Radical Paper (2024, The Legacy Press)

Radical Paper: Art and Invention with Colored Pulp is a landmark book that serves as both an overdue history and an up-close look at the range, versatility, and brilliance of art created with colored paper pulp — an artistic movement that has operated largely outside the mainstream art world. Co-authored by artists and master papermakers Lynn Sures and Michelle Samour, Radical Paper is available for purchase through The Legacy Press’s distributor, Oak Knoll Books. In May 2025, it was announced that Radical Paper won the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award in the Art category and was shortlisted for the Grand Prize.

In Radical Paper, the authors discuss the contemporary breakthrough of using colored paper pulp as an integral element in creating art – as opposed to serving only as the surface on which art is created. The book chronicles the rapid development of the movement over the last 70 years, and how early practitioners in the mid-20th century first began manipulating colored pulp, freeing it from its two-dimensional function as a substrate. Mapping out new directions in using colored paper pulp, progressive papermakers, such as Douglass Morse Howell, Laurence Barker, and Kenneth Tyler, inspired the careers of generations of artists, including Pacita Abad, El Anatsui, Firelei Báez, Leonardo Drew, Torkwase Dyson, Melvin Edwards, Helen Frankenthaler, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mona Hatoum, David Hockney, Jim Hodges, Eddie Martinez, Wangechi Mutu, Adam Pendleton, Howardena Pindell, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Alan Shields, who have taken this medium in fresh and unexpected directions.

This foundational book — the first of its kind — features 245 works by 73 innovators in a hardcover, offset-printed, full-color publication comprising 440 pages. Nearly 30 essays, many based on the authors’ first-person interviews, cover a range of topics from history to practitioners to collaborators of this revolutionary and little understood medium. Each artist’s work, grounded in the common medium of liquid, colored pulp, takes flight through an array of applications, modalities, and techniques, from the pictorial to the structural, representational to abstract, two- and three-dimensional, spanning the meditative to the mercurial.

Radical Paper is in the collections of museums and university libraries across the globe, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, NL), Yale University (New Haven, CT), Princeton University (Princeton, NJ), Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), and Rhode Island School of Design, (Providence, RI), among many others.

440 pages • 342 full-colored images • hardcover, sewn • 12 x 9 in. • 2024 • 9781940965260 • $75.00

Praise for Radical Paper:

“Radical Paper: Art and Invention with Colored Pulp discovers a new world, mapping the variety, power and beauty of pulp as an artistic medium. The book explores new possibilities with this humble yet magnificent material.” — Carol Sauvion, Executive Director, “Craft in America” PBS series

“This book is an extraordinary overview of the subject, both the selection of art as well as the clear and thoughtful commentary. The design of the book and the high quality reproductions make it a must for any art library.” — Joann Moser, Senior Curator Emerita, Smithsonian American Art Museum

"Both historically insightful and visually stunning, this work opens wide the door to this art medium. The authors give attention to significant forebears, allow devoted long-time practitioners to present their work and approaches, and provide important focus on key collaborative studios and their master craftspeople. Hundreds of artworks by scores of artists complement the textual richness. I found much to revel in and enjoy in these pages." — Michael Durgin, Co-Founder and former Editor, Hand Papermaking

“This sizable, richly-produced coffee table book provides an immersive introduction into the process, product, and possibilities of the medium of colored pulp in art and papermaking. Lavishly illustrated throughout, the book gives ample focus to a variety of contemporary artists and papermakers who are incorporating this little-understood technique into their creative practices. Vibrant illustrations illuminate not only the actual process behind creating artworks with colored pulp, but also the finished works themselves, while explanatory text and artist insights reveal the range of stunning possibilities. In the process, this book brings welcomed visibility and understanding to this medium.” — The Eric Hoffer Award