Paper Fashions

Little Women Stilletos.

Postcard SLR camera. 

Detail of Postcard SLR.

Roliflex Box Camera.

Typewriter, (not sure what kind however). 

The work of paper imagineer Jennifer Collier from the UK, who fashions these paper wonders with a sewing machine, much like any other fabric. All of her works are one-offs, but you can find some of it for sale here. I wonder if this is the sewing machine she uses:

::Via Illusion

Cut & Turn

These delicate, hand-cut paper letters are the work of Japanese paper artist Aoyama Hina, now living in Paris. Hina began doing her lacy paper cuts, as she refers to them, about 11 years ago using only a simple pair of scissors, patience and ingenuity. She also does paper-cut illustration work, but her series of hand-lettering artworks are a knock-out. See more of her intricate paper-cuts on Flickr. I've seen others do some beautiful and intricate paper-cut artworks in the past, but this is the smallest and most detailed I have yet seen. Pretty incredible work. 

Monster Type

Not that kind of monster type. This monster type is a paper sculpture created as a  letter V. It is the work of my student Donovan Nguyen who created it for a type assignment in another class Winter quarter. The task was to make a letter as a face of a monster and to use any media or material. His monster type is a letter V and is about 3 feet tall. It was the first sort of paper sculpture Donovan has ever produced. I really hope he continues to create an entire monster type family now!

A Paper Valentine

Set designer Kelly Angood is as good as they come when it comes to paper engineering. Last week I reported on her DIY pinhole Hassleblad camera she designed and made available for downloading. There is more—she has also created a totally functional replica of the adorable Olivetti Valentine typewriter—60s logomark and all. Using a cheap German typewriter for the interior guts and carriage, she encased it with a bright red corrugated cardboard framework to recreate the Valentine which was originally designed by Ettore Sottsass and introduced on Valentine's Day in 1969 by Olivetti. Angood then engineered an entirely functional paper keyboard, screen-printed the keys, fashioned metal parts with aluminum and used Lazertran, a waterslide transfer decal to recreate the ruler. Once her bright red gem of a typewriter was complete, she produced a monotone french-folded book to explain and document the entire production process. It has a red thread stitch binding and a flood of solid red tucked inside each folded page. Angood's red replica marvel is a wonderful paper valentine to Sottsass and his jewel of a typewriter. Watch it in motion here.

The original red Olivetti Valentine designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1969. He called his plastic portable typewriter an anti-machine machine. It also includes an exterior storage case which is not displayed here.

Pinhole Hasselblad

Ok, this is a little off topic, but I am so overjoyed to see this corrugated cardboard pinhole Hasselblad camera over at Retro Thing today. It is created by UK set and prop designer Kelly Angood. And the good news is she has a fully functional downloadable PDF of it available so you can print your own version and it accepts 120 film. Kelly offers a pretty full service site as she also provides a nice little video set of instructions to assemble it. She even set up a Tumbler site to view and post images from your pinhole camera adventures. I love this girl.

Local Conditions are Very Bright

Seeing Mt. Rainier for the first time from any vantage point is an awe-inspiring experience. I've lived in it's shadow for most of my life and I still get chills when I see it come out on a clear day. For full disclosure, I cannot conceal my spiritual connection to the mountain, as we locals so affectionately have christened it. My parents both lived and worked at the mountain in the early 1940s, my husband now works for Mt. Rainier National Park as the debris flow specialist (or fluvial geomorphologist), my father and his best friend made a daring and successful 1st ascent up the SW ridge in 1957 and I've had the misfortune of scattering the ashes of a dear friend into a glacier there. One of the most remarkable events of my own life was a summit climb I did with my husband and a small group of friends on a fairly benevolent September weekend years ago. The mountain is a pretty exceptional sight when it's visible. Some visitors never see it. Many have told stories of traveling long distances to visit Mt. Rainier, only to stand on its' flanks in the midst of a complete white-out without even a glimpse. It is an enigma—formidable, imposing and constantly changing, but when seen on a clear day, it is a magnificent sight from any direction.

