​Adnotes to the scoop papers (handmade papers) by Yoly Maurer 
(​using the example of the 1+366 project)
How many objects do we pick up every day? How many newspapers, books, advertising catalogues and other printed sheets that praise the ease of coping with everyday life and display the special offers from supermarkets like fishing rods? Then there are everyday objects such as cutlery, glasses, bottles, bedding, clothing, table tops, chair backs, telephone receivers, dial buttons, door handles, window latches, doorbell buttons, toothbrushes, combs, hair shampoos and other cosmetics. We touch, grasp, grope, feel and weigh so many different things in our hands every single day that we are not only unable to answer the question of the order of magnitude of the number, but we do not even really register most of them. We simply use things and then either put them back where we took them from (hopefully we are orderly) or we throw away the stuff that has become useless. If we didn't do that, our living space would be overgrown with populations of different kinds. Populations of printed matter, plastic cups, tin cans, disposable and reusable bottles, etc. etc. Yoly Maurer has set out to record every day in her project 1+366. And what might at first seem to be the belief in Udo Jürgen's popular hit "Ein Tag wie jeder...", namely that one day is like the other, is soon to be proven wrong. Of course the «Karawanken crooner» song muses about love, which makes the comparison a little awkward. What else would you dream about every day, you ask yourself, slightly annoyed. In pop music, people always ask about love, or its end or revival. The answer is usually like the negative to the positive, if you are just a little familiar with earthly conditions and are prepared to perceive worldly circumstances without a sugarcoated view. Nevertheless, sometimes you can't help but get the impression that one day is just like the next, that the differences are merely marginal. The daily routine is usually structured more or less according to the same pattern. After all - as has already been said in another context - we are usually orderly. This comfortable idea - that one day is like another (the next) as two peas in a pod - is over when you take a look at Yoly Maurer's creations. It's just not true, one day is not like any other, but different. Completely different, in fact. The year 2008 had 366 days and Yoly Maurer captured each day in a scoop paper, giving it an individual face. The term “individual” means two things: on the one hand, each day is different from the past, which is different from the one before, as the traces make clear. On the other hand, it is her personal traces that she has left behind. Every single person has contact with other objects and foods, which would produce a different image if each of us made our own personal scoop paper. What is a “scoop paper”? The term “scoop paper” refers on the one hand to the fact that used material is scooped out of or with water onto a sieve, and on the other hand, it is creations made from the materials that characterize the respective day. From a purely technical point of view, it is a craft process that was developed in several regions of the world and is generally known as paper production. Yoly Maurer mainly uses rags to produce her special papers. She scoops the sheet out of the thin paper pulp by hand using a very fine-meshed, flat, rectangular sieve. The size of the sieve determines the size of the sheet of paper. The materials that will determine the day, such as grass, newspaper clippings, and remnants of plastic bags, are either already mixed into the thin paper pulp, or are pressed into it during the process of couching, like sand or small stones. A brief explanation of the no longer everyday term of couching: It describes the first dewatering step after couching the paper, placing the freshly laundered sheet of paper on a felt pad, over which Yoly Maurer lays a cotton cloth. After it has dried, she scrapes the sheet of paper off the cloth. She (Yoly Maurer) believes that colorful eggshells become synonymous with a liberated, happy day, and that gold colors indicate particularly inspirational hours. If you look over the individual 366 abstract daily reports, you will immediately see that more colorful - i.e. happier or more eventful - images are next to gray - i.e. duller days.
If you now look at the individual pictures, you can see that Yoly Maurer uses an old craft technique on the one hand, but on the other hand carries out a process of recycling. The careless process of throwing away objects such as packaging materials, advertising brochures, magazines and newspapers is not possible for her. With each object, she has to ask the question: what does this mean for the characteristics of a day? Of course, she cannot use everything, but waste becomes raw material for her art. Since recycling is known to distinguish between upcycling and downcycling - high-quality or low-quality products can be made from waste materials - the work carried out by the artist can be described as particularly high-grade upcycling. What could be more precious than art in which craftsmanship, aestheticization and reason come together? In other words: in this strongly craft-oriented art, Yoly Maurer seeks to bring the dialogue between the working hand and the seeing eye into the picture. Previously, after quoting a hit song by the Carinthian bard, I asked the question: if you don't dream of love, what do you dream of? The question has now found a less than romantic answer: the careful (mindful) handling of objects. This does not necessarily mean that you should grasp every plastic bag with humility and every piece of mail with awe, but rather: how can we handle the multitude of objects consciously at one time or another? If you want, you could recognize an unobtrusive "carpe diem". The 366 images are laid out in a spiral, starting from the inside and turning outwards to the right. As is well known, a spiral is a curve that runs around a point or an axis and moves away from or closer to it depending on the direction. The direction of the spiral is more interesting: to the right. This is the direction of life, while the direction to the left symbolizes the path to death. Seen in this way, the year, which has become an overall picture, is an invitation and a sign of conscious living. You might think that anyone who wants to create art should use materials that have a certain stability and durability. Stone and iron sculptures are the ones most likely to be expected to be so durable. But isn't paper particularly at risk? The counter argument is that paper has been used as a writing material since the third millennium BC. This means that, if stored properly, people in the year 7000 and beyond can still enjoy Yoly Maurer's works. But that's just a side note. What is certain is that the pictures will change when exposed to light and, just as memories of most events fade, every day of 2008 will probably lose its radiance. This aspect means the most to me: when I listen to those who proclaim truths that are supposedly eternal, I feel a sense of unease. Eternal and absolutely unchangeable. Haven't there been some things that were intended to last forever and then disappeared? Integrating transience into one's own art is a reminder that everything that surrounds us, including what we are, will one day be gone. That does not mean meaninglessness!
Helmuth A. Niederle

