This is Day 4 of 25 Days of Paper and Day 73 of my 100 x 100 Paper Weavings Project.

Anyone who knows me well is aware of my obsession with abaca. It is a fiber from the banana plant that takes a beating well: the more you beat it, the more translucent it becomes and the more it shrinks as it dries. I call this bluish sheet air dried abaca crinkle. After pressing, I allowed the sheet to air dry and then misted it with water and dried it under restraint. The resulting sheet is both translucent and textured. I wove it with a sheet of paper from Shizen Design.
Check out this lovely image I found of harvested abaca fiber drying on a line.

I have made two short films featuring my work with abaca. The first one is called The Secret Life of Paper and was made in preparation for a grant proposal. Imagine trying to talk a grant panel into giving me money to show images of paper drying – it worked much better when I had some video footage to stand behind those words! Here is a short segment from that video that show the magic of abaca. And a link just in case the video doesn’t show up on your screen.

Thankfully, I received funding from the Regional Art & Culture Council in Portland which enabled me to hire filmmaker Gretchen Hogue and sound artist Kell Black to help produce my film Water Paper Time. Here’s the trailer and if you feel the urge to watch the entire film, you can purchase it it here.

Speaking of paper in motion, did anyone catch Robert Sabuda on The Today Show yesterday? Hooray for prime time TV featuring pop-ups! Robert had Hoda and Kathie Lee making pop-up sea horse, which you can make too (downloadable instructions can be found at the link).
Paper can be animated in many ways (think kites, flip books, pop-ups …). I’d love to hear about any paper in motion stories you have to share. Please leave a comment below!

About the 25 Days of Paper: I’m going to be a crazy blogger in December, featuring cool paper products, projects, blogs, books, or papers each day. Join in the fun by reading along! I’ll also post links on my FaceBook page. Enjoy the season!
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About 100 x 100 Paper Weavings: On September 23, 2013, I started making 100 daily paper weavings. I’ll finish on New Year’s Eve!