PAPER Practice

Drawing is tender evidence—an embodied record of gesture, attention, and evolving conditions. It is my most immediate form of inquiry, a quiet architecture of thought that unfolds through mark, erasure, and revision. Drawing allows for intimacy and interiority; it remains unobtrusive, private, and porous, able to be both rudimentary and masterful while holding the possibility of simultaneous thought and reconsideration. In my practice, drawing functions not as a preliminary act but as a living system of thinking-with materials—a reciprocal conversation rather than a unilateral mark on a passive surface.

Papermaking has become an essential extension of this inquiry. My recent works incorporate handmade sheets—typically one quarter of each composition—crafted from fibers that I beat entirely by hand. I work with kozo, cotton, and flax in respectful conversation with the cultural lineages they carry, integrating these fibers with botanicals gathered from the local ecosystem in ways that reflect regenerative, place-based harvesting and ecological accountability.

The physical act of hand-beating pulp holds a somatic intelligence. The motion resembles chewing: rhythmic, intimate, and transformative. It is a kind of pre-digestion that turns raw plant matter into a surface capable of absorbing gesture, thought, and breath. Through papermaking, I metabolize experience—the body’s labor becomes inseparable from the paper’s formation, making the substrate itself a collaborator in the work.

Creating my own paper mirrors the ethos of weaving my own cloth. Both practices are slow, cyclical, and grounded in embodied knowledge. They produce surfaces that remember pressure, water, time, and the presence of hands. These nuanced substrates hold marks differently; they invite resistance, absorption, and unpredictability. They shape the drawing as much as the drawing shapes them.

In this ecology of making, drawing becomes a mode of listening. It is a study in relationality—between fiber and gesture, body and material, place and process. Through hand-made paper and drawing, I cultivate a practice of attention that honors material lineage, ecological intimacy, and the ongoing conversation between the seen and the sensed.