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Artist Simon Beck

It’s possible you’ve never heard of Simon Beck, but after today, you won’t be able to forget him or his wintry works of art. Simon is an artist and is most well-known for making incredibly delicate and detailed art in the snow, just by walking over a fresh snowfall. Heliterally walks miles in the snow to create these pieces. And the part that blows our minds? He could spend hours upon hours creating one design, just to have it be covered by snowfall or blown away by the next day. But he still makes them.

In the 2020 fall semester, our department head Max Yela taught his course INFOST 603: History of Books and Printing entirely online for the first time. Usually, when taught in-person, the class would make a field trip to a papermaking studio to engage in Western and Eastern papermaking practices as part of the history of paper segment of the course. This semester, however, he had to rely on virtual resources to offer some semblance of how if might feel to make paper by hand, and came across this remarkable little video produced by China’s Peoples Daily newspaper of making a giant sheet of traditional Xuan paper. By our count, it looks like it takes about 50 people to make a single 36 x 11-foot sheet of paper!

Unlike Western papermaking screens that are made out of woven copper wire, many Asian screens use a flexible silk mesh (today, probably polyester) that can be peeled off the frame. Max and Milwaukee artist and papermaker Dara Larson and their crew used a modified version of these screens to make their paper installations for the Look Here! exhibition. The newly-formed sheet is then affixed to a heated wall where it dries within minutes and can be rolled off into a finished product. 

The making of Xuan paper dates back to the Tang dynasty, ca. 700 CE. Today this UNESCO intangible cultural heritage product is made primarily from the bark of the blue sandalwood tree (Pteroceltis tatarinowii), indigenous to China, and rice fibers.

Transformation, artist unknown to me - please add in comment if you know.