Artist Statement

PLAYFUL PAPER is all about childhood—the joy of discovering colors, form and composition, simple shapes, and concepts.  Although I also work in paint and textiles, nothing brings me face-to-face with my artist child quicker than sitting down with a fresh sheet of colored paper, a knife (I have mostly graduated from scissors) and glue. It is pure joy.

PLAYFUL PAPER is my homage to the simplicity and innocence of childhood and the pleasure of making stuff.  I used readily available materials:  paper, cutting implements and glue as needed.  I focused on elementary concepts and bright colors in uncomplicated manipulations: weaving, cutting large shapes, simple collages, even playing dress-up.  All these were consciously chosen to evoke our inner child, those moments of childish creation, those times where the world is unimportant, and we live only in the creative moment.  Art is born in that place. Our adult lives can be complicated, frantic, sophisticated: the future is uncertain and anxious.  As I made these pieces, however, I forgot all that. 

Even though I measured, planned, sketched, struggled and discarded ideas far more than I ever did as a child, I was often surprised to find so much time had gone by while I was busy playing with my paper in the moment. And in the silence in which I worked, I found most of the world’s chaos slipped away, at least for a while. 

I hope that PLAYFUL PAPER reminds you, the viewer, of that child-like creative state.  I hope it encourages you to take your artist child out to your favorite creative spot — your “sandbox”, so to speak —  to make stuff that pleases you and allows you to forget, for a short while, the troubles of being an adult.  All of us have that inner child, and all of us can make art.  Even in a sandbox.