About WoodPaperHand
header • Lin Yan 林延 • Sky 天 • Xuan paper & ink installation, 2013 • courtesy of Yuan Art Museum 元典美术馆, Beijing
We are makers, we are told. But who is still making things? Do we need these handmade things? What value do objects handmade of natural materials hold in real life? What is their use in a virtual world, in the digital age?
Handmade objects store concrete information—about natural systems, cultural processes, traditions and about their makers. Well-crafted objects can endure beyond their source materials in nature: a wooden bowl might outlive a tree's lifespan and a basket preserves the fibers of an annual plant. These objects can also outlast their makers, serving both as a tribute to and a keeper of their makers' traditions, skills and process.
Handmade objects are catalysts for human experience and interaction. The makers, givers and receivers of any object have their social, sensory and economic lives attached to the objects.
These objects tell solid stories of ingenuity, adaptation and problem-solving and of cultures and communities, resourcefulness and resilience, the rituals, practices and cycles of life.
WoodPaperHand considers the values behind handmade objects in three ways:
STORYTELLER spotlights people, processes and practices behind handmade objects from around the world to expand understanding of the values behind objects and their artisanship.
STUDIO features particular works of others Gallery Multi|2D, creative workshops and experiential events.
STOREHOUSE holds a collection of old, forgotten or out-of-sight things to inform and inspire our present and future world.
WoodPaperHand presents handmade things in all the ways they shape our lives.
logo design • 橋爪佳子 yoshiko hashizume |||| / logo editing • tamera bedford 泰梅兰
below • Kyoko Ibe • Untitled • Washi, sumi, mirror film, led light, 2017 • photo credit | Susan Allen
Claire Cuccio
Creator
I played Rock, Paper, Scissors when I was a child, maybe like you. I liked the bold hand gestures and the concrete things that the hand signified. When I landed in Japan as an adult, I discovered how the local equivalent of the game, janken じゃんけん, is embedded in everyday life beyond child’s play. Over time, Rock, Paper, Scissors surfaced in different cultural iterations the world over.
As I grew immersed in the print and paper-making worlds in China, Japan, Nepal and across Asia, I embraced a turn of the phrase, WoodPaperHand as the collective name to represent my work about print, paper, and increasingly, handmade craft that often began in wood or on paper.
My encounters with people adapting natural materials to a diversity of cultural practices fill a storehouse today.
The WoodPaperHand site opens that storehouse to transmit the values behind the stories of objects that humans make.
“Handmade objects are manifestations of values over time and across cultures. From beauty and ethics to techniques and sensory learning, the materiality of objects reveals layers of human engagement with the surrounding world. Beyond their form and purpose, the objects I live with carry meaning because nearly all of them are linked to the people whose hands made them. Their lives, drives and special knowledge, in turn, inform how I live.”
below • Shree Mangal Dvip Students • Himalayan backdrop for a stage play • chalk on cloth, 2020
