Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Paper Sculpture



If you're like me, your inspirations come in waves. When I admitted to myself (after 4 intense years) that digital art wasn't doing it for me anymore, I went through a fairly scary dry spell, but lately, the waves have been crashing on shore so constantly that I'm making lists of inspirations, lest I forget some of them. How do I know when it's a worthwhile inspiration? I forget to breathe. That, and my heart beats faster, and sometimes I get tears in my eyes. Sounds like a religious experience, doesn't it? It is, sort of. When we create something from within, we're connected as though with an umbilical cord with El Shaddai, The Great I Am, Cosmic Consciousness, or whatever you choose to call It. Anyway, it's a rush, and it makes me happy and gives me a reason to get up in the morning, to wake up expectantly with plans already milling around in my scattered little brain for my current art victim.

I was working happily on the project I thought would come next in this blog when I went rummaging in a supply/storage closet and came across 2 paper lamps I'd bought years ago at Pier 1. One of them got damaged when visitors were rough-housing in the living room (nobody ever admitted to the crime; I guess it jumped off and impaled itself on the table corner), and I liked the lamps too much to throw them away. They're useless as a light source, but they give off such a soft, golden glow. How could I not love them? People talk a lot these days about repurposing objects. I like that term. It's good for the planet, and it speaks to the reverence for the stuff we bring into our lives.

A few years ago, I began doing paper sculpture. I didn't know that was the name for it. Actually, I thought I'd invented something when I began cutting shapes from paper and gluing them together. Then I saw online that artists had been doing it for a long time, even making a living from it. So much for my invention. I did several ambitious pieces, one of them being a 4-foot picture of peacocks in a tree, all white. I never was satisfied with it, but Jim made a frame for it, and it hung on the wall for a while. Then I decided I couldn't take it anymore, but I'd spent hundreds of hours cutting out those feathers, and I couldn't throw them away. Do we see a pattern forming here? So I stripped them from the backboard and stuffed them into a couple of Wal-Mart sacks and stuck them in the closet. Here's a detail of the feathers, and the image at the top is a shot of an iris watercolor/paper sculpture that hangs in the hallway.


So, there were the lamps and the feathers, waiting to be repurposed, together; Breathe, Cat, just breathe.....I abandoned the other project for the moment and began feverishly gluing feathers to lamps, making sure to cover the damaged spot. It took about an hour, and I could hardly wait till dark to see the full impact of my new lamps! Well, I'm in love with them. They're not really repurposed; they're still lamps but with a new attitude. Hard to do them justice in photos.


'Scuse me now, I started yet another project yesterday, and it's the kind that involves the house, and Jim will be impatient with me till I get it finished and everything back to normal. He likes my art, just not the messy part between inspiration and ta-daaah!

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