Papier-mâché, originally invented in China, is a historic method of using paper and glue to form or cast three-dimensional objects. In contemporary papermaking, wet sheets of paper strengthen as water evaporates and they dry. If freshly made sheets of paper are pressed, removing most of the water, they are strong enough to manipulate without tearing while still wet. The sheets can be draped around wire or reed armatures and permanently bond along the seams, so that the three-dimensional forms become kite-like constructions. They can be designed to any scale and still remain lightweight. If the sheets are made of a particularly strong fiber, like overbeaten linen or abaca, the wet sheets shrink as they dry. The power exerted by the shrinking sheet will bend the wire or reed armature into shapes.
Alan Shields was one of the original pioneers of handmade paper art and used paper pulp with metal wires to create his innovative sculptures. Together with papermaker Pat Almonrode and collaborators Joe Wilfer and Bill Weege, Shields fabricated architectural wire structures.Almonrode then dipped them into cotton or abaca pulp numerous times, thoroughly coating the wire with paper pulp as in Bee Bee Wait. Once they were dry, Shields painted the dry pulp with vivid watercolors. After Shields’s death in 2006, Dieu Donné honored him with an exhibition of these brilliant pieces.
Collaborators: Amy Jacobs, Tatiana Ginsberg, and Katharine DeLamater, assisted by Margot Bridges.
In 2023, in anticipation of Dieu Donné’s fiftieth anniversary in 2026, Lynda Benglis created twisted abaca paper sculptures. She sandwiched the wire “armatures” between two wet sheets of brightly colored, double couched, and stenciled abaca paper, which shrunk, dried, and twisted into extraordinary free-form shapes. Due to overbeaten abaca’s high shrinkage, the sheets contracted as they dried on the wire to make new shapes and animated the undulating pieces.
Collaborators: Lisa (Switalski) Haque and Paul Wong.
B. Wurtz draws inspiration from quotidian consumer goods to create artworks that are both humorous and ironically beautiful. By using an everyday clothes hanger as a wire armature for his sheet sculptures, Wurtz invites viewers to see their unassuming, everyday objects with a sense of wonder.
Wurtz describes how, after an inside joke with his wife earlier on in his sculptural practice, he began to view consumer objects as figurative, and associate plastic bags with clothing types. “When I made a handmade paper series at Dieu Donné e of ‘“portraits’” of plastic bags, I attached each ‘“bag’” to an actual (paper coated) hanger. The bag shape made me think of a tank top. Inside each one I placed a kind of logo, like something that would appear on the front of a T-shirt. That logo incorporated the shape of a bowl, a T-shirt and a house, all symbolic of a major theme in my work: food, clothing, and shelter.”
Beneath the layers, patterns, and colors in Joan Hall’s work is a troubling message about plastic pollution. Disguising the message in beautiful sculptural forms and installations, Hall creates sculptural works using a variety of media and processes.
Courtesy of Childs Gallery, Boston.
Joan Hall,Ocean Library 1 (short stack),2022-2026.
Ocean Library comprises gathered materials from beaches, including natural materials such as sand, as well as plastic pollutants, in the cast paper sculpture resembling a stack of books. The handmade paper was made from the artist’s late husband’s shirts, and the inclusions were from his silk ties.
Paul Wong,from Burning History installation at Neuberger Museum,1997.
Artist Paul Wong, noted Master Collaborator at Dieu Donné, cast abaca paper pulp over objects, such as this pair of hands, to create sculptural objects for his installations. This piece was featured in his exhibition, Burning History; at the Neuberger Museum, in 1997. As a second-generation Chinese American, Wong’s work reflects on Chinese culture, ancient Chinese funerary objects and ritualistic practices, and his own relationship to the hand papermaking process, as well as its invention and use in Chinese culture.
Emma Mohrmann,Kiki from Ant Hills and Self Recognition series,2025.
Emma Mohrmann,Bouba from Ant Hills and Self Recognition series,2025.
Emma Mohrmann first beat and prepared linen and cotton pulp from her own textiles, which she then formed into sheets. On one side, she applied red “underpaintings,” and on the other side, she created abstract pulp drawings with jump ring inclusions. Inspired by the construction of ant hills and a scientific study in which scientists observed self-recognition in ants, Mohrmann shaped and folded the wet sheets around foam cones and cubes so they would dry in architectural forms.
Katharine DeLamater is a studio collaborator and papermaker at Dieu Donné. In her Flight Risk series, she applies linen pulp paints to high-shrinkage hemp sheets to create woven textile patterns. These objects are hung up while wet in free-form shapes. As moisture evaporates, the “towels” shrink and contract, giving the impression of real dish towels hung out to dry.
Tatiana Ginsberg,Vajra/Doorknob (Indigo) I & III,2019.
Tatiana Ginsberg is a master collaborator and papermaker at Dieu Donné. Here she used kozo papers patterned with indigo to cast over doorknobs. The hollow forms suggest vajra, the two-ended scepter used in Buddhism to convey the flash of enlightenment and understanding of emptiness. Like a snakeskin, these paper shells remember the forms they once contained.
