Just so much is possible with paper, is a realisation that dawns when one encounters Ingrid Pitzer’s paper reliefs and sculptures at Gallery Sumukha. Her latest show called “Leaves of Morya’s Garden” is based on the famous book by German artist and writer Nicholas Roerich.
The German-born, Delhi-based, artist gives us a glimpse of her art making and the show.
About the show
Whenever I go to a new place to work, I always see, listen, and find out what that place has to offer as an inspiration. To find and discover is a great joy and the ‘routemap’.
The admiration for the Russian painter and mystic Nicolas Roerich, who lived in India almost three decades before India got independence, drew me to his place of residence in the Himalayas. It is easy to get lost forever in the writings about his four-year long cultural expedition covering all of Central Asia, Tibet and Hindustan under the objective to search for ancient cultural testimonials.
That was a strong inspiration for me, because pure art is the true expression of the radiant spirit. We are all connected and through art you gain the light. His “Leaves of Morya’s garden” contains a world of knowing spirit and inspired me to create leaves in my way.
On discovering paper
After I finished College of Art, Berlin, I set out to make sculptures from papier-mache. That meant, using recycled already existing paper like newspaper, white computer paper etc.
I treated it as my familiar material — clay — and tried to work with it as with this. Working with recycled paper needs a binder, to hold everything together. With clay one can work to build up a sculpture in one go and so I did with papier-mache and failed. On a certain height the whole thing collapsed. That showed, that one had to work slowly and let parts of it first dry and then continue. At that time I had not discover the secret and magic of high quality fibers to work with. Also I found out, that the low quality material papier-mache will not last long and that was one of the main reasons, I started to look for another way of working with paper.
The next step was the visit to a traditional paper workshop, where sheets of paper were produced. Working in this two-dimensional way, which quickly turned into a more 3-dimensional adventure, finally led me to Japan,which used handmade paper even to make raincoats and today windows and doors.
In Europe I could have never imagined the possibilities with this fragile and vulnerable material. The Japanese workshop in a small traditional town, Mount Fujiyama with its excellent working conditions and beautiful environment, provided me the basic techniques.
On the process
The process of casting paper was unknown in the European art world. In Japan, old masters of papermaking are regarded like living cultural treasures. The long process of preparing the fibres to the point where an artist can use it for his own creation demands absolute respect and admiration. This process begins with harvesting the barks of certain shrubs or trees. The inner soft part is scraped off from the outer bark and being washed and cleaned, if possible in a small clean river and dried in the sun. The next step is boiling it in soda ash for several hours, which is followed by a thorough cleaning again. As the colour of the now very smooth fibres has changed during the boiling procedure, it must be bleached if a light colour is wanted. The next step is a rough cutting of the fibres before they undergo the transformation into a soft pulp in a European-invented machine called Hollander beater for several hours. After this treatment the pulp which is called now, paper pulp, is ready for use by the artist.
The Japanese prefer the indigenous plants for papermaking like, Mulberry, Kozo, Gampi, of which the Gampi is a wild shrub and relatively rare and can not be domesticated like the others. For the process of casting the paper pulp, I can choose any mould like plant leaves, metal, wood, stone, any wire mesh or rubber, even plastic foil. I can choose between bordering the mould or let the pulp flow freely and give it a specific feature of hand-cast paper. The colouring has to be done before the casting. That means, I have to be clear of my desired artwork before casting. The options for the artist here are either the natural colours derived from plants or stones or the unlimited palette of the chemical colours.
Then the thickness of the casting has to be decided. It takes time until one has discovered all the possible results of working with that magic material paper. It only reveals this side of it which the artist asks for, in other words, challenges a certain aspect of it. To let the final cast work dry also takes time.
The ready product only can be called paper. I have worked in the ancient Egyptian quarries of Asswan and have used a spray gun with a compressor to spray the fibres on upright granite and sandstone walls. It is an experiment by me.
(The show Leaves of Morya’s Garden is on at Gallery Sumukha, Wilson Garden, till December 2)
