Reciprocity

‘Reciprocity is the basic currency of social life’

- Jonathan Haidt, Social Psychologist

I have been thinking carefully about which materials and experiments seem to ‘have legs’, as Dryden so aptly put it. Focussing my future and art making practice into those things that are so singularly important, that I can commit to saying I want to be in this space for a good while, in the full acceptance that it will change and evolve eventually. One of the moments of poetry over the past year has been witnessing the reciprocity between beeswax and paper, which speaks to the form finding in my practice that feels yet to come. My theories seem to leap and bound but there is a natural time lag in finding form thereafter: the work needs time to gestate and emerge in its own time.

Beeswax moulding has been a pleasure, I love the smell of it and taking over the kitchen lovingly nudging the Bain Marie to melt the wax evenly, then a dynamic splash of the wax and frantic forming before it dries. I fell in love with paper pulp last year, its ancient history of spreading knowledge and its inherent wisdom extracted but not thieved from nature. When casting with paper pulp and beeswax it is a process of memorialisation and recording, retaining something of the form, translating it through the medium of wax into something new. This reciprocity is like a gentle holding of hands, gestures of mark and touch, a fluidity where neither wax nor paper is strictly solid nor liquid but in a constant state of flux. So many natural processes and laws of temperature, pressure, time and compassion. It speaks to the illusion of separation, of quantum entanglement, where two bodies fit so perfectly together, rather like being in love.

There is a quiet intelligence to the way in which the imprint or memory of a cabbage leaf or a mark made by hand is transferred to the wax, generously absorbed and retained within itself, then a transition from presence to disappearance and re-presence occurs as the paper reciprocates the surface textures and forms into a new iteration, shaped by the wax but where not a trace of the wax remains, save its memory. I am reminded of My Octopus Teacher, where the female octopus gives birth to her young and in the process vanishes away quietly to make way for the next.

I am particularly interested in paper as a medium rather than a substrate. I have been making drawings with paper on paper and no other materials to swirl the idea around in my mind. Paper is a gentle medium, it listens and is receptive, gentle and open to possibilities. It embodies within its nature so many of the attitudes we seem to lack as we drift angrily, despairingly, apathetically, wastefully towards ecologies that no longer function at all. Both wax and paper feel ethical, humble and honest. They are sustainable and may be used over and over again with patience and good grace. Paper may be made from anything containing cellulose and beeswax may be produced carefully and respectfully using sustainable practices with almost no waste at all.

I don’t know where my paper journey is going but it seems to ‘have legs’ - it is poetic, beautiful, interesting and the possibilities are endless. I enjoy how tactile paper and beeswax are, that they are like skins in themselves, How paper will sit alongside painting and other pursuits remains to be seen but I am increasingly tipping over into a thinking that includes beeswax and paper will continue for me, it has been more than a teacher and may very well become a companion.