Newspaper artist

I found this piece hanging in the Nordstrom's shoe department at the "Mall of America"(come on Minnesotan sing the jingle song) in Minnesota, USA. At first it is a nice image of course appropriate for the shoe department but then I looked closer and was fascinated by the woven newspaper technique. I come from a Fiber Arts background and love the use of recycled materials, the texture it gives the piece and the large scale.


















Here is a close up. I researched and found from daily art muse.com(lots of good stuff!) woven newspaper paintings by Danish artist Gugger Petter. Living in California since 1986, Petter has used newspapers as a medium for her paintings for the last 18 years, rolling the paper into tubes and weaving the tubes with hemp. Here is Gugger's personal website.

My fascination with newspaper consists not only of its being “the diary of our lives”, it also presents me with a black/white/and limited color palette, which has always been my choice. My work is most often based on an over sized image, an observation of daily life, which can be seen as an abstraction as well as a representational image, where surface, subject matter, color and content all convey tension between opposites.

This inspires me to get creative again by using recycled materials and what is around me...surprise but there is no Dick Blick art stores in Didim...or any equivalent. I do miss really nice paper(any one know how to make paper?), I also have a book idea? On this blog I document daily life and love bring small activities into focus. I just need to get our new house and make myself a studio, a place where I can have all my art junk out and about to work on at any time of the day and not worry about cleaning up. Yes! Messy art fun!

P.S. I am happy for my friend Len for deciding to make art for a living, hard road but I wish her the best!