Jane Ponsford - UK
“Jane Ponsford is an artist and papermaker based in London and South East England. She works using repetitive processes, constructing sculptural forms made up of hundreds of near identical fragments to make bookworks, sculpture and installations.
Although in the past she has used a variety of materials, recently she has mainly concentrated on working with handmade paper.
‘I enjoy using this material because it brings together surface and form. It is evocative, reminiscent of documentation and archives. Staining and tearing easily, it can be seen as the receptive surface for forensic investigation or a blank form to catch light or shadow. Much of my work outside involves papermaking. I love the contradictory nature of working with a fragile, ephemeral material in difficult, dirty surroundings at the mercy of the weather.
My current preoccupation is with materiality and process in response to place. I am interested in working with the materials of particular settings and landscapes, the chalk and clay and silt and the traces that they leave. Working in response to specific places has become increasingly important to me; and all my work; whether employing papermaking or not, involves getting traces from particular spaces or landscapes. These traces have included in previous projects, earth, volcanic ash deposits, water from the Medway, impressions and castings, photographs and stories. While craft processes are integral to the development of my work and inform the final outcome, the starting point of the work is often based on collections of dust and materials connected with specific locations.’
Jane is a member of IAPMA, the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists. She exhibits nationally and teaches papermaking in a variety of settings ranging recently from The British Museum, Stroud International Textiles, West Dean College and out in the landscape”
-Taken verbatim from janeponsfordstudio.com ‘ABOUT’ section.
@janeponsford
“I am a papermaker and artist who works with natural materials often in relation to particular places and landscapes. The fibres I use to make my paper are mainly recycled from other previous uses and all are sustainably sourced. I am interested in repetitive processes not just in terms of the practical ones I use in my craft; beating fibres into pulp, couching paper, forming hundreds of simple shapes by hand, but also in the way I collect materials from the landscape to colour the paper. Walking is part of my process.
Part of my schooling was at a convent and many aspects of the religious practice that I observed and took part in there still resonate with me even though I don’t subscribe to any religion now. The things that appealed were repetition of prayer, telling of a rosary etc. these things linked in my mind with other small, humble and seemingly inconsequential things that I had come across in traditional fairy stories; weaving a shirt from nettles, collecting white stones to form a trail etc and they inform the way that I make my handmade paper works.“
- Taken from Jane Ponsford.