Original WFHS Student paste paper designs from December 2017: periods 4 and 6 |
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ART STANDARDS: A. VISUAL MEMORY AND KNOWLEDGE: Students will know and remember information and ideas about the art and design around them and throughout the world.
B. ART AND DESIGN HISTORY, CITIZENSHIP, AND ENVIRONMENT: Students will understand the value and significance of the visual arts, media, and design in relation to history, citizenship, the environment, and social development.
C. VISUAL DESIGN AND PRODUCTION: Studentswill design and produce quality original images and objects, such as paintings, sculptures, designed objects, photographs, graphic designs, videos, and computer images.
J. CULTURAL AND AESTHETIC UNDERSTANDING: Students will reflect upon the nature of art and design and meaning in art and culture.
K. MAKING CONNECTIONS: Students will use their imaginations and creativity to develop multiple solutions to problems, expand their minds, and create ideas for original works of art and design.
What exactly is paste paper, you may well ask? It is paper decorated with thick paint made from colored pigment and starch paste in a process often compared to finger painting. Makers need only a simple starch (such as wheat, corn, or rice flour), water, and a source of heat over which to mix the two until they thicken into (you guessed it) a paste. When the paste cools, it is combined with enough water-soluble paint to obtain the desired hue. A brush is then used to spread the colored paste across a dampened sheet of paper. Once the paper is evenly coated, various tools can be used to manipulate the paste into patterns simple or complex.
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History of Paste Paper:
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Paste paper examples can be found in books dating as far back as the sixteenth century, and many rival their better known marbled paper contemporaries in vibrancy and creativity of design. So why don’t we hear more about them? While paste paper’s popular contemporaries, marbled paper and printed paper, left a trail of production evidence, such as the woodblocks used to print designs and the records of the Parisian guild of dominotiers (makers of decorative papers), paste papers have left little trace – beyond their existence – on the historical record. This is, perhaps, because paste paper is far less glamorous (and demanding) than the marbled, Dutch gilt, and printed paper starlets of the decorative paper world. The marbling process required precise measurements of expensive ingredients (such as ox gall), and was sensitive to everything from impure water to changing air temperature; printed paper production required the right tools, and successful operations relied on skilled woodcarvers to produce a continual supply of woodblocks that could be mixed and matched in a variety of printed designs. Paste paper, by contrast, required only common and inexpensive ingredients, and was not susceptible to the vagaries of temperature and humidity. Making paste paper required “but little skill or experience” (Loring, “Colored,” 40), which meant that binders and booksellers could easily produce their own in-house. Paste paper became the logical choice for binding ephemeral publications (such as pamphlets), and was an economical option for small printing operations unable to afford professionally made decorative papers. Thus, paste-paper making was a craft of common knowledge: few (if any) paste recipes were written down, and papers were nearly always unsigned. pius7.slu.edu/special_collections/?p=4330 |