Recycled Paper Measuring Cups

Recycled Paper Measuring Cups (In search of better tools)

2020

Recycled paper (see Recipe Card for more detail), recycled paper “backdrop” made during Calendars, Currencies and Curriculums, domestic items, digital photography, rainwater, dishwater

These measuring cups were created from collecting and recycling domestic paper waste in my home through a hand paper-making and casting process. The cups will serve as tools in my practice and during workshops, allowing me to measure ingredients used in paper-making and display how paper can be used to create unconventional objects. A “recipe card” was also created which visually displays a portion of each piece of paper that went into making the measuring cups. The process of making these cups and the objects themselves are a form of artistic research investigating the following questions:

How can I create my own tools and avoid relying on market forces? Why is it useful (in the arts and beyond) to make one’s own tools? How can my work be more sustainable, both in how I source material and also how projects directly support and sustain each other? How can documentation of my process be a meaningful component of my work, changing viewership from a passive act, to an active act of learning? How can I embody the role of a facilitator of learning in my practice, through visual means? What are different ways that I can attempt to share “recipes” with others so that my process can be more readily shared and reproduced? In what ways do practices of material repurposing, self sufficiency and recycling at home speak to the present moment? How and why might educational environments, creative environments and domestic environments merge and speak to one another? Why is it important for artists to show not just what they make, but also how and where they make it?