Recently I have included found paper in my work. Often pages from old journals, ledgers and so on. The attraction is two fold for me, as it seems a wonderfully eco-conscious thing to create art from left-behind papers that would most likely be turned in refuse and it also seems a way to capture a bit of the intrinsic energy from others who have touched or written on this paper. Its perfect for my work.
Recently I have also discovered the work of two other artists who use found paper although to very different ends. Georgia Russell totally transforms found books into sculptural works. She claims her scalpel to be her brush and it certainly appears to be. Her recreation of Baudelaire is hauntingly surreal.
And of course Brian Dettmer's work is not to be missed. Cutting away the written text of old illustrated books, Brian creates a different kind of book sculpture, a visual labyrinth of dissected bits of what was meant to be written knowledge.
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