Happy New Year! I’ve officially been writing this blog for 2 years now – wow how time flies! I hope everyone had a great holiday break and is back to the grind. For my part, this morning I learned that West Elm would be selling art from Etsy artists via their catalog it appears. When perusing their online “favorites” I came upon the work of Yvette Hawkins.
Yvette runs an Etsy store called PaperFaerie where she sells some of her individual book-based artworks. When I dug deeper onto her own site though I learned that she does really amazing, large, installation works with her stylized books and I love them.
This particular work is build around what looks like an embroidery hoop, which I have tons of right now. I like the recycling of elements for the creation of new works, very cool.
In her artist statement, Yvette explains, “Her inspiration comes from the natural environment, organic and architectural structures, Eastern European folklore, Japanese textile art and the extraordinary things that happen to ordinary people.” The fact that she reinvents books into exploding, fantastic pieces is certainly in keeping with a sort of fairytale element too.
Each one of those cylinders is a book that I think she turns out on its spine and then folds, though I’m not 100% sure.
Oh yeah, it’s much larger than just the pieces on the wall, it creates a path down onto the floor. It reminds me of Tara Donovan’s tape, cup and straw works in how they are different in height.
Another, very different installation piece is above where the books are in columns, suspended above the floor.