On my work

As an artist I am mainly interested in the movement of lines and in my power to influence them. But I also need the resistance of the material. By experimentally exploring and developing ways to provoke the resistance of the fine drawing cardboard I use and to push it to the limits I take a hand in the material, grasp it, and elicit unimagined forces and tensions from it. These I use to steer the lines, create spatiality and new shapes.

My point of departure is a bundle of flat stripes. Once having started to move the bundle and to force different stripes on a single plane I am feeling the resistance of the cardboard against being manipulated by my hands. This resistance releases the impulse to shape even further and the material responds to my hand and unfurls its curvature and shape – the concentrated process of artistic form finding is launched.  I love my way of working mainly on account of the openness required to this interaction with the material and the challenge to make the best decisions while forming.

The jewels are stable and wearable.

On my techniques: forming and fixation under strong pressure

On account of applying my different methods and techniques I am able to generate strong tension within the cardboard. These I use to create self supporting structures. The resulting objects are stable and resilient. These is the reason why I need not apply the standard paper handling techniques - glueing, folding, nesting - and why I need not use additional reinforcements such as metal, baars, other rivets or other support within the spatial structure. So my technique allows both to overcome the well known restrictions of working with paper and to make use of the advantages of this material. To my knowlege I generally extend through this technique the possibilities of working with paper in the arts. So far I came neither across works in jewellery made of paper nor in paper arts in which tension is used in such an intensive and essential way.

With my recent group “One week in May – or seven possibilities to move my hands” I have enriched my knowledge on and my possibilities to apply my hands for creating pressure and indirectly forming the material. This provides me with a wider scope for using my hands in subsequent works. Combining this with other techniques further developed enables me to use the material in a less restrictive way and to extend the spatiality in my works.