flax paper and palladium
Good morning, Yesterday I had the fun experience of collaborating with an art grad student who makes her own flax paper. She wanted to put photographs on her flax sculptures, so I told her to come over to my house and we'd see if it worked. I thought those on the list who are paper makers might like to know this. I guess she buys the flax pulp from a paper supply house, which is somewhat expensive--she said $100 a bucket (it comes liquid). I know NOTHING about paper making, but the flax paper is dark parchment tannish, and quite textural, and very long fibered, but the paper is flat and very thin. It irons well (flax being same as linen, of course) and lays flat, in other words, after wet baths it doesn't shrink and pucker. I thought it would disintegrate immediately in the development bath, or whatnot. It didn't . We were doing small prints for testing and not large though, but they held together perfectly, even when I held them up by one edge. Very strong. I tested one with just regular pt/pd, one on top of gelatin size, and one with the pt/pd cut in half with water. The paper is very absorbent so that 26 drops were sucked up into an area of, let's say, 4x6. On the gelatin size it did not soak up right away so that was a good thing, so sizing could be the way to go, but the print we agreed looked best was the one with pt/pd cut in half with water. It was warmer in tone (redder) than the others. Then after we completed this test it occurred to me that cyanotype toned with tannic acid would be the cheapest and easiest way to go (no development or clear baths) but what amazed me is the beautiful tonal range of pt/pd on this paper. I also felt it would be great paper to give a final soak in wax to transparentize. I think Camden is going to test VDB and liquid emulsion for her, right Camden? For archival purposes, I wonder if the toned cyano would be best, so you don't have to mess with silver left in the paper? Nevertheless, this paper has great possibilities. I told her she should sell it, but each sheet just to make (small sheets) is about $10 so selling them, she'd have to probably charge $25 for say, a foot and a half square sheet? I wish I was a paper maker...I wonder if there is a commercial source for homemade flax paper? Someone google it for me, I have to go gum print :) This is definitely the benefit of teaching in an art environment--collaboration. The other grad student who came over to watch does large charcoal drawings, erases and redraws and erases and redraws while she films the drawings over an 8 hour day, and then ends up with a movie, dark and charcoaly--really beautiful. Chris CZAphotography.com
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