Chances and Boundaries
Giving sage a second chance.
This action happened very spontaneously. When thinking of the action’s self-determination I started playing around with the sage paper that was lying on my desk. I noticed that somehow the smell had disappeared to a certain point – it somehow smelled …good! So I decided I’ll give it another try and won’t give up on the sage.
I wanted to bring the 2-dimensional paper to life, so I started thinking of how I can give it volume. I started bending the paper and testing how much flexibility it gives me. I didn’t make all of the sheets the same, so I had some very thin ones and also some thicker ones. I decided to cut the sage paper into elements that I would, later on, sew together – in my mind I wanted to achieve a sphere. The form emerged by making.
I loved working with this paper! It made me so happy to think of it as a one of a kind material and how if it doesn’t work, I could technically just throw it back in the garden and start producing new paper again and start new! When cutting the paper I had to be careful and treat each paper individually as some parts were very thin and would tear. A simple straight line was nearly impossible to cut, as the pieces of sage-leaves wouldn’t allow me to. So I simply had to cut around – respond to the matter – learn from the matter.
In my action six I described how I burned one sheet of sage paper when placing it too close to a candle. That time I wanted to investigate how light could become interesting with the paper.
This time, I tried it once more – this time with my phone instead of fire and I was amazed! This was not what I expected at all.
The light turned out green, even though the paper itself does not appear green in daylight. Light spots and shadows evolve from the natural pattern within the paper and remind me of stars!