Research and Inspiration
For the first product design class we were asked to look for inspiration and do a little bit of research before heading onto the practical tasks.
We were sent a document with a list of different sculptors and paper artists to get inspiration and a general idea what we’re going to work with.
I decided to look into three sculptors that have very different styles in terms of creating with paper. Ranging from weaving with shredded paper to making a cup with glue and book scraps.
Here are the three artists I decided to research more about.
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Géraldine Gonzalez
Having graduated from Duperré school of Applied Arts, Paris. Géraldine started off as a Shoe designer before she started doing sculpting.
She works with materials that manipulate light one way or another, like paper, crystals and other materials.
For her paper sculptures she uses wire and thin paper to be able to make the sculptures radiate a warm and glowing light, working as a light source. She also has different paper sculptures that don’t radiate light, but I wanted to focus on the ones that did.
I chose to research about Géraldine because of her techniques and her animal sculptures she had done with paper. Only when I started to read about her techniques and what inspired her I felt more drawn to her. I find it inspiring whenever artists create motives that they’ve seen in their dreams, and want to make it a reality.
Seeing how she worked with wires and thin layers made me inspired to work with a similar technique to create a strong foundation to my sculpture we’re going to create and play with the idea of see through and how to manipulate it to make it me.
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Cecilia Levy
A former graphic designer and bookbinder, located in Uppsala, Sweden. Now a full time independent artist with a specialty of reusing old books to create sculptures.
Her technique varies a lot but she does have a few she keeps working with, which is: tearing, cutting, shredding in terms of getting the pages into pieces. When she’s creating the sculptures she’s using paste, a papier maché technique, Molds; to get the desired shape of the object, such as a cup mold, to make a cup out of shredded book pages.
What inspired me about this artist is that she’s creating beautiful paper sculptures from old books, recycling them into something new. She wrote on her website that ‘The book is recreated in a way, but takes on a new form.’, which I thought was a beautiful way to see it.
She appreciates the old and worn state of a book, and uses those characteristics to get the right expression in her work.
“Berättelsen lever vidare, men i en annan form.”
(translated: The story lives on, but in another shape and form)
– Quoted from Cecilia
I chose Cecilia because I found her techniques reusing old books extremely beautiful and inspiring. When I started to read about her I also noticed that she was Swedish which I thought was pretty funny, since if we were supposed to do more research I would have a massive advantage.
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Ilann Vogt
Born in France and raised by a family with a deep cultural awareness and appreciation of poetry. Ilann creates very personal sculptures by weaving, weaving poetry and pages from books that have inspired him into an art piece with a deep meaning.
Ilann uses a weaving technique exploring how to combine textile and text, using poetry and inspiring pages from books to make a weave of inspiration. According to him it’s sometimes tricky to use some pages because of the material, like bible pages would be too thin, and pages that have been wet is very hard to use.
I chose Ilann because I have a great passion for weaving and I saw the beauty in his works. After reading about him quite a bit I fell in love with his concept to create using things that inspire him. It’s a great way to show appreciation whilst also recycling which is another thing I love to do. His works inspired me to make use of things that inspired me, to create something more personal and make the piece me rather than something I just made to get it done with. To get a more sentimental connection to my work, and pour more love and effort into them.
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This part of the project made me explore myself and think from researching these artists that inspired me, it made me realize how much I can do with so little and yet make it very personal to me.
I really enjoyed it and I will definitely research more into these creators, since they really did hit that soft spot to inspire me.