​Aidée Bernard               

 -  I Love to Immerse Myself in Nature

                                                                                                            Interview by Sophie Reynolds







Ten years ago Aidee Bernard found herself living in a wild valley near

Roquebrun.  Studying at Les Beaux Arts, Montpellier the most precious

thing she learnt was to experiment – and that creating could be led by her

curiosity. She could try things out....



Now deep in nature and surrounded by plants she thought, “There must be something in these

plants that I can uncover.”  Without knowing in advance how, and grateful not to be intimidated

by the idea that paper making is something complex, the reserve of an 'artist' or ‘artisan’, Aidee

started. Harvesting… chestnut, yucca, horsetail, micocoulier, iris, ivy and reeds; cooking ... DIY

book in hand;  unravelling… textures and colours of the resulting fibres, all leading her to

eventually produce her first paper in 2004.



I love to immerse myself in nature. The day I discovered paper making I'd found a medium

through which to share my encounters with the plant world with others. Paper reveals itself

to me as something in its own right, complete in itself, expressive of its own self, rather than

just being the backdrop for writing.



The paper embodies the quality of my wanderings in nature, that of being both apart from the

world, and, harboured by the canopy of trees, unusually close to it. When harvest time arrives,

each plant tells me a story... and its particular characteristics determine what shape and use

it will lend itself to. My favourites are the delicate newborn fibres of spring, viscous and shiny.

The wild oats I gather are like this. Their transformation into paper fibres through the alchemy

of the cooking process produces a vibrant material that varies depending on whether the oats

were harvested in spring or winter. The fibres are then neutralised to ph7 in order to be worked

upon.  They join up in the water in the 'tamis' (the paper making frame) revealing forms and

textures.  As a paper artist I use these vegetable fibres to create ethereal sculptures, objects

that can be worn such as hats or costumes, or 'books'.



While the paper pulp is still in the tamis I may also 'write' on it, using jets of water to make traces

or 'tracks'. The force of the jets parts the shreds of the fibres into well defined grooves. I can also

create other effects.



Words are omnipresent, even in silence the totality of language is there. Thanks to

light my water- created writing is legible, thanks to the transparency of the paper. It is

a secret communication that can exist only in symbiosis with the very matter of the

paper. The surface is pierced, rendered fragile by the traces of writing, by the water

marks. The paper bears witness to damage, the inevitable wear and tear of life. It

speaks of birth and death. I love to make the surface as thin as absolutely possible,

like a film, a skin that tells the invisible story of that which has touched me, that which

is there, but ineffably, not possible to be said, a murmur in the ear.



Today Aidee exhibits widely and offers regular paper making workshops. Evermore

she enjoys sharing the transformation of plants into paper and the delight of involving

ourselves in this process. Not surprisingly she is particularly passionate about sharing

the experience that we don't need to put up barriers for ourselves – “I need expertise”,

“I need to be artistic”, 'I need to do it right'  - between a wish to engage in some way

with the materials offered to us by the world and  aspiration for an 'end product'. 



Aidee lives and works at Puisseguier with her family.



​

 

Workshops

Aidee runs 2 day workshops in Puisseguier, Marseille and at libraries around France where she shares techniques, the plants of the region, and creating paper.

Coming up:  Leaf to Book – a 4 day workshop allowing people to make a trace, a trail, of what they have lived in the form of a simple folded accordion or Japanese style book. The book will emerge from exploring content and expression of how the paper feels and speaks.   24th-27th July. The workshop will take place at 20 rue du lirou, Puisserguier.

For more information: www.aidee-bernard.com

 

Captions for the Images:

Photo references/credits see emails : photo "Fil de vie", Gilles Hutchinson.

(For the red dress)  Costume entirely in plant fibre paper dyed with madder for  'A Tout Fil', competition for  'art portee' ( art that can be worn) in the Gard.

(skirt) A correspondence of 22 years (1988 – 2010) is the starting point for this 'Skirt-book'.
The letters chart a journey of acceptance and transformation.