KPBS San Diego Promos 1980s

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[Music] >> I asked for my rights as a citizen to protect me against other countries and this sewage and they turned me down. >> I think our community deserves a little attention uh with a very serious problem. I mean, does people have to die out here before something happens? Every day, millions of gallons of raw sewage is pouring into San Diego from Tijuana, polluting the environment and contaminating our beaches. The potential for a serious outbreak of disease threatens everyone living in this border region. How bad is the problem and what is being done to resolve it? Find out Wednesday, January 23rd, when KPBS presents a 1-hour special, Awas Negris Political Update. That's Wednesday evening at 8:00 PM here on TV15. In the world of art, a new medium doesn't come along very often. It's a new material to work with. And this is the first time paper's been used for sculpture. Up until now, paper has been thought of as something to work on rather than something to work with. [Music] People [Music] [Music] [Music] are sometimes surprised that when I tell them I started out as a metal sculptor, but once I found this medium of paper making and it I fell in love with it. It's really a beautiful medium and uh I haven't really been able to go back at all to working in metal. This has got me kind of fascinated by the texture and and the white pristineess of it and I really enjoy working with it. This method of making paper that I'm doing here is about 2,000 years old and nothing's really changed and um can make up to 20 or 30 sheets at a time with this method. I'm going to cooch this, lay it down here in the felt blanket [Music] and put another felt over it. I have about 10 in this pile right here. put it in the press, which is a 20 ton press. It's a hydraulic uh truck jack in there, [Music] and it really presses most of the p water out of the paper. The there's about 90% the paper has about 90% water in it now. And we'll get most of it out. About all except about 5%. [Music] [Music] Well, I made the the machinery in here to make paper because I couldn't buy any at the time. No one had anything to buy that you could make paper with. So, I had to figure out how to make it. And uh I didn't have the money anyway if they'd had it. So, I just got an old washer and I got an old refrigerator and I uh took them apart and I put them back together again so they'd make paper. Okay, this material is 100% cotton fiber and it's been thoroughly hydropulated into the water in this old washing machine and uh it's um the purest form of cellulose fibers that we can find to use for paper making. It's where the term rag paper comes from. Um, after it's hydropuled or or spread around in the water, it's ready to use with either method of paper making, the old traditional methods or uh the new vacuum casting method. Okay. Now that I've got the fibers thoroughly distributed over the surface of this inside this frame, I'm going to pat them. This is called setting the sheet. You'll see the surface smooths out considerably. And this interlocks the fibers so I can come out with a real strong sheet of paper. It's got to be done thoroughly over the whole surface so there's no weak spots. All right. This is a paper making backing table and it differs from the traditional methods of making paper that I can make a very large sheet of paper and I can make it up to 2 in thick. Um, and use it for sculptural purposes. I'll cover this with acetate and we'll turn on the vacuum pump and draw the air and the water out and this will vacuum it down into a flat sheet of paper. Okay, now the sheet should be formed and fully pressed um by the acetate. And I'm going to put my arms under here and transport it over to the workbench so I can form it into a piece of sculpture. It's pretty fragile still. this size. So, I have to be a little careful with it, but I think I can break it free here. Um, the paper's real flexible at this time and I can shape it into some nice shapes, nice sculptural shapes without too much problem. I'll lay it over this styrofoam form that I've already laid down on the piece to help with the shape. The beauty of this uh medium is that it's will form so rapidly to your every gesture and um it's an immediate kind of shaping. You don't have to work at it for months and months or chisel away with stone. It forms immediately. You just have to be careful that you don't overdo it and keep it fairly understated. Now when this is dry, it will remain in this shape and I can glue it down to the particular board or I can rewet it and shape it some more. Come up with the final form that I'm happy with. I like to think that paper has a really ethereal feel about it. a lightness that's unattainable by simply painting something white. Um, I think it's the whiteness and the way the whiteness breaks down the light, the subtleties in the shadows between individual sheets, the changes from brightness to shadow, and the variations in color and direction of light. In a way.