Look, Colossal Pulp Paintings! A Conversation with Artist Hong Hong

Paper ArtPapermaking Artists
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Paper. Remember that stuff? It’s more than a surface to paint on. In fact, papermaking is an art medium in its own right. Hong Hong is an interdisciplinary artist who creates large scale pulp paintings that are a must-see. Based in Connecticut and upstate New York, her handmade paper works are the relics of a performative process of pouring pulps into a special modular mould.I first met Hong around two years ago when she invited me to her Connecticut studio, and showed me her awesome, colossal modular mould design which she uses to create her artwork across the country. Sharing Hong's art practice here has been a long time coming, and so I'm really happy and excited to share this special conversation we had! Enjoy.  - May Babcock

MAY BABCOCK: I’m super curious—how did you first get introduced to hand papermaking? What drew you to the process initially, compared to what you were working with beforehand?

HONG HONG: When I began the MFA program at University of Georgia, my focus was in painting and drawing. However, I eventually became dissatisfied with the immediacy of adding and subtracting materials on two-dimensional surfaces. I became more interested in forms and experiences that had the potential to exist outside of the realm of my hand and decision-making, both of which I knew intimately. Was it possible to construct something that would come into being in one moment, and in another moment, completely dissolve, of its volition? My initial experiences in papermaking evolved organically from these concerns.  I was very lucky that the Lamar Dodd School of Art had a great papermaking facility, and a generous, knowledgeable teacher, Eileen Wallace. Through Eileen’s guidance and the transformative process of making paper, I learned how to see things not for what they are, but for what they could be.

MB: I feel like many artists working with paper have a particular fiber that they love, and that fits naturally with their artwork. What is it about kozo that you are drawn to? How does fiber choice come into play with your process and the resulting artwork?HH: I consider both material and process as metaphors for, and exercises in, largely philosophical concerns. One of my primary interests is change, and the ways in which change manifests as time. Eastern papermaking, in particular, is cyclical and seasonal. Each step in the process serves as an abstract temporal measurement, similar to the position of the moon in the night sky or the swing of a pendulum. Kozo echoes this quality. It is such a dynamic fiber because each tendril has the capacity to distill what happens during a single instant, as well as in the moments leading up to that instant, into a culminating form.

MB: Can you speak a bit about the factors that pushed you to arrive at your large-scale modular mould design? I think one of the current hurdles of choosing hand papermaking as an art medium is the idea that you need tons of specialized equipment to make great work, and your approach is inspiring to many for its movability, scale, and simplicity.

HH: It came out of love. I love making paper, so I wanted to carry it with me, always. It also came out of limitation. Limitation is interesting, because art is rarely born without it, or far from it. A lack of resources is a challenge, but it is also an opportunity for innovation. Part of what an artist must do is to find solutions to the following question: how do I, and in what ways can I, continue? The answers we find are invaluable, because they change us and alter the course of our trajectories, for the better.

MB: I really love how the paper is an imprint of the process and the quality of a day—the act of pouring, layering, and moving pulp on the mould, the ratio of water to pulp, the breeze, rain, and the sunshine. Can you describe how this experience of making feels? Also, what makes papermaking different from other mediums for you?

HH: Pouring paper outside, and making site-specific installations, tethers me to present. My thoughts recede to the peripherals. What I need to know, and everything I feel, is unspoken and right in front of me. The world ceases to exist, except for in the most beautiful ways, as dimming light, changing temperatures, continuous movement, familiar sensations, and sun-warmed shoulders. Conversely, these processes involve long hours of physically exhausting labor. Much of it also depends on factors that are out of my control, such as weather and the specifics of a particular site.  Large-scale papermaking is compelling because it unites opposites: slowness and swiftness, precision and spontaneity, repetition and chaos, control and surrender. Ultimately, my practice is a dance with, and a slow yielding to, something infinitely larger.

MB: Are there commonalities between creating a paperwork and one of your mylar, outdoor site-specific pieces? For you, what links these bodies of work thematically?

