Crushed Paper

Crushed Paper. I did this one with the kids over many years. Sometimes starting each new class with it. First, clear off the table in front of you--put everything away, so that the space is entireley open. Next, take a sheet of 8-1/2 x 11 inch white paper, holding it in your hands, then bend it, crush it, work it continuously until you make it as soft as possible.

Over time, usually about 5 minutes, with everyone doing this together, around the table. The sound was important, too--and a kind of peripheral awareness of everyone else's progress. If progress is the word. It could be hard to get started--people needed to see how someone else jumped in, this opening the way to begin yourself. Also, other than the softness, there was no goal. That was important, too.

After several minutes (sometimes I'd walk around the table, lean over to see how each person was doing--this was a wonderful way to get to know them, actually) I'd have the students stop, lay the sheets out in front, in a ring. Light in the middle, from the hooded lamp. And then the question: How are these different?

It was the only question, really--for the sheets would be remarkably different--each person's touch registered in a specific way--unplanned, but entirely felt. I never knew exactly how they saw them--sometimes there were smiles of recognition, when someone's personality showed in a particular way. And they'd all have things to say--it wasn't a matter of criticism. Everyone's work mattered.

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I do remember one class in particular--where Vicente Sauceda, a young guy from the Central Valley, from a farm-worker family (his stories, later, about picking tomatoes with his father, which they did in the middle of the night, to avoid the heat)--I'd asked that group to pin up their sheets, side by side, and noticed that Vicente, as he walked towards the wall, was molding and forming his paper in some way.  When everyone's was pinned up, there on the wall was a beautiful white crushed-paper impression of Vicente's hand!  The only time this had ever happened.

He went on to do grad school at Yale--maybe this was fitting, too, just like his hand--and is now back in South Texas, in McAllen, near the border, working as an architect. Giving back, I always imagine...

And Mauricio, who took the class with me in 1992, says that still he remembers this project quite clearly!
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A final note: Each of the sheets at the outset comes from a ream of industrially-produced paper, all virtually the same--the standardization, of course, being the point. We're surrounded by such things. Made for efficiency--clearer printing, better copies. But the effect of working the paper--making it soft--makes for a set of individual experiences--everyone's important, each person's unique. The opposite of repetition. Some things need to be consistent, of course--a key in a lock has got to work!. But difference matters, too!
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Oh yes--those twigs. Gathered from the camphor tree in front of the house. I took them in one evening so that the class could use them to make drawings. Each twig dipped in a small individual container of thickened ink. Drawing with an implement that eliminated the idea of control, to see what might result (like drawing with your left hand.) Opening up.

They never got used, somehow--have stayed wrapped like this (with a twist tie, uncharacteristically!) for many years. I always like seeing them there on top of the sheets of crushed paper... Think of them as a belonging together...

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