The sunflowers that once bloomed in the acre lot at the corner of 5th and Garfield streets in downtown Phoenix are gone. But on Friday at Combine Studios, the Valley of the Sunflowers project will live on.
ASU graduate students in the Herberger Institute School of Art’s printmaking program initiated an unusual project last year – taking the sunflower stalks grown during the last Valley of the Sunflowers season and turning them into paper. Kerri Harding, Dana LeMoine and Rachel Nore didn’t stop the project once they had successfully made the paper. They passed the paper along to local artists and asked them to create artwork.
“We wanted to raise awareness of sustainability issues in the area and also to build community,” LeMoine said. “We were hoping each artist would have their own take on this.”
Artist Aimee León, also an ASU graduate student, said connecting her artwork to issues of sustainability is nothing new for her, so once she heard about the project she was immediately on board.
“All of my work has to do with sustainable resources,” León said, speaking both figuratively and literally. For example, beeswax, she said, is a substance she works with often in her art and is a sustainable organic material she prefers to use.
“The materials speak for themselves,” León said. “I think it’s really important that we as artists take these steps to talk about issues like this.”
Along with beeswax, León listed steel and, of course, the sunflower paper as mediums in her piece.
LeMoine said the papermaking process itself proved to be more difficult than she and her partners imagined. What she thought would be a quick side project instead took months of trial and error. Even their papermaking professor had no experience with sunflower stalks and could only give suggestions.
Finally, the students hit their “breakthrough.” A classmate helped them with the process of retting, which LeMoine described as letting the stalks rot outside in the desert heat for weeks.
Nore explained the details of the time-intensive process. “The stalks were put into garbage cans with milk and water,” Nore said, “then left covered outside for two months during the months of July and August.”
The sunflower stalks were extremely tough. Retting allowed the fiber to be broken down enough to form pulp, which was turned into the sheets, Nore said.
Despite the rancid smell of milk left to rot for two months, LeMoine said retting was much better than the previous method they had tried at ASU’s paper mill, which involved the use of lye, an unnatural chemical. She said retting used much less water and was overall a more sustainable option.
In this way, the paper process itself became reflective of the more sustainable lifestyle the students hoped their artists would advocate.
The art exhibition in Combine Studios will open to the public on Jan. 18 from 6-9 p.m. The art, including pieces from the student papermakers, will be displayed in the studio through Feb. 10.
Contact the reporter at ascline1@asu.edu
