08.12.09

Su Blackwell's Sculptures from Old Books

London artist Su Blackwell sifts through used book shops looking for texts that inspire her - novels, guide books, fairy tales - and then delicately slices the pages into a breathtaking paper sculpture that appears to grow from the book.

Each sculpture sprouts from what lies within the pages of the book, Alice from Through the Looking Glass, flowers assembled from A Field Guide to Wild Flowers in Britain. To observe her sculptures is to quite literally observe your imagination unfolded before your eyes.

Miss Blackwell says of her creations: "It is the delicacy, the slight feeling of claustrophobia, as if these characters, the landscape have been trapped inside the book all this time and are now suddenly released. A number of the compositions have an urgency about them, the choices made for the cut-out people from the illustrations seem to lean towards people on their way somewhere, about to discover something, or perhaps escaping from something. And the landscapes speak of a bleak mystery, a rising, an awareness of the air."

Visit Su Blackwell's site and peruse her galleries.

-- From The Telegraph, July 29, 2009. Read the full article here.