Aesthetic Experiences of Making with Paper

Abstract

AbstractArtists bring heightened awareness of sensation and material qualities in the experience of making. In this chapter, I portray the sensate experience of making with paper spurred by artists as embedded living installations in The Corner—a play/making space for under eight year olds in the State Library of Queensland, Australia. I look closely at the experience of making as inherently connected to aesthetics (); in particular making with paper. Three artists make with paper on different days. Each brings different insights of the sensuous qualities and making capacities of paper.Children and their families make with the artists. Intense focus is experienced. The unlimited possibilities of paper come to be known in a library—a place of books—preserved entities made of paper; yet, in The Corner of the library, paper can be reconfigured—is reconfigured—opening up the wonder of the aesthetic experience of mattering, imagining, and making with paper. Attention to sensation, matter and making were gathered through sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015), aesthetic sensibilities and understanding of the vibrancy of matter (). Performative accounts of artist making experiences with paper are shared to glean what happens in the experiences of making; what we come to sense, to know, to be and connect across generations and communities. Material literacies unfold.