DENE ROSS
Paper Pulp Painting

    RIVERSIDE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS CREATE CELEBRITY HANDMADE PAPER QUILTS--2019

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Mr. Laughton Huggins’ computer classes at Riverside High School in Yonkers, New York have hosted Dene as a guest artist for the last four years. Their projects are structured around student-made pieces of white cotton paper which are the ‘canvas’ for designs created with the use of Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop. By making their own paper, and printing with archival inks which are extraordinarily strong on this surface, students are creating these Quilts from scratch. 

 

This year four classes chose 12 ‘Heroes and Icons’ from their heritage, the African-American and Latino communities, as the focus of their designs, and photos used are available for public use. Each photo was divided into a nine-panel grid and nine students chose one panel to paint with three or more unique "brushes" they created. Working independently, each printed his or her final image on their pieces of dried and pressed handmade paper. Each piece was meant to stand alone as a finished artwork.  The pieces are held together as a ‘Quilt’ with thin white ribbon. Until it is assembled, there is no way of knowing what a Quilt will look like.