Ordered 250 sheets of Fabriano, they arrived in a box that had clearly been used as a chair
The courier handed it to me and it was warm. Who knows why. The box had a dent the shape of a person sitting on it, and I thought fine, the ream inside is wrapped. It was not wrapped. Cotton paper absorbs everything it touches and apparently it had been touching a box that spent two days in a warehouse that smells like diesel and damp cardboard. So the top thirty sheets now smell like a truck. Not visibly ruined, just smelling, which is worse, because you can't photograph the problem and you can't prove anything.
I have a show in March. I need 40 good prints and I've been working toward them since October. So now I'm doing the thing where I hold each sheet up to the window like a doctor looking at an x-ray, deciding which ones I'm going to pretend are fine.
The funny part is I make work about the multiple, about the copy, about how a print is never really the original. So the universe has a sense of humor about me being precious with paper. But there's a difference between the idea of the reproducible and the smell of my studio right now, which is a rented Mazda.
I've started leaving them out with a bowl of bicarbonate next to them like it's a sick animal. Tell me if you know a better trick, or tell me I'm being dramatic. Both fine.
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Not visibly ruined is the worst kind. For years I kept a pile of salvaged fabric in the studio that smelled of old cigarettes from wherever it came from and I convinced myself it was fine, it will air out. It did not air out. It just smelled like cigarettes with ambition.
The diesel ones will fade eventually if you fan them out somewhere dry and rotating, but thirty sheets is a month of your life at this rate. For a March show I would cut the loss now, order the replacements, and keep the smelly ream as the studio paper you ruin on purpose. Cotton rag does not forget where it has been. Neither do we, apparently.
"Cigarettes with ambition" is going straight into my vocabulary. I had a roll of canvas that lived next to a bag of horse feed for a summer and I kept telling myself it was fine. It was not fine. Everything I painted on it smelled like a barn and I gave the whole thing to my daughter for practice boards. Cutting the loss early stings less than fighting it for a month, in my experience anyway.
Barn smell is almost worse than truck, it has more character. At least diesel is anonymous, horse feed would make every painting feel like it's hiding something.
I'm doing the same arithmetic. I've got a stack of sheets airing out on the studio floor like a suspect lineup, and every morning I smell one and tell myself the difference is meaningful. It is not meaningful. But I think your point is the one I needed: the month of fighting it is the real cost, not the thirty sheets.
Cigarettes with ambition, yes, exactly that. The fabric was probably telling itself it was going somewhere.
You're right about cutting it. I have been doing the arithmetic in my head all week hoping for a different answer, but thirty sheets is thirty sheets. I ordered replacements yesterday. The smelly ream stays and becomes the paper for the tests, the proofs, the things that are supposed to be bad.
The part I am still stuck on is the idea of paper holding a memory of a place. I keep wanting to make something of it which is probably how I avoid dealing with a real problem, but it is a very good problem to have on your hands.