Paper clouds

Paper cloud displayed in window at Bowlees Visitor Centre Gallery, Upper Teesdale

Paper clouds and other sculptures and how to make them

Here are a couple of videos on two of the many steps in the process of making paper clouds and other sculptures from dead moorland grasses collected in the late winter early spring. 

After collecting out in the moors, a couple of months of partial rotting in a plastic bag and cutting to short lengths the grass is cooked in a solution of sodium bi-carbonate for several hours which stinks the studio out. This starts to break  apart and digest the cellulose fibres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOYH07CTNO4

After mashing the cooked grass with a pestle and mortar the broken down cellulose is washed and then bathed in dilute bleach to lighten the colour before a final rinse in cold water. 

The pulp is then ready to store in airtight containers until needed for pouring into a paper cloud on a paper making screen or onto silk screen printing mesh. The paper is left on the screen to either air dry for a day or so, or to fast dry with a current of warm air passing over it for an hour or more. Faster drying will make the paper cockle and bend more dramatically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_vDUYaYvmE&t=21s

Once dry, if the paper hasn't released itself from the screen, a small curved knife blade is very gently run under the delicate edges until it lifts off. 

Some of these paper clouds are very fragile at the edges but the thinness of the paper in these parts helps create a brighter silver lining when back lit. This scattering effect is enhanced when the cellulose fibres are finer which depends on the amount of cooking, mashing and bleaching and on the types of grass used.

Paper pulp can be used to make almost any 3-D object out of a skin of paper such as this model of a 25 micron wide birch pollen grain exhibited at Baltic 39 in Newcastle upon Tyne and at Brantwood, Coniston in 2015.

Birch pollen paper sculpture, Baltic 39, Newcastle upon Tyne

Birch pollen paper sculpture and paper cloud, Brantwood, Coniston