The paper doll brings to mind a stereotypical image of femininity. The work on display in PAPER DOLLS obliterates stereotype and defies the traditional notions of femininity, craft, and “women’s work.” In five radically different expressions within the broad discipline of book arts, the teen artists – Sophie Alfano, Samantha Esguerra, Mairead Herson, Stephanie Kunze and Libby London – continue By Design’s history of challenging traditional definitions of the book arts.
Minnesota Center for Book Arts’ By Design teen artist program Summer 2007 exhibition features the work of five students selected by proposal to continue their experimentations into the book arts and work with mentor artists to complete an elaborate independent project. The program includes intense studio work as well as opportunities to meet and learn from numerous working artists in various disciplines.
Using handmade paper “feathers,” Mairead Herson has brought fairy tale and mythology to life in a pair of sculptural wings. These are no dainty fairy wings; Herson, a By Design veteran, has constructed superhuman-scale wings. Working with her mentor, paper and fiber artist Lin Lacy, Herson’s work exhibits unique techniques of papermaking and decorative marbling, culminating in an interactive paper sculpture that invites the viewer to experience seeing him or herself as divine.
The project was inspired by a walk with a friend adorned with jangling bracelets and glittering jewels. “I did my best to ignore her adornment and to listen as she spoke,” wrote Herson in her artist statement, “but instead I wondered why she had spent so much time on her appearance. I did not understand that day but eventually I came to realize that donning that attire, putting on that face and altering that hair was both an act of insecurity and hope. How you are is unimportant; self-declaration is about how you want to be.”
Since her move to Minneapolis a year ago, Herson has come to appreciate the similarities and disparities between public image and private self. After discovering a pair of dress-up angel wings, she decided to recreate them. “Wings can be put on just as easily as any article of clothing, but they mean something much more,” asserts Herson. “Clothing can say that the wearer is tough, attractive, artistic, professional. But to wear wings is to declare yourself divine.”
Accompanying the wings, mounted to the wall at a height where adults can stand and “wear” the wings, is a grid of Polaroids showing human angels. Many appear awkward in their newfound divinity. Herson’s extraordinary piece makes visible the divine within each of us.
“No material thing is ever itself,” she explains. “This is what makes pigment and paper into a painting, how warp and weft, when deftly woven, are fashion, how memories emerge from the chemical potions of a Polaroid. This is how the paint, paper, wire and thread of these wings become a sign of divinity.”
Another take on myth, Samantha Esguerra’s ambitious work reinterprets “papel picado,” a traditional Mexican papercutting craft. Esguerra transforms the typically delicate and small-scale artform to a large-scale expression in heavy unbleached Japanese rice paper. The Mexican folktale “La Llorona” is retold through Esguerra’s elaborate cuttings, done freehand without tracing from an intermediary image.
“La Llorona” illustrates the Mexican folktale of the Crying Woman who kills her children to avenge their father for abandoning her. Esguerra chose a story from Mexico as a mode for her paper cuts because she wanted to explore Mexican paper cutting, or papel picado, rather than paper cutting generally. Dividing the story into four section, Esguerra created a papel picado for each one.
“El Amor” shows the proud Aztec woman who is to become La Llorona standing adoringly with her children and a Spanish soldier, her husband. The second depicts “El Rechazo,” Rejection, when he declares their marriage untrue and their children illegitimate, and abandons her for a Spanish lady. In the third panel, “La Venganza,” Revenge, the Aztec woman is seen drowning her children in a moment of rage and madness. The final cut depicts her as La Llorona, bound for all eternity to walk the riverbanks howling for her children.
Unlike traditional papel picado, Esguerra’s pages are large-scale, measuring 18 inches by 32 inches. Esguerra wanted to change the scale so the piece would be more than a party decoration. “I wanted to change it to be something you take note of and get close to and see the detail more clearly,” she explains. “It’s more noticeable when it’s bigger. And there’s more space to work with.” Esguerra also adapted the traditional technique to serve her vision. Instead of using a hammer and chisel to cut through 50 or so pieces of tissue, she used an X-acto knife to cut through a single sheet of thin but strong Japanese paper.
The white sheets are exhibited as wall pieces, floating in front of black paper. Esguerra hung the white sheets as close as she could to the black paper while allowing shadows to give her work a third dimension. Mentor Armando Gutierrez G. worked with Esguerra on her project throughout the 10-week session.
Using the papel picado technique was new for Esguerra, and she was surprised at how well she was able to use the technique to create her exhibition piece. “It was really cool figuring out that you can have so much depth and expression with a flat image and express those with either negative or positive spaces,” says Esguerra.
