Overseas and across the nation, the Combat Paper Project has touched the lives of veterans, artists and students, through creating handmade paper from veterans’ military uniforms worn while in service — material that is embedded with profound meaning.

“Papermaking is a very literal deconstruction. You’re ripping rag, you’re cutting it apart, and transforming it,” said Drew Cameron, co-director and co-founder of the Combat Paper Project. “So, in and of itself, just that tactile experience is a process of transformation. It’s creating, repurposing, reclaiming.”

The Combat Paper Project involves cutting uniforms into rags, breaking them down into pulp and forming handmade paper, which is used to write poetry, make prints and create other forms of artistic expression. Combat Paper provides a non-confrontational open space for veterans to effectively express and share their war experiences.

“It’s a really freeing, liberating, cathartic process for a lot of veterans,” said Steve Kostell, a lecturer within the School of Art and Design, and collaborator with Soybean Press which has worked actively with the Combat Paper Project.

Veterans have found the Combat Paper Project to be so meaningful because it allows them to express experiences that cannot easily be explained in words.

“It can be tough to find and access the verbal language to be able to speak about military experiences,” Cameron said. “So, art, any creative practice of papermaking, just seems to be the one that I love and adore. It is a way to access that language … to speak about memory and emotion. It’s another form of language that I find is really successful.”

Cameron served in the U.S. Army for four years on active duty, and two years in the VT Army National Guard. Drew Matott is also a co-founder of the Combat Paper Project. When Mattot was a graduate student at Columbia College Chicago in their interdisciplinary Book & Paper Arts Program, Mattot met Cameron at Green Door Studio. In 2007, the Combat Paper Project began. The inspiration came from the desire to spread hand papermaking, Cameron said.

In addition to providing a mechanism for veterans to express and reflect on their memories of wartime experience, the Combat Paper Project is about bringing together the community and sharing those experiences, Kostell said. The Combat Paper Project has toured all over the world, traveling to local communities as well as numerous universities to give workshops and lectures.

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) holds the most comprehensive collection of the Combat Paper Project’s work. The RBML sought out Combat Paper Project in its early stages in order to arrange for the RBML to become the official repository for all their archives and works.

The project first came to the Soybean Press at the University in the spring of 2009. In September 2010, the Combat Paper Project had an artist residency in conjunction with Allen Hall, and produced 13 projects with the University.

“A big a goal of ours is to teach people and encourage them to teach and practice papermaking with their communities,” Cameron said.

Olivia Cornell, senior in Engineering, participated in the Combat Paper Project last year at Allen Hall.

“It’s helping veterans who might have a hard time coping with what they went through, helping them cope in a really creative and new way,” Cornell said.

The Combat Paper Project gave various workshops at Allen Hall involving papermaking, where students were able to learn how to make the paper using different techniques.

“I had a great time at it, and I think a lot of the residents and community members who came too really enjoyed it too,” Cornell said.

To create the handmade paper, the rags are cut up and put into a beater, which cycles the water and the rags, breaking down the fibers until they are small, hydrated fibers. After the pulp is sandwiched into a mold that is put into a water-charged vat, it is lifted out of the vat and put onto a wool post. The fibers rebond under pressure, and the paper becomes solid during the drying process.

The Combat Paper Project also has a portable bicycle petal-powered beater that pulps the rags without electricity, which makes the papermaking process even more of an interactive event.

The exchange between war veterans, students and local citizens through the papermaking process helps communicate some of the subtleties of war experiences.

“The Combat Paper Project really bridges that gap. They are able to bring the University community with these returning veterans, as well as engage the local community and veterans that are living in the community. It’s really about community building in a sense,” Kostell said.

In addition to handmade paper, the Combat Paper Project makes other forms of artwork, such as postcards, poetry, artist books and handmade journals. Participants keep the paper they make, and a significant body of work is displayed at exhibitions. The collections have traveled throughout the country, as well as internationally, such as the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.

The Combat Paper Project also lead an initiative to produce numerous blank journals with the help of participants in papermaking workshops, and shipped them to a physician stationed in Afghanistan.

“A physician was working with soldiers who had been wounded. They were being sent home, and being removed from the field,” Cameron said. “For part of their transition out of the country, he was passing out and giving these journals to these soldiers who had been injured, sort of as an offering, a gesture, to let them know that we’re back here thinking about them.”

The Combat Paper Project has been very successful in academic institutions across the country.

“So many of the students are in college now, they grew up with war. As they’ve grown, their world view kind has expanded from their family, to their high school, to their college, to the world – different layers,” Cameron said. “But within each of those, part of their perspective of what is normal has been conflict and war. Afghanistan, Iraq, Horn of Africa, conflicts elsewhere. And Combat Paper really helps us to kind of unpack some of that.”

Whether it has been for the purpose of commemoration, catharsis, or telling a story, the Combat Paper Project has affected thousands of people worldwide, allowing each person to carry their own meaning from the project. Through the papermaking process, the Combat Paper Project has created deep connections within communities, and will continue to inspire and help individuals — in ways immeasurable through words — for years to come.