Community art to promote campus sustainability

On Sunday and Wednesday afternoons, it is now possible to find a small group of people busily folding paper in the Science Library or the Book Arts Lab in the Clapp Library. The composition of the group changes, but their leader and goal remain the same. The project is called "Paperworks," and is the newest project to be funded by the Class of 1957 Green Fund. According to the college website, the Green Fund was "established … to enhance sustainable practices at Wellesley;" its previous projects have included the installation of Brita water filters in Shafer and the failed "Zip Cup" program, in which reusable travel mugs were put in campus dining halls to be borrowed and returned. For weeks after that, moldy mugs could be found all over campus and the supply in dining halls dwindled to nothing.

"Paperworks" is a new community-based art installation designed to address the massive quantity of abandoned print-outs in campus libraries. Over a hundred pounds of abandoned paper have been collected from public printers all over campus, but especially from the Science Center. Beginning Feb. 17 and extending through the month of March, this paper will be transformed into what artist Amanda Nelsen hopes will be two twenty-five foot long books, suspended over the Science Library.

For the duration of this project, Amanda Nelsen is the artist in residence at the Book Arts Lab. Nelsen has been involved in many other projects relating to book arts and sustainability. Her recent work includes the "Buy-o-chromatic," which was a similar project made from the weekly ad circulars sent to her house for a year. Nelsen specializes in bookbinding and has her own workspace, which she shares with four other binders and a printer. She also co-teaches a course at the Art Institute of Boston, classes at the New England School and workshops at the North Bennet Street School. In addition to this, she recently had a residency at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, where she worked on a book called "Fine Print," playing off the difference between the art of printing and the small print on credit card agreements.

In her most recent project, "Kincade Recycled," Nelsen asked friends to help assemble the books that formed the pixels of the image of a Thomas Kincade painting. She said, "I was surprised by how positive the interactions were. People liked coming in for a few hours, doing a no-brainer and feeling like they're part of something." Katherine Ruffin, director of the Book Arts Program here at Wellesley was also involved and hoped to bring that energy to Wellesley, and to open a dialogue about bookbinding, paper use and sustainability. The project would also give the Wellesley community a chance to use their hands as well as their minds.

"People don't tend to work with their hands," Nelsen said. "If you design the project correctly, then you can have a lot of people do simple things." For "Paperworks," the complicated process of bookbinding has been broken down into a number of individual steps. The first step is collecting six sheets of paper, or in bookbinding terms, folios, together. This process provides an interesting glimpse into what Wellesley prints. Rejected print-outs include papers on Indian railway systems, short stories, art history reference slides and scientific readings, complete with graphs and images of iguanas.

The most interesting image or text is placed on the outside of the section, to "optimize the ink" as Nelsen said. These sections are then folded in half lengthwise and cut in half widthwise into the pages of the book, called signatures. Nelsen then sorts through these signatures to make the most interesting pattern in the lines on the edge of each signature, the only part to be exposed. Two holes are punched in the fold of the signature, and the signatures are sewn together one by one onto two cords kept taught on an adjustable frame.

Bookbinding using cords is a technique from the medieval period and is both strong and durable. "A binding like this will last longer than the other materials in the book," Nelsen said. In medieval bindings too, binders would sometimes use scraps of old manuscripts as the end pages. "Paperworks" will be made completely of abandoned, some might say useless, paper. Nelsen said, "There is value in [abandoned printer paper]. It's just a matter of editing it, rearranging, composing it slightly differently."

Once all the signatures are sewn together in fourteen to seventeen inch sections, the sections will be sewn together and suspended above the Science Library to remind the Wellesley community to conserve paper. "There are a lot of resources in the world, like land area, water, that come together to give us this resource that we consider an excess," Nelsen explained. "There are some areas in the world where this paper would be precious."

The eventual success of "Paperworks" depends both on the amount of paper they can collect and the willingness of the Wellesley Community to work a little with their hands and to be part of something bigger.