Different kinds of pulp can be pressed into various types of molds to cast multiples or a one-of-a-kind piece of sculpture. Simple plaster casts work well for low relief and sculpture with few undercuts. For more complicated cast work, multiple rubber molds are fabricated to cast highly dimensional and freestanding sculptures. Cotton pulp is the standard for casting sculpture because it can pick up fine surface detail. Cotton shrinks much less than other fibers as it dries, so the details remain sharp and intact. Color or decorative additives can be mixed into the pulp before casting, and paper casts can be painted after dried.
The four sculptures in each edition of Richard Tuttle’sThe Triumph of Night are cast by hand, rather than pulp cast in a mold. While Tuttle “performed” the work by spontaneously smashing pulp, his collaborator Paul Wong had to carefully freeze the performance and reproduce it as a work of art in an edition of ten.
As Paul Wong describes, this is “evidence of the play” that Tuttle engaged in, “[an] intervention with the sculptural pieces, you make a beautiful sandcastle and smash it like a child. For each piece, he takes a tool that he selected to do the smashing, and then you see the evidence [of the tool] in the pieces. It’s fallen apart and somehow it’s dried and held together. It’s like an accident that was photographed, you have the evidence.”
Mel Kendrick,Untitled from Loopholes installation,2008.
Collaborator: Megan Moorhouse. Finish: Paul Wong.
Low-relief casting molds can also be inked to create prints that are a true hybrid of printmaking and papermaking. For relief printing, rubber molds, with or without water-based ink applied to the surface of the rubber mold, can be placed on top of fresh cotton pulp and pressed in a platen press, as in Mel Kendrick’s Loopholes.
Louise Nevelson’s Morning Haze was a landmark cast paper sculpture. Working with publisher Dick Solomon of Pace Prints, who was an early hand papermaking supporter, papermaker Garner Tullis fabricated some of the first paper casts for sculptor Louise Nevelson. Unpigmented cotton paper pulp was cast and dried into a relief mold developed by the artist.
Nari Ward cast low-relief cotton pulp into custom designed, highly detailed rubber molds of commercial cardboard pieces similar to cardboard used for signs by people soliciting money on the street. Using laser-cut Mylar stencils of text from phishing and email scams, Ward then hand-painted the phrases onto the freshly formed pulp casts. As he worked, Ward also poured and misted gold pigment onto the casts, because, as he noted, “it’s easier to tell lies with gold than cardboard.”
In 2018, artist Mark Bradford and publisher Hauser & Wirth commissioned Dieu Donné to fabricate an edition to celebrate and support Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Fund. To make Mark Bradford’s replica of a Los Angeles Police Department body camera, Life Size, black cotton paper pulp was cast into molds. The paper casts were painted with acrylic for a plasticky surface sheen, then attached to thick white cotton paper board. For the finishing touches in the edition, the red markings on the camera were painted by hand with gouache, and serial numbers were letterpress printed on top of the white board.
Letterpress by Coeur Noir.Mold by Fiona Westphal. Cutting by Davin Kuntz (Woodside Press).
Jonathan Seliger,Triple Scoop: Pistachio, Raspberry, Fudge Brownie,2004.
Collaborator: Megan Moorhouse.
Using traditional casting techniques, Dieu Donné collaborator Megan Moorhouse helped Jonathan Seliger cast paper sculptures from plaster molds to make multiples of hyper realistic ice-cream cones. Wet cotton casting pulp, superb at holding fine detail, was pressed into the molds to take the shape of scoops of ice cream. The surface texture of the pulp created the illusion of the actual commercial snacks they were designed to replicate.
Tricia Wright,We Have No Prairies (Bogland Variation #5), 2003.
Collaborator: Tatiana Ginsberg.
Tricia Wright’s books, created at Dieu Donné in 2024, explore themes of identity, history, and our connection to the natural world. Inspired by Seamus Heaney’s Bogland and Wright’s Irish heritage, the series contrasts the layered history of the Irish landscape with the vastness of the American landscape.
Wright includes materials sourced from the bog itself with the cast cotton pulp. Wright manipulated the wet pulp by pushing together edges of the sheet so they would wrinkle together like skin.
To create the cast paper busts for the installation Heads, Lesley Dill modeled a bust shape in clay which was cast into a rubber mold. Letters that spell the word “radiance,” inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poetry, were cut from sheets of natural-colored abaca paper. To create each bust, the word “radiance,” made from the cut paper letters, was glued together inside each mold. When dry, the busts have an airy, radiant quality instead of the typical heavy appearance of a bust made from stone or cast paper pulp.
Collaborators: Amy Jacobs and Katharine DeLamater.
Artist Howardena Pindell has been actively involved with paper since she was a curator for the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Prints and Illustrated Books in the 1970s. In 1974, she organized the exhibition Printed, Cut, Folded, and Torn. In 1975, she interviewed pioneering handmade paper artist Alan Shields for the Print Collectors Newsletter. Pindell and Shields discussed their common interest in handmade paper, the intimacy of the process, and how to control it.
Through her use of color and geometric shapes, Pindell rearranges systems of logic, drawing inspiration from her father’s mathematical notebooks. She meticulously handwrites, etches, or letterpress prints numbers and symbols onto very small circles of handmade paper. These are then collaged onto the surface of geometrically shaped handmade paper sheets that vary in size, from small, handheld, single sheets to large-scale, multipaned artworks. Her collages collapse the boundary between surface and material.
Courtesy of Dieu Donné Papermill, NY.
Howardena Pindell,Untitled #113,2023.
Collaborators: Amy Jacobs and Katharine DeLamater.