Artist Chandler O'Leary first set eyes upon Mt. Rainier about 4 years ago on her first visit to Seattle when she spotted the view from the University of Washington campus. After a relocation to the Northwest a short time later, the seeds of an artist book took shape which later evolved into a two year project funded by an artist's grant and filled with historic research, 100s of miles of photo-scouting adventures, preliminary drawings and 1000s of print impressions at a print studio owned by her good friend Jessica Spring of Springtide Press in Tacoma, Washington. Chandler took inspiration for her final work Local Conditions, from Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1759-1849) who produced two series of woodblock prints depicting scenes of life at the foot of Mt. Fuji in the mid-19th century. Like Hokusai, she wanted to illustrate the many views, and she chose to produce a series of 120 image flats—both foregrounds and backdrops of the mountain—which can be interchanged at will by the viewer to create a nearly endless variety of different views. These image flats as she calls them, are contained inside drawers within a custom 10 inch square viewing box. The 4 sides of the box each have corresponding illustrations of the north, south, east and west faces of the mountain, depicting each at the same time of day: sunset. The title plate at the top is nicely arranged with a topographic map image of the summit.

The box opens to reveal a cloth-bound wrapper with attached colophon explaining the book's concept, production and instructions for display. Inside the nest of drawers are the image flats and a 3x5 inch viewing window to stage your interactive display on top of the box. Each of the 120 different image flats are letterpress printed in Hokusai's indigo blue ink and hand-finished with watercolors. The edition size is 26. The price is $2600. You can find a great deal more information about Local Conditions and see additional work from Chandler O'Leary's at Anagram Press.

Below is a view of the mountain at 10,000 feet from a plane. And another with a cow standing on the wing. It's Local Conditions with a chance of mirage.

Below is a composite of two image flats which is the view Chandler first saw of Mt. Rainier on the UW campus and a historic photo taken at the same place during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909.

Below is a 1905 postcard view of the Northwest face of the mountain taken from Tacoma, and Chandler's composite of the same aspect which includes 3 image flats. This view is also available as an individual print on Etsy.

Origami Parade

These 3 origami balls were a gift from a very sweet Japanese friend named Yayoi Matsuda from Osaka. She made them all from text pages of Parade Magazine as they were the lightest weight paper she had on hand at the time. Each ball contains about 50 different folded pieces of paper. Her father taught her how to make them when she was a young girl. He told her that origami will keep your brain active and sharp and be a prevention against memory loss. Yayoi tried to teach me how to make a ball, but I was not a good student. Which may account for my poor memory. Yayoi has since returned to Japan years ago, but left me with this beautiful 3D step-by-step set of instructions which I treasure as much as the origami balls. 

Typogami

Typogami from Jeroen Krielaars on Vimeo.

For more info or purchase visit Calango.
:: Via This Isn't Happiness.

Paper Imagineer

I was on a quick errand in old Ballard the other day to scout a birthday gift when I made an impromptu detour to see the holiday-dressed windows of Curtis Steiner's store, Souvenir which was in the 'hood. This has become an annual holiday destination for me as Curtis always creates the best-decked windows in Ballard and beyond. This year his display stopped me in my tracks and I had to drift inside to see more.

On display until December 23rd is the lovely paper sculptures of Patty Grazini, a very talented Seattle artist. Visiting this new exhibit of Grazini's paper sculptures is like walking back stage of a puppet theater and peering behind the curtain. Patty does things with paper that defy its' physical properties. Each theatrical character she's created is something out of a fairytale—if Fellini had imagined it. They stand about 18 inches tall and are dressed mostly in 18th C costume made entirely of beautiful, old paper—many pale shades of faded black and white patterned papers, with many words, letters, and textures—and each of her characters has a personal narrative to tell. The figures each hide behind animal masks, and with further study, a demure paper mache face is revealed beneath it. A white bird with feathers in its' bonnet carries a bow and quiver and has tiny envelopes hanging from a paper string on the belt of her skirt. On the other side of her skirt hangs a heart and a key. A wolf-faced woman with a cape looks like she stepped right out of Red-Riding Hood's tale. A rabbit-faced character jumps rope wearing her best Easter clothes. And a young swan is swinging from a cloud surrounded by a wreath of paper stars in the front window. There are several more story-book characters on display, and I highly encourage you to see them in person if you are anywhere near Seattle or the West Coast.











And not-to-be-missed on your visit to Souvenir is Curtis Steiner's stunning insect & alphabet samplers which he has produced over the course of this past year. They each feature beautiful calligraphic insects with decorative roman and script alphabets and flourishes. Very inspired work indeed and I am grateful to Curtis that he's offered me to share all of this with you here.