EDGES and TRANSITIONS

Transitions - where one thing ends and another begins. Sometimes they are sharp, clear lines, easily discerned, other times the shift is so gradual that it is hard to say where the exact separation is.

So it is in my work as I consider how one color will lie next to another, one material will nudge into another or one pattern will disintegrate as another coalesces. Some of my edges are crisp - contrasting, cut, folded, exact - but the nature of paper lends itself to fuzzy edges as well - subtly blended, torn, feathered, deckled.

One of the things you can work with when you make paper is the quality of the deckled edge. The deckle is the frame that lies on top of the mould and controls the way the pulp drains. A tight fitting deckle with a finely beaten pulp will produce a smooth, even edge, like tearing paper with the grain against a ruler. A looser deckle and/or "threadier" pulp will produce an edge with more variation as some fibers slip under the deckle and spread into lacey patterns. You can even lift the deckle during draining to increase this effect.

I like to play different types of edges against each other in my work. The meandering edge framed by a crisp line, the rigid form interrupted by an errant smudge or thread. I also like to accentuate the transitions with an added line or edge treatment, tricks borrowed from dressmaking where an edge will be trimmed, piped or visibly hemmed. In traditional Japanese dress, several full robes will be worn underneath just for the thin lines of color marking the edge of an opening.

In life, we may use a ritual to mark a transition, to provide the break between patterns. In my pieces, I try to consider each transition and how I want to honor its own edginess, with strong demarcation or seamless blending.

Maybe it says something that I chose to live in a place where the edges change noticeably throughout the day and night. Seen or unseen, the tides move the line of transition between land and sea, changing the shape of our Island, decorating the edges with lines of seaweed or ice, with long transitions of flat sand skimmed with water or sharp contrasts of waves lapping at rocks and road.