Sophie Alfano’s project was inspired by poster art. The antithesis to everyday posters selling the mundane, Alfano’s “Lost” poster series is art with a message. To prepare for her project, she looked at rock band posters, visited MIA’s psychedelic poster show, and toured the galleries of Walker’s fine artist prints. She also took a workshop at MCBA with printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. on making a poster with a message. Working with Alfano was mentor and printmaker Anna Tsantir.
Following the format of a traditional “lost pet” poster, Alfano printed a series of four posters conveying a sequenced narrative. The first poster is an announcement of her lost earring. On the second poster Alfano conveys a history of the earring and its importance to the owner. The third poster, of a foreboding street scene, tells how the earring was lost. The narrative ends with the fourth poster, in which Alfano lets the viewer know she’s let go of her attachment to the earring and accepted the loss.
In addition to being exhibited in Open Book, Alfano’s poster series was installed on a street in Minneapolis. “The sole purpose of my posters is to communicate this not very significant event artistically,” writes Alfano in her artist statement. Each evening, four nights in a row, Alfano posted one of the posters on 43rd Street, where she was walking her dog when she lost her earring. “I like the idea of connecting with the community. Maybe someone will notice the first night that my lost poster is missing all contact info. Maybe the next time they spot it they’ll decide to follow the story.”
Stephanie Kunze’s “Eight Months” is a visual memoir told visually with charcoal and conte sketches. Based on an eight-month battle against clinical depression and doctors who prescribed too many drugs, the seven folios illustrate an experience still too devastating for the artist to put into words. “Pictures, unlike words, don’t rely on clarity, and – at least for me – are less scary to create when it comes to portraying an experience,” writes Kunze in her artist statement. “This is because images, in their interpretative nature, can capture moments in subtle ways.”
“Eight Months” depicts a surreal landscape where a solitary character metaphorically representing the artist. Because the folios are not bound, the viewer can interpret his or her own narrative flow. Kunze used charcoal to create a murky effect in the drawings and loosen her drawings. For past By Design sessions she had created pen drawings with incredible detail. She realized pen was not an ideal medium for “Eight Months” because it looks too mechanical. Kunze's mentor Chandler O'Leary introduced the teen to charcoal and conte. Charcoal, Kunze found, was much more intuitive, expressive, and humanistic than pen.
On the back of each folio Kunze hand-wrote text describing her eight-month experience. The words, taken from journals and writing projects, read abstractly because they are reproduced in a pattern. They give the piece a feeling of intimacy even though they are used strictly as a design element.
Libby London’s “Perspectives” is a full-scale self-portrait cast in paper pulp. In this piece the artist explores the effect of society as digital information makes communication on paper obsolete. “I feel as if the more paperless we become,” writes London in her artist statement, “the more detached we become from the world and each other.” London used flax and kozo to create her paper pulp cast. “Grass,” made from paper, connects the cast to the “computer.” Working with London was mentor Bridget O'Malley of Cave Paper.
Minnesota Center for Book Arts is proud to provide opportunities for teen artists to explore, nurture and develop their own individual artistic visions. By Design was created to serve and nurture highly motivated teens who are not receiving the level of art education they desire in their schools through current art programming. In 2008, By Design will expand to offer multiple entry points for teens at various levels of artmaking experience, creating even more opportunities for teens to explore the book arts.
For more information, contact Emma Allen at 612.215.2533 or email.
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 Wings
Mairead Herson
"I can’t tell you the correct meaning of this piece, because there is none. All I have is my interpretation. But I can tell you to step up in front of these wings, to take them as your own and to take a Polaroid too. As the chemicals converge and a picture of you begins to emerge, maybe some divinity will too."
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 La Llorona
Samantha Esguerra
"While many cultures have their own versions of traditional paper cutting, I find papel picado the most visually appealing. The mathematical exactness of the gridded background, combined with the organic floral borders and the “funny bones” imagery was what inspired me to experiment with making my own papel picado."
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 Lost
Sophie Alfano
"Visually, the hardest part of this project was laying out the posters so they would read as a narrative. My pages are vellum so the beginning can still be seen when looking at the ending. I had to think of each page as an individual and as a whole part of my series."
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 Eight Months
Stephanie Kunze
“’Eight Months’ is much more than a representation of a bad memory,” writes Kunze. “It’s an inner self-portrait, a portrayal of transformation, a rebirth of the self. If I hadn’t ever gone through those eight months, I wouldn’t be the person I am now. The experience not only changed me. It made me.”
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 Perspectives
Libby London
"Paper provides a very textile, organic and natural essence that cannot be simply replaced by a computer. The grass which travels from the earth, or the paper body, to the technology, the computer, represents the transition from paper to hard drives and how society transitions from paper it loses many qualities, but also gains many remarkable components." |
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