Support and Skin: On Clay and Paper
Clay and paper are among the most ancient materials in human culture. One is born of mineral, the other of plant; one carries weight, the other lightness. At first glance, they appear to stand apart. Yet when we look closely, they mirror each other in surprising ways. Both are suspensions—particles held in water—that become form through drying. Both are shaped while soft, yet gain their strength only in fragility: thin skins, delicate layers, light membranes that harden into structure.
To work with clay and paper is to understand that their real power lies not in mass but in surface. A sheet of paper has no depth, yet it holds memory, image, and time. A vessel of clay is only millimeters thick, yet it carries fire, water, and life. Both are skins that protect, preserve, and record. Both carry topographies—folds, scars, impressions—that testify to the hands and histories that shaped them.
In this way, clay and paper share a profound kinship. They are not opposites but reflections: clay is heavy skin, paper is light skin; clay bears weight, paper bears trace. Each begins in water, in suspension, and each becomes fragile once dried. Both remind us that permanence is always negotiated through thinness, through layers that hold more than they appear.
Clay as Object, Clay as Mold
One of the most overlooked capacities of clay is its role as mold. We tend to think of clay as a final material: bricks, vessels, tiles, sculptures. But clay is just as powerful in its negative state, when it serves not as object but as matrix. Press a leaf, a textile, or even a wall relief into clay, and it will capture every detail, every fold, every ridge.
This dual nature is astonishing: clay can be both the artwork and the mold for an artwork. It can be divided into one-part, two-part, or many-part molds, depending on what needs to be released. In this role, clay becomes not only mineral matter but also memory matter: it remembers textures and offers them to other materials.
When paired with paper, this function expands. Paper pulp pressed into a clay mold takes on the full precision of its negative, while retaining its own fibrous lightness. The result is a skin that preserves what clay once held, but without its weight. Here clay acts as support, paper as skin—a collaboration of opposites that reveals their deep interdependence.
The Philosophy of Skin
Skin is not merely a surface; it is structure. In both clay and paper, skin is what carries meaning. It is the boundary, the place of contact, the record of every touch. Clay skin hardens into permanence, carrying fingerprints, tools, and time. Paper skin, fragile and tearable, records its own scars as well: fold lines, creases, punctures. Both materials speak through what their skins reveal.
To treat clay and paper as skins is to shift attention from the finished form to the process of accumulation and memory. It is to see sculpture not as solid mass but as the layering of surfaces. It is to understand fragility not as weakness but as evidence—evidence of labor, of time, of encounter.
Nature as Guide
This dialogue between mineral and fiber is not only cultural; it is natural. In landscapes, roots hold soil, preventing erosion; fibers bind minerals into stable ground. Wetlands and clay beds are shaped as much by plants as by earth. Fossils show us the impressions of leaves preserved forever in stone. Nature itself demonstrates how plant and mineral intertwine, each depending on the other for form and survival.
When we work with clay and paper, we are not inventing this dialogue; we are continuing it. We borrow from what already happens in the world around us: plant supporting earth, earth recording plant. Our task is to observe, to translate, and to extend these encounters through our own experiments.
Support and Skin
The deeper lesson is that clay and paper remind us that support and skin are inseparable. Every structure needs both: the body that gives form, and the surface that holds memory. In our practice, clay offers its mass so that paper can find independence. Paper, in turn, carries forward the memory of clay long after the mineral body is gone.
This reciprocity is not only technical—it is philosophical. It teaches us that nothing exists alone. Clay without paper remains heavy; paper without clay risks collapse. But together, they form a cycle of support and release, presence and absence, weight and lightness.
Toward a Practice of Dialogue
For the Paper Lab, clay and paper are not materials to be mastered separately, but companions in dialogue. Each brings its own logic, its own fragility, its own resilience. Each extends the other’s possibilities.
To explore clay and paper together is to explore the tension between permanence and impermanence, mass and skin, memory and lightness. It is to recognize that every material holds not only what it is, but also what it can become in relation to another.
In this way, the union of clay and paper is not just a technique—it is a philosophy of making. It asks us to work with patience, to embrace fragility, to honor memory, and to see materials not as fixed categories but as shifting partners in the act of creation.
In closing, it is worth pausing on the broader question of mold-making in relation to paper. Clay reminds us that a mold is not only a technical tool but a conceptual one—a way of thinking about form, memory, and translation. The varieties of clay available today, from natural earth clays to polymer, wax-based, or hand-mixed substitutes, expand the field even further. And perhaps the deeper question is not “what is clay?” but “how open are we to redefining it?” To see clay not only as matter from the ground but as any mass that can hold, record, and support is to recognize that mold-making itself is a practice of imagination. For artists, this is an invitation: to research, to test, to invent, and to discover how paper may grow new skins through every dialogue with clay.