From Fabric to Form: The Alchemy of Paper

A Material Encounter

In the quiet act of unraveling an old shirt, there is already the beginning of transformation. The weave loosens, threads release, and something forgotten becomes raw again—ready to become something else. What once clothed a body, held stories, or lived invisibly in the everyday is gently returned to its essence.

This is not merely a masterclass about paper. It is a conversation with material memory, with cellulose as a patient collaborator. Here, paper is not flat. It is not blank. It carries the echo of what it used to be—and the potential of what it might become.

The Common Thread: Cellulose as a Carrier of Memory

At the core of both fabric and paper lies a single, ancient molecule: cellulose. Found in the cell walls of plants, it is nature’s quiet architect—one that holds together leaves, bark, stems, threads, and sheets. But in the hands of the artist, cellulose becomes more than a structural component. It becomes a language of transformation.

Fabric celebrates the continuity of the fiber. It is spun, woven, and stretched to follow the body. Paper, by contrast, is born of rupture. The fiber must first be broken down, disassembled, and restructured to become something new. In this fracture lies the power of reinvention.

This cycle—from cohesion to fragmentation to cohesion again—is not just a material process. It mirrors something human. Each act of papermaking from fabric is a quiet confrontation with memory, a reclamation of something cast aside. In every sheet or sculpted form, there remains the trace of what it once was: a thread, a shirt, a skin.

The Labor of Becoming

Papermaking from fabric is not a passive process. It asks something of the body. Hours of preparation, cutting, soaking, pounding—movements that resist elegance and lean toward effort. The material does not yield easily. Its transformation must be earned.

There is a particular rhythm that emerges: repetitive, almost devotional. The hands begin to memorize what the fiber requires. Pressure. Moisture. Patience. This choreography is not decorative—it is fundamental. Through it, the artist becomes part of the process, not just a facilitator but a participant in the reshaping of the material.

In this way, the work becomes corporeal. Not symbolic alone, but physically inscribed. The artist’s fatigue, decisions, and attention are embedded in the sheet. The labor becomes part of the paper's memory.

Paper as Skin: Holding, Scarring, Remembering

To work with fabric is to work with intimacy. It has lived near the body—sometimes directly upon it—and holds a familiarity that is hard to replicate. When this material is transformed into paper, it becomes a kind of second skin: one that no longer protects, but reveals.

The resulting forms are not smooth or sterile. They wrinkle, crack, stretch. They hold memory the way skin holds scar. They carry absence as much as presence. At times, they feel like cast-offs. At others, like relics.

This metaphor of paper as skin invites us to see material not as inert, but as sensitive, responsive, witnessing. A surface that absorbs both process and meaning, one layer at a time.

From Pulp to Presence: Casting Form from Fiber

While the transformation of fabric into pulp is a crucial beginning, the masterclass does not end there. What truly distinguishes this approach is the way that pulp is then formed, shaped, and cast—not into flat sheets alone, but into sculptural reliefs, contours, and vessels. The process becomes architectural. Spatial.

Using handmade molds, porous structures, and intuitive casting techniques developed over years of experimentation, participants are invited to explore paper as volume, not just surface. These paper forms are not copies—they are reinterpretations. They hold textures, absorb shadows, and offer a distinct physicality rarely associated with paper. In these moments, the material behaves less like paper and more like clay, textile, or even skin—folding in on itself, bearing weight, remembering touch.

This unique focus on paper reliefs and mold making is what elevates the masterclass into a full investigation—not only of how material is made, but of how it holds shape and meaning.

Material as Witness

Before a single fiber is broken down, the fabric already holds a biography. Sometimes it is intimate—a piece of clothing worn thin over years. Sometimes it is anonymous, pulled from the folds of secondhand piles, severed from its original story. In both cases, the fabric arrives already inscribed.

To work with textiles in the context of papermaking is to accept them as witnesses. Their previous function—whether utilitarian, decorative, or deeply personal—enters into the artwork not as a subject, but as a texture of history. Even when reduced to pulp, there are remnants that persist: the density of a weave, a particular hue, the ghost of a seam.

