Relief Sculpture

In this assignment, we were urged to connect our materials with the subject matter, and I—devoid of ideas—decided to make a paper mill out of paper. When I first really got interested in drawing, and then art as a whole, I was fascinated by machines, drawing ridiculous contraptions with an emphasis on tangles of thin pipes, peeking out from behind panels. My piece Pure Imagination that I did in last year's class was very much inspired by this, and Paper Paper Factory is a continuation of this idea. In addition, the paper mill depicted in this piece is loosely based upon the paper mill in Rumford, ME. I have seen a lot of small towns that have shriveled when the paper mill goes away, and currently, the Rumford one is in the process of re-tooling so that it can make a different kind of paper that is more widely used so that it can stay profitable and open. I think that these behemoth mills, sitting empty and derelict, are symbols of failure: a failed venture, one that an entire town depended upon for its entire economy, and symbols of the past, as our world moves online, and away from papers, books, and magazines.

This piece uses bristol, foam board, and glue to create a relief of a paper mill. The shapes were accomplished using scissors and a stencil knife. A thick cardstock was then added to pop some features out while others were cut away. The outline of the mill sits on top of a piece of thin foam board, which I then covered with six layers of bristol that had the same outline as the foam board. This allowed me to carve into the paper once nearly finished to create more definition and shadow in some places.

This piece was pretty clear-cut from the beginning, I had an image of the finished product in my mind, and with a reference photo sourced from the Portland Press Herald, I was able to settle on a composition I liked. Once finished with the sketch, the piece didn't change that much, the only key decision being the one to carve slightly back into the layers of bristol in order to create subtle definition.