Sweeter Than Honey – 22″ x 22″ – hand-made paper, dyed, marbled, and altered papers, tyvek, plaster, pigment, dried flower petals, cottonwood pods.
I started with the title to this piece, and then went looking through my studio for honey-colored papers and appropriate objects. The golden honeycomb paper at the bottom was specifically made for this piece; while the paper pulp was wet on the screen, I used a flat stick to make holes in it and push them into hexagonal shapes. That one piece of paper took nearly half an hour to make! One of my other favorite parts of this piece is the cottonwood pods, which are flying in a circle around the whole piece. I’ve been around cottonwood trees my whole life, and always see the fluff flying around, but this summer is the first time I really noticed the pods that enclose the fluff on the tree. They split open into these pretty little shapes; mostly with three petals, but you can see a few four-petaled ones near the center.