This transformation is not erasure. It is sedimentation. The layers of the past do not disappear; they settle into new configurations, shaping the structure and voice of the final form.

Dialogues in the Expanded Field

While the masterclass is grounded in lived experimentation, it also speaks to a broader movement in contemporary art—one that engages material not just for its utility, but for its poetic resistance. Artists like El Anatsui, who reconfigures found materials into massive tapestries, or Anne Wilson, whose thread-based installations reflect on labor and fragility, offer kinships to this practice.

But where others may emphasize narrative or scale, this work remains focused on material intelligence itself. On what fiber wants. On how form emerges from attention rather than imposition.

This is not work that seeks to impress with spectacle. It asks instead for quiet observation, for the slow unfolding of something that cannot be rushed.

The Unruliness of Synthetic Matter

Not all materials cooperate. Synthetic fibers—ubiquitous in discarded clothing—refuse the classical rules of papermaking. They do not bond. They resist absorption. They float.

But rather than dismiss these fibers, the masterclass embraces their unruliness. When processed with care—or sometimes despite care—they yield strange, shimmering results. Web-like structures, translucent veils, textures that refuse to settle. They are reminders that not all transformation is clean, and not all materials are ready to obey.

This willingness to engage the unpredictable reinforces the lab ethos at the heart of the practice: not all outcomes are controllable, and that’s precisely where invention lives.

The Tempo of Material Life

If there is one demand the process makes above all else, it is this: wait. The drying phase cannot be hurried. Paper is not paper until it is fully dry. Until then, it is possibility—pliable, vulnerable, in formation.

This delay is not an inconvenience. It is part of the logic of the material. Drying introduces time as a collaborator. It reveals what has settled, what has warped, what has held.

Time becomes a sculptor. A final author. It compresses, contracts, leaves evidence of evaporation and weight. It teaches the maker to pause, to return, to watch what emerges in stillness.

This temporal dimension gives the work its gravitas. It reminds us that to make something by hand, from raw fiber, is to resist the compression of time demanded by most contemporary production. It is an act of counter-speed, of deep attention. A quiet refusal.

Paper Talk: An Ongoing Conversation

For those interested in the material, philosophical, or artistic dimensions of this work, Paper Lab Berlin hosts Paper Talk, a free monthly online gathering open to all. These sessions offer space for shared inquiry, questions, and dialogue across disciplines and backgrounds. Whether you are a practicing artist, a curious newcomer, or someone exploring the possibilities of paper, you’re invited to join the conversation and expand your thinking in community.

Unveiling the Art of Becoming

There’s a moment—sometimes subtle, sometimes abrupt—when what was once fabric no longer resembles cloth, and what is becoming paper hasn’t yet become flat. It floats in a kind of in-between state. Suspended. Soft. Almost breathing.

This threshold, this becoming, is where the most compelling work takes place.

What unfolds in the masterclass is a kind of choreography: the rhythm of breaking down and building up again, of listening to what the material resists, of noticing what it absorbs. It is not a class in technique alone, but a conversation with material intelligence. A place where failure is essential and intuition is valid data.

This is a discipline that rewards slowness. That honors the unseen. That invites the participant to see a sheet of paper not as an object, but as a document of time, labor, and transformation—of fiber pushed to its edge and reassembled into something entirely new.

In a world increasingly shaped by acceleration, by smoothness, by erasure of origin—this practice insists on the opposite. It slows down. It surfaces the scar. It leaves in the thread. It makes visible the layers.

And in doing so, it offers more than paper. It offers a way of thinking through matter—one that is tactile, conceptual, and entirely alive.

About the Author

Guy Lougashi is a visual artist, educator, and founder of Paper Lab Berlin—an independent platform dedicated to the research of paper as material, metaphor, and medium. His work explores the intersection of fiber, identity, and topography, using experimental processes to push the boundaries of contemporary papermaking. Lougashi’s masterclasses, exhibitions, and installations have been presented internationally, offering a unique approach to material transformation rooted in observation, experimentation, and poetic logic.