HH: During the past few years, I traveled across the United States to first define, and then expand, a site-responsive, on-going effort loosely titled Everlasting Ephemera. For this project, I experimented primarily with reflective plastics, such as cellophane and Mylar, to construct what I consider to be three-dimensional, collapsible drawings. I also worked with Kozo, the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, to create what I consider to be monumental, two-dimensional sculptures. The Mylar installations and large-scale paperworks are trajectories that circle the same group of fluctuating themes, much of which has to do with my fascination with the temporal parameters of human perception, and its impact on cultural, geographical, and environmental systems. I personally experience both as ritualistic, private performances. Like objects in an Eastern shrine, the same materials, such as Mylar or pulp, are used and reused during each installation and paper pour. They derive new meaning and context through changing structures and environments. The paperworks, or 2D sculptures, are relics of largely intangible processes, such as weather, gravity, water flow, and physical motions. Similarly, the installations, or 3D drawings, reflect the culminating interactions between changes in light, atmosphere, and color in their surroundings. In both processes, the works are imprints of the time passed during their creation. Contextually, the 3D drawings and 2D sculptures function as photographic stills of unfolding, momentary progressions, both of my body and of the landscape my body is situated within.

MB: The All the Light in a Vivid Dream series are immense at over 12 feet in width, and they are even taller! In viewing the work in person, one is forced to walk to experience each piece. And up close, I felt immersed in the textural surfaces and their physical presence. What is the importance of scale for you?

HH: When I was ten years old, I immigrated with my mother from a metropolis in central China to Fargo, North Dakota. It was there, in the Great Plains, that I encountered land for the first time. There was an open field not far from where we lived at the time. It snowed quite heavily one evening, and I went out there the morning after. The horizon was barely perceptible: the fallen snow was just a few shades more opaque than the silver skies. I remember the way everything looked as the world stretched out in all directions around me in an endless, white mile. For the first time, land, to me, became a presence, with its own weight. Whenever I consider scale, I recall that particular moment. I think I have always been searching for, in my own work, the sensation of being very small held in something all-encompassing.

MB: Your paper artworks evoke expanses of land and sea, and earlier pieces were all-over abstractions. What are some places that have inspired you? Additionally, in the new series, All the Light in a Vivid Dream, exciting developments are the introduction of a horizon line (by overlapping sheets) and incorporating fragments of previous papers. Can you elaborate on these new directions?

HH: “Memory is a landscape seen from the window of a moving train.” I read that in The Book of Chameleons recently. Immigration is different from traveling for pleasure. There is this sense of never being able to return, and that even if you do go back, your own memories of home will somehow betray you. I have moved so often, that I sometimes forget where I am from. It’s an odd sensation to go through life feeling like a visitor in someone else’s dream.  No matter where I was, I have always been fond of looking out of windows, whether it was from an airplane, a car, or the corner of an apartment. What I remember about each view often has to do with the temperature of the blueness of the sky, the dappling of light, and the air, which was full of scents that wrapped themselves around my face like a soft cowl. A landscape, like a memory, is comprised of disparate, tiny segments that make no sense when taken apart, or out of context. Using and reusing fragments of previous work is a gesture towards the idea that memory is simply a story that we, fallible narrators that we are, write.  In All the Light in a Vivid Dream, I wanted a motif that read as an anchor or a buoy. When we enter a space where the edges of forms are not clearly defined, our bodies begin to feel confused, sort of like we are trying to decide if we are really losing our balance. Sometimes the world seems like a room with neither an ending nor a beginning. Maybe this is the reason the human eye is so attracted to landmarks, and why we once traveled by them. The mountains and stars are beautiful because they allow us a chance to orient, and to see ourselves. That’s what the horizon line in All the Light in a Vivid Dream represents to me: a brief moment of knowing in the midst of all that we do not know.

MB: Finally, what’s in the works that we can look out for?

HH: I am currently preparing for the final phase of Everlasting Ephemera. These explorations will culminate in a multidisciplinary exhibition, tentatively titled Holding the Whole: Selections from Everlasting Ephemera, at Real Art Ways in late 2018. In the meantime, I will be teaching large-scale papermaking workshops.

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