Julia Goodman

My papermaking is a study in how we fall apart, expose our hearts, heal, and come back together. By gathering discarded fabrics, I seek to bring into relief the invisible, essential work of historical and contemporary women through my sculptural pieces.

I tear, pulp and press these fabrics into hand carved molds and found surfaces to create textures that refuse to be printed on. Without the addition of any pigments or dyes, I make new color pulps by mixing two or more differently colored pulped fabrics. I work with the pulped fabrics inside my studio and outside against built structures. In my studio I work slowly and intricately creating entangled and expanding shapes. Outside, I press pulp from interior worlds against exterior surfaces, brick walls and concrete. The soft private materials absorb and lift small fragments off of the more permanent surfaces, changing the hard public surfaces slowly over time.

My work rejects flatness and gives volume to women’s labor, interdependence and grief. Through working with handmade paper, I invite contemplation of cycles of love and loss that mark our lives.

For centuries, Western rag paper making depended on reusing discarded domestic fabrics. Examining this era’s printed materials, I imagine the interlocked fibers of this paper formed from anonymous multitudes of gathered cloth and unspoken histories they hold. Building on this history and my environmental concerns, I gather and transform discarded bedsheets and t-shirts into sculptural forms.

Photos and press release for this artist.