Bay Area–based artist Julia Goodman creates hand-formed paper sculptures from reused textiles, expanding the possibilities of handmade paper through a focus on sustainability, texture, and history.

Drawing on the overlooked tradition of gathering rags for papermaking, she collects cotton bedding and t-shirts from family, friends, and thrift stores. These materials—embedded with traces of everyday life—bring forward the unseen labor of women and caretakers, past and present. Goodman tears and pulps the fabrics, forming and pressing them into shapes and textures that recall the moon, the imprint of her gripped hand, and the folds of bedsheets and t-shirts. Colors emerge directly from the original fabrics or by mixing together differently-colored fabrics—without dyes or pigments. In recent work, washes of watercolor respond to layered shapes and surfaces in her work.

Julia Goodman works at the intersection of papermaking, textiles, sculpture, and painting. Her work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, DePaul Art Museum, Recology San Francisco, and Google.