Paper Making

On the Mend, our regular group at Telegraph Hill centre, uses art, creative writing and conversation, to reflect gently on all things repair.  In the Autumn of 2023, we were experimenting with printing, and with paper making. To make the paper, Amanda tore up huge quantities of newspaper to make the most glorious mush, which is then caught on a deckle – a mesh stretched over a frame. Once this is dry, you have a nice new piece of paper. We embedded words we’d found in newspapers and magazines, but our overall theme was: At the ending of the year, what do you want to leave behind, and what do you want to welcome in?  So, one week, we wrote down what we wanted to leave behind, and then ripped that paper into tiny bits, and added it to the pulp. The words disappeared into the new paper, which we made into notebooks and calendars, for ourselves and each other. These are blank, ready for the new things to come in. Those who wanted to talked about what they were leaving behind, but others didn’t, because the paper-making was doing it for us.