Destruction Project

For this project initially I was very attracted to the phrase cannibalize. As someone who loves cooking I looked into every way possible to incorporate my work into a dish and didn't find one that I both thought was creative that really integrated the work into a dish that I was also comfortable with. There's a trend of using leek ash as a garnishing agent, and I thought about doing something along those lines but I felt the work wouldn't really be incorporated the way that I wanted it to be. I considered smoking as well, using the work alongside traditional agents used for smoking, but the toxicity or potential carcinogenic properties of the pigment after combustion worried me so I changed concept. My new source of inspiration came from the intense color of the papers I had used in both my source projects. Previously I had done a watercolor style painting with wine and wanted to do something along those lines. I got the idea of leeching the pigment from the paper as well as the drawn portion of the project and then in turn using that to create a new piece of art.

These are the pieces I used. My plan was to boil them then boil off the majority of the water to concentrate the pigment, as I had seen done with red cabbages. 

I broke the pieces down into scraps, and set them to boil. During the process, as the paper broke down I remembered something I used to do with my mother as a kid- make recycled paper. 

Once I had gathered all the pigment I thought I could gain from simply boiling the paper, I separated the pulp from the water and set the liquid to reduce down to about a third of a cup. I then blended the pulp in more water to create a looser pulp and placed it on a screen. 

Following this I realized the paper would be too dark, and the pigment too weak as they carried the same color. So I looked for a way to bleach the pulp to lighten it a few shades, then repeated the process. 

After a few runs with the bleach gel I was confident enough that the pigment would show I put the pulp back over the screen and set it outside to dry, where it stayed for about 24 hours (It might've been dry sooner I don't know I was in the hospital). I then painted the paper with the reduced pigment. First I attempted a figure drawing but the paper was quite coarse and didn't lend itself well to detail, and in looking for portraits to paint, found one that had the same color scheme as my paper and the pigment (unimportant in terms of decision making, but it seemed like it was calling for this paper).