Transformations – From Fabric to Paper

Julia Goodman on 20 Years Making Paper Rooted in the Bay Area. This lecture will introduce the history of rag papermaking - making paper from discarded textiles - and focus on Goodman’s innovative and interdisciplinary work anchored in this history. Julia Goodman's practice begins with repurposed bedsheets and t-shirts — fabrics carrying traces of daily life. Building on rag paper history and the women's labor that prepared used cloth for paper mills, she gathers, sorts, tears, and pulps textiles. Julia transforms materials closest to bodies into hand-formed paper. Her innovations in shape, thickness, edges, shadows, and sustainable color foreground overlooked supports that carry us through vulnerable experiences. The catalyst was personal: losing her father in 2007 drew Julia toward texture and material transformation; having a child in 2019 reawakened her relationship to color and fabric. Most color comes directly from original fabrics, pulped and mixed without dyes. Julia builds wet-into-wet to form low-relief surfaces with expanding ellipses. Watercolor washes accentuate texture. Torn fabric and impressions left by removed material interrupt forms with evidence of both rupture and repair, presence and absence.

San Francisco, California
94118  United States