Beyond the Picture

My ceramics colleague, Robert Boyer, shares my fascination with obsessive, repetitive patterns and textures. So I wasn’t surprised that he drew my attention to Jen Stark, the Miami-based paper/color/X-acto artist:

She discusses in a video on her site how she got started with the obsessive paper sculptures. She went to Paris for a year-long art fellowship, figuring she would buy art supplies once she arrived in France. Once she realized how expensive everything was, however, she bought the least expensive, most appealing thing she could find in the art supply shop – a ream of brightly colored children’s paper. She figured she could make something of it. She made something of it, indeed:

The video is fascinating, as is this one on another site. In both, you can see glimpses of Stark at work. You also get a sense of her demeanor, which strikes me as unassuming, humble, simple. She is just cutting paper, no big deal. She is not making big, sweeping statements about what she does. And yet she makes these incredible, technically sophisticated gems of beauty that draw one’s attention to light and color and geometry. She even grabs a few leaves and achieves a similar effect:

What other artists do you know of who work in a similarly meditative, unselfconscious sort of way?

This entry was posted Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 8:32 am and is filed under existential, fine art, pay attention. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.