A Paper Earth: Exciting Discovery

The main set build here was stuck. I was stuck, stuck, stuck trying to piece together the former plaster pieces of the salvaged landscape set pieces from the original pre-move build. They were heavy and messy with loose plaster, unfinished, disjointed, unwilling to blend together, just awkward to move in place. I kept trying with the help of other people to make it come together for the last 12 years. Until last week.

I was nearing the completion of another 1/2L set, the overscale close-up ground set, where the Pink Snail puppet will be seen traveling by in the evening light from Rana's bedroom window. (It has three other close-up shot uses as well, but the Snail's path is the chief one.) Anyhoo, there I was, building that set when my hands needed a way to easily extend the ground around its existing fixed size. There was a torn-up piece of Kraft paper pulp packing insulation on the floor that I picked up unknowingly, and slowly came to connect how it might work for that. Huh. Let me try•...

Within moments, it was clear this was some kind of perfect answer for all set ground topography going forward. It was FREE, it was essentially recycling trash, it was lightweight and effortless to blend and install to form any and all topography as needed, in a word, a sublime solution. 

I easily daubed the installed material with burnt umber acrylic and matte medium. It took the coverage in just the right way. Layers of coffee grounds and dried excess tea were added with equal ease, using whatever binder I had on hand: small amounts of matte medium, starch, or diluted glue worked beautifully. This material was a total dream! (•see the material as it was discovered here)

“That’s when I REALIZED I had enough of this material on hand to cover the ENTIRE main set with it. It would be 1000x easier to work with to create the landscape as I would wish (future link to the acres of grasses made for it), plant the handmade blades of grass into it, perfectly upright and stable, no other substrate needed. When I tell you it’s fast... Look out, this Main Set is fixing to fly now.”

Pieces of the OLD plaster set being destroyed on their way out to the trash bins. I salvaged what I could from the formerly planted grass to reuse at the new landscape's edges.

I also saved the chopped wooden log stairs from the last build, as they took forever to construct.

And I expect them to incorporate well into the new material.

I had to sneak up on destroying the existing landscape. Step One was to demolish all the plaster pieces and have the city trash service dispose of them at the landfill. (I hated adding to that, but I couldn't see any other way.) The Next Step was to toss out the mountain of dyed brown fleece fabric pieces I thought would work, but didn't. That was hard to do, too, because I'd spent so much wasted time dying that yardage brown, used up all my brown paint, dyes, and inks doing it, only to throw it all away in the end. However, husband Paul was gently encouraging me because he could feel how "heavy" all that failed fabric was in my psyche. He didn't tell me what to do, but he asked me objectively about the former set pieces and whether the fabric might be better off without them now that I had this new material to work with so harmoniously. Never has anyone been more right. I felt lighter and lighter as we lugged the bags out to the bins for pickup the next day.