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A Passion for Paper Art
Paper art is my new passion. Several years ago I became intrigued by fabulous period clothing displayed in the fashion section at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Last July I wandered into a shop called Kate's Paperie in Soho in New York. My granddaughter, Tiger, and I were entranced with the ceiling paved with paper flowers and the life sized and highly detailed paper evening gowns which floated among them. Back in NYC, today Cole and I stopped by the Museum of Arts and Design and discovered an indescribably wonderful exhibit of significant paper art, coincidentally sponsored by Kate's Paperie.
Where do I start? From the boldest ten foot tall walls of bold ink-splotchy abstract forms to the tiniest depiction of maps and even smaller details of fantastical architectural plans to shimmering windows full of layered gossamer threads and slivers...this show astounds!!
There are many, many artists I never knew of who have profoundly interesting and mature pieces here. Some very famous ones are also included. Olafur Eliasson, whom I have only seen work on a huge scale, has produced a miniscule book with slivers of forms overlaid in countless layers, creating a hollow model of his house in Iceland.
The exhibit is called Slash/Paper Under the Knife. It is not to be missed and has inspired me to seek artists working in paper and try to collect some of their pieces.
In the same museum there is an exhibit of Madeleine Albright's pins called Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection. Very amusing, there are an enormous number of pins both costume and precious, that this former Secretary of State wore every day and which she came to use as messages in themselves. These pins are in the shapes of wild animals, insects, flags, fruits, flowers and just about every other form you could imagine, including a group of extraterrestrials that would make ET proud. Cole couldn’t escape this jewelry display fast enough but I would have liked to linger.
The restaurant at the Museum of Arts and Design overlooks Central Park and although it is avant-garde and interesting, I didn’t find it overwhelmingly attractive. It is worth the wait on the slow elevators, though. The view is from a unique angle of the park and really shows its vastness. The swath of green seems almost endless and reaches as far as we could see...sort of like the ocean when you have just escaped the sight of land. The food looked good but we were late for the opera and had to skip lunch.
This smallish museum is fantastic and I don’t plan to ever miss stopping by on future trips to New York.
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"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it."
- H.E. Luccock |
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