Water is used as a tool to create imagery in the blowout technique. A waterproof object or plastic stencil is placed on top of a freshly formed sheet to protect specific areas of pulp while surrounding pulp is removed or “blown out” by spraying water. The pulp image remaining is usually couched onto a base sheet. Multiple blowouts can be layered to build a composition.
Melvin Edwards based his two-dimensional images on his sculptural work:
“When it comes to being on paper—or IN paper in this case—it’s very related to ideas where the sculpture and graphics come together. Using the stencil process and the concept of negative space—to be able to use the waterhose and blow stuff away, but at the same time to leave stuff—it’s almost like the process of painting with washes and solid areas. And here, we used three-dimensional objects as stencils.”
To create his “blowout” image in Ogun Knows, Edwards arranged metal objects from his sculptures onto a freshly pulled sheet. The entire surface was then sprayed with water to blown out the unprotected black pulp. The remaining black silhouette was then couched onto a base sheet. In some areas, the pigment but not the pulp, was blown away, creating a grayish-white halo:
“What’s interesting is we didn’t necessarily end up using things in anticipated ways, but we certainly got very interesting things out of the process...There are some references straight out of Angola—the working tools, for instance, and the importance of water in life and art.”
Diana Al-Hadid used the water-intensive “blowout” process to create two-dimensional work with master collaborator Amy Jacobs and her team at Dieu Donné. Borrowing from her sculpture practice, Al-Hadid focuses on material and process aspects in her artmaking. She is also inspired by mythical imagery, such as the Tower of Babel.
Jennifer Clifford Danner,Nature’s Dark Victory: Covid Dreams 2,2020.
Blowout images can be layered, or double-couched, onto sheets that contain collage elements. Jennifer Clifford Danner sandwiched seaweed between two sheets of translucent abaca, then couched her blowout sheet on top. Once the paper dried, Danner painted gouache imagery on top.
Courtesy of Glenda Shorb
Susan Gosin and Anne Vilsboell,Khela,2019.
The title of this edition of Tagore’s Poem “Unending Love,” is Khela, which means “to play” in Bengali. The book Khela includes two different versions for each of the three Kamasutra couples: a female and a male version, each consisting of three overlaying pages which, when layered, reunite the separated couples conceptually and visually.
The bottom page of opaque cotton paper has an original hand-painted miniature of either the separated female or male figure. The figure’s partner is printed on a sheet of translucent abaca paper. The top sheet is a cotton blowout image of a classic Indian Jali pattern couched on a colored translucent sheet of abaca paper. By turning the pages of each grouping, the figures are revealed in a continuous play of separation and union.
Published by Dieu Donné Press.
Jalis: photographed by Anne Vilsboell, designs developed by Susan Gosin.Miniatures: hand painted by the artist Zenul Khan and his family, Udaipur, Rajasthan.Figures drawn by Anne Vilsboell, developed and printed on pigmented abaca paper by Sayre Gaydos and Peter Kruty.Designed and hand-printed Bengali and English calligraphy and letterpress printing by Sayre Gaydos and Peter Kruty at Peter Kruty Editions, NY. Covers fabricated by Peter Kruty.All paper was custom designed by Susan Gosin and produced at Dieu Donné Press and at Dieu Donné Papermill.Assisted by Tatiana Ginsberg and Amy Jacobs.Calligraphy and binding design by Aditi Babel.Box production by Beth Sheehan.
Artist Michelle Oka Doner uses white and off-white pulp colors to create imagery in What is White. In a book, as Doner states, “it’s a sequence. It’s not happening at once.” She compares turning the pages to travelingthrough snow: “A blizzard obliterates everything but extreme white notes... Sometimes I think we need extreme absences of everything, like a cleansing.”
Oka Doner’s wax stencils, normally used for her sculpture, were used to blow out white cotton images, which were couched onto translucent natural abaca sheets. The book is bound with a Japanese-style binding.
Oka Doner painted hot wax onto archival binding boards to create a protective trifold cover for the book. She designed a white felt envelope to cover the wax trifold cover, which is housed in a linen-covered clamshell box.
Published by Dieu Donné Press. Printed by Peter Kruty and Sayre Gaydos. Bound by Barbara Mauriello.
