Flax paper challenge succeeds

Press, 5 August 1988, Page 4

Flax paper challenge succeeds

By SUZANNE KEEN Six weeks work by a graphic artist and a band of young helpers has produced enough flax paper to cover a football field almost three times over.

However, the paper is destined for the theatre, not the sports scene. With help from Hagley High School thirdformers, Mark Lander, a visual artist, has produced 33 sheets of 7m by I.Bm flax paper for the set of the “Five Rivers Dance

Project” to be performed by the Limbs Dance Company later this month. “We thought we would use materials from the Canterbury area and because paper is so cheap to make it has cost us virtu-, ally nothing for the backdrop,” said Mr Lander. “There is also the fact that paper uses water in its manufacture and the project’s theme is the five rivers.”

The Canterbury rivers chosen as the choreo-

graphic theme are the Avon, Waimakariri, Rakaia, Hurunui and Rangitata. There was little difficulty finding young people willing to help with the project and the papermaking process is now almost complete. It involved harvesting the flax from the Metro refuse station at Bromley and bruising it by pounding and cutting it into scm lengths. It was then boiled in a caustic soda solution

in an old bath with a fire under it, pulped in a hydropulper (a modified hoovermatic washing machine) and put into a large plastic-lined swimming pool.

The sheets were formed on a mould and dried in the sun.

They were then flameproofed and then peeled off ready for hanging or painting for the show.

Seventh-formers from several 'Christchurch schools will this week-end

help paint the paper with more than 30 different coloured earth pigments collected from the Port Hills, Redcliffs and Sumner.

Transporting all the paper to the James Hay Theatre for the show on August 14 should be no problem, said Mr Lander. “The paper is quite strong and so we can scrunch it up until we get there and then unravel it, or else we can just roll it up,” he said.