The story of the soldier, the Marine, the men and the women and the journeys within the military service in a time of war is the basis for this project. The goal is to utilize art as a means to help veterans reconcile their personal experiences as well as challenge the traditional narrative surrounding service, honor and the military culture.
Through papermaking workshops veterans use their uniforms worn in combat to create cathartic works of art. The uniforms are cut up, beat and formed into sheets of paper. Veterans use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences as a soldier in war.
I got to work with these folks (headed by Drew Cameron and Drew Matott) at Rutgers in the fall of 2008 and meant to write something up on it forever, but didn't until now. It's a really amazing project and it's also been interesting to see how papermaking has shifted from being a "craft" to actually being considered a form of art. Typically, papermaking hasn't been considered much an art in itself, but rather just a step in the process of printmaking or a craft, like knitting. But initiatives such as Combat Paper show how much you can do with paper itself.
The video is a clip from a longer documentary that filmmaker Sara Nesson has been working on the past few years.
