulp to create more interest around the lichen (to see if this would add or subtract from the natural patterns) and start to manipulate the pages by bending curving and folding to see how far I can push the paper until its fragility gives in. As well as this I want to start to bring in another stitch element into the paper to exaggerate some of the manipulation as well as mimic the lichen.
Lara Hoad Artist Designer: Maker 