Tatum Dodd

Returning to the Hand

Historical preservation is traditionally understood as the act of protecting objects and buildings from change, reinstating and stabilizing the past so they may endure into the future. When preservation seeks to freeze and resolve the past, it separates it from the reality of our multi-layered histories and the traces of labor, repair, and care unfolding across generations. Through a human-centered lens that allows one to touch, uncover, and redefine, we are able to relate to our built environments through an ethical practice of care, inviting new avenues of dialogue and engagement with our past.

Recording traces of the hand within the built environment involves many layers of transformation.  Through hand-driven processes using remainder paper pulp and water, I pull sheets of handmade paper and press them directly onto surfaces, from finished ornamentation to the underlying structure.  As the water evaporates and the fibers settle, the paper retains an impression, transforming the act of making into a method of recording the presence of the hand within the walls of our domestic spaces. We begin to notice, acknowledge and ask through engaging with materiality, temporality, and human and nonhuman relationships at once. By engaging more honestly with our built environment and the emotions and labor invested in it, this work invites an ongoing dialogue around the many narratives that shape our shared architectural histories and asks what it might mean to truly listen to what our walls have always been trying to say.

Untitled, in progress — The Wedding Cake House, Providence, RI
2026
Handmade paper, dimensions variable
 

Handmade paper, pulled from remainder pulp sourced from RISD's waste stream, pressed directly onto the vestibule wall of the Kendrick-Prentice-Tirocchi House during the drying process. The paper receives the surface as it settles — recording tool marks, layers of repair, and the accumulated traces of the hands that built and tended this interior over generations. This image documents the work mid-process, before the sheet releases from the wall as a single irreproducible impression. 

Basement detail — The Wedding Cake House, Providence, RI
2026

A documentation photograph of the basement interior of the Kendrick-Prentice-Tirocchi House, revealing exposed lathing beneath. This image captures the layered materiality of the building — the surface giving way to the structure beneath, exposing the evidence of construction, time, and the hands that built and maintained it. These are the interior conditions that Returning to the Hand seeks to engage — not as sites of decay, but as sites of accumulated presence and unacknowledged labor. 

Untitled (detail)
Handmade paper, dimensions variable
2026

A close-up of a paper trace recording the impression of wooden lathing. At this scale, the grain of the wood, the gaps between strips, and the texture of the surface become legible — evidence of construction that would otherwise remain hidden beneath layers of plaster and finish. 

Untitled (vestibule)
Handmade paper, dimensions variable
2026

Handmade paper, pulled from remainder pulp sourced from RISD's waste stream, pressed directly onto the vestibule wall of the Kendrick-Prentice-Tirocchi House during the drying process. The paper receives the surface as it settles — recording tool marks, layers of repair, and the accumulated traces of the hands that built and tended this interior over generations. This image documents the work mid-process, before the sheet releases from the wall as a single irreproducible impression.

Untitled
Handmade paper, dimensions variable
2026

An early material investigation from the basement wall of my own home — the first site where this practice was developed and tested. The cast records the crumbling edge of plaster, lathing, and brick, pressed onto the wall mid-drying and released as a single irreproducible impression. This prototyping phase established the material logic that would later be applied to the Kendrick-Prentice-Tirocchi House. 

Untitled
Handmade paper, dimensions variable
2026

A paper trace from the kitchen corner of my home, capturing the profile of the chair rail and the meeting of two walls. Part of the early prototyping phase of this practice, the cast records the accumulated texture of the surface — paint layers, the geometry of the molding, the irregularities of the corner joint.