Paper Snow

Some weeks ago I threw out some soaking paper into the compost bin and missed slightly causing some of the paper to fall into the hedgerow alongside. I noticed it a while later as it had dried and looked beautiful. I kept thinking how I would love to see this on a larger scale and today I had a go on the hedges on the other side of the garden. I had a pan of soaking paper that I had left a bit long and had gone pretty stinky so I threw it all into the hedge. I will now leave it to dry and see what becomes of it.

I feel this is an act of faith, as it is probably, likely, pretentious and stupid but something niggled and wanted me to try it. A little spark of curiosity meant I wanted to see what would happen, for its own sake. I think before the MA I would have put these little creative sparks to one side thinking of them as unproductive and pointless. I am grateful that I am learning to do things just for their own sake and even if they are a bit pretentious or pointless, no one need know and I might even strike upon something that leads somewhere much less pointless.

I’m not entirely sure why I have done this - it looks pretty for sure and I was happy to use up paper that isn’t working so well for casting. But more than that I think the exercise has been about dialogue, starting a conversation with the trees and the paper, moving back and forth in a space where questions are posed in my mind around why I am making paper, the resources, the original source, how paper is used as a substrate rather than a medium. I love all of these ideas and I really like how they make me feel.

They remind me of Japanese wish trees and Yoko Ono’s participatory wish tree, which she started in 1996. I love the idea of it becoming participatory and I am wondering whether the idea of a hope tree or worry tree might be of interest as part of my paper explorations. I began investigating private forms of grief processing before the MA, which had involved gathering objects and rituals in my own family that spoke to loss and worry dolls were a feature of my husband’s loss of his mother. She had given him worry dolls as a child and after she died (quite suddenly and in his arms) the worry dolls took on a more poignant role in his life and we still have them in the house and they are referred to and quietly whispered to, to this day.