To Make Art, One Must First Burn It...
Although I intend to focus mainly on metals in this project, I also wanted to explore a few other materials. Burning paper sounds like an interesting idea because a) its effects are visually vulnerable, yet aggressive and b) fire is never a good idea. Which makes it just that.
My first experiments with burning the paper. I bought a 50-metre roll of paper last June and decided to use a bit of it for this experiment. I cut it up, rolled it and tied the end, and proceeded to crease it... artistically, of course.
I set the paper knot on the garage floor and lit it with a match. When playing with fire, it's important to always have a way to put it off nearby. In this case, we're using two towels---a dry one to snuff the flames out, and a wet one to extinguish the smaller burns.
Whenever the fire had eaten away some parts of the paper, I threw the dry towel over it and sealed all gaps, suffocating the fire. If smaller flames persisted, I would go in with the smaller wet towel.
NOTE - I have a video showing the entire process, but I can't seem to figure out how to speed it up (it's about ten minutes long). When I do, I will update this post and upload the video here.
The second time, I used a slightly different format---less creases and more folds. The folds are held there with superglue.
The results:
Dramatic.
The key to creating less holes and more burns, I found, is to extinguish the flames with only the wet towel and hold it there for a few seconds. This will accentuate the blackened chars.
The challenge with working with fire and paper is controlling it. You can't really control the direction of the fire, nor which parts it will eat. Its wholly unpredictable, which is its strength---and weakness. I may want to use this technique in my final project, or not. I still can't decide yet. I do think it's a very compelling look, and paper is lighter and easier to transport, as opposed to metal. Still, it's very delicate, and that's another challenge---how do you preserve it enough that it stays fragile, yet durable enough for wear?