​Scoop papers (handmade papers)
With her scoop paper technique, Yoly continues the InProgress principle. She collects stories and their materializations on paper. From these paper and rag collections, she creates something new. Yoly often reuses scoop papers that she has already produced. For example, she also reworked old scoop papers for the «shepherd's carpet». They were put together like patches on a patchwork quilt. The title refers to the shepherd's carpets, which are usually made of sheepskin. The carpets travel with the shepherds and the sheep through the landscape and over time absorb grass, earth, flower petals and much more. They become topological information carriers, as it were, says Yoly.
The work «Weinleben» was created during a stay in Feuersbrunn. In the wine-growing region on the Wagram, Yoly collected intensively and produced new scoop papers from pomace, loess, pieces of vine, spices, but also labels and lists.

Poetically changing newspapers
Newspapers have to do with the life around me, says Yoly. She collects the products of the information society intensively. She starts with both the content and the materiality and plays with it. Printed matter become a new mass, newly created and supplemented with new information. The beginning of this creative phase is marked by the papyrus images. For what she calls space and time storage devices, she initially used newspapers from Cairo. She then collected newspapers from all over the world. The mass of paper and the density of the information produced requires space and now - in the current phase of her work - Yoly places towers in the room. Yoly describes the group of columns as statements on the information and media society. The sculpture of the Information Tower consists of more than 1000 handmade papers. The mass of sheets represents the complexity of information. The acrylic glass casing refers to the motif of the skyscraper and thus to the power of the media corporations, which inscribe themselves into the cityscape through representative architecture.
Isabel Termini

Protruding surfaces - from a flat image to a spatial object
YOLY allows her striving for change, for a disposition of the previous approach, a discussion of her own perspective, a revision of the usual working method and an exposure of new ideas to take effect in a special way in the medium of expression of her artistic work itself. The InProgress principle can be found in the most diverse periods of her oeuvre, from the gouache pictures to the scoop paper works and the expansive works with plaster objects, sculptures and scoop masks. The basic reference of all of this is the intensive engagement with the most diverse artefacts, be they physical, social or spiritual in nature. YOLY herself becomes the catalyst of a process in which personal experiences, media reports, social questions, philosophical aspects and transcendent thoughts are transformed into real objects of artistic creation. The dialogue with the viewer, the process of disposition - discussion - revision - exposition, can also be understood in YOLY's three-dimensional works. This becomes particularly evident when YOLY uses her own "death mask" as the starting point for her sculptures, putting herself up for discussion and developing it further.
Walter Hessler