While Sonya Philip is one of the next amazing artists on my list to highlight – one woman that she Pinned the other day was Susan Warner Keene and I was blown away by her paper and fibers work. I’ve been thinking about experimenting with paper making lately and seeing what Susan has done over her lengthy career is truly inspiring.
Isn’t that just unbelievable – the paper is so phenomenal. I love the color. It’s handmade flax paper she says with linen thread in it, those darker veins.
I love the way she uses pigment, this looks like watercolor – or the rugs from Fort Street Studio.
This to me looks like brickwork – or a really really nice lego with those flat circles in the sea of texture. I think the linen thread in this is lighter, whiter than the flax.
These last two pieces are of called Cursive – not sure why. They’re part of her Water Line series which she says is observing, “the power of water to form and imprint our world. On its way to becoming an object, paper consists of a water-infused membrane sensitive to flow, stress, passages of light – much like our own bodies, like the Earth’s crust.”
Close up of the linen thread in her pieces.
This color blows me away, it feels like fall and mustard and squash. This might be my favorite piece.
Liquid paper pulp in a form you never imagined it. This is from Susan’s ReVisions series and the works are representative of text in cursive that you can sort of make out in some of the pieces.
I can’t even imagine how difficult these are to make – I was thinking maybe they’re made in layers like a candle but I truly don’t have the foggiest idea, I’ve never worked in liquid pulp or really in paper making at all.
Close up. It looks so so fragile!
This piece, from 2001, is part of her exploration of the skinlike qualities of paper and is small format.
Crossing Water – same materials but made years earlier in 1996. I love the color!
We just bought one huge kuba cloth for our bedroom and this piece reminds me of it in both the color palette and patterns. I love kuba cloth and the idea of it in paper form is pretty cool.
I think I should also learn more about flax as a material too – this has unspun flax in it and I just can’t visualize the consistency of that. Susan explains in this gallery that, “When flax fibre is properly prepared, it develops high rates of shrinkage and translucency, qualities that can address such issues as the effects of time, experience, change. Inscribing the papers from within or, perhaps more accurately, creating the conditions in which they inscribe themselves, tells a tale innocent of words.” I’m amazed at all of the variety of her work while primarily keeping to one kind of material – makes me want to get into paper even more!
Tags: 3D, material, paper, sculpture