I’m not sure how to explain how much I love these… hm… well, I made a strange gasping sound when I saw that first piece, so that might do it.  Beautifully drawn graphite ropes living in perfect harmony with sherbet-hued gouache on really big pieces of paper. Yep, madly in love with these gorgeous compositions by Philadelphia based artist Jen Wink Hays. Sigh. Happy Monday.

{You can find some of Jen’s work at Uprise Art}

Intricate ink drawings on gorgeous dyed paper… all of these pieces are from a series, titled “There Is No Road” by American artist Jeanne Heifetz. I absolutely love her statement about this work:

“… As a child, I was always afraid of making the wrong decision. Selecting from many possible options was torture unless I could find a convincing rationale for my choice, some external justification beyond my own desire. Fear made me superstitious. I enlisted numerology, mythology, arcane patterns of all sorts to confirm the “rightness” of my decisions.

This body of work confronts decision-making head on. Still craving a system, I borrow one from nature: Plateau’s laws, which govern the branching and growth of many natural forms. Within that system, I improvise, lighting out for the territory without a map. Each drawing grows by slow accretion as I allow myself (or force myself) to make hundreds of tiny sequential decisions…”

So. Good. What a beautiful challenge to give herself… as are the results.

So, I’m sitting here trying to think of a way to explain what India born, Sydney based paper artist Gunjan Aylawadi does… but in all honesty I really have no idea how she does what she does. Let’s just say there is a lot of paper, woven to look like intricate/patterned tapestries. Yes. She makes paper do this?! But don’t worry, she’s going to tell us how. Listen right up there under that insane “work in progress”, or you can subscribe on iTunes.

First up, this is the original she recently sent to me. Mind. Blown…

Yeah, that’s in my house!? The photographs are fantastic, but I wish I could explain what it looks like in person. So, so, so good.

We talked about her love of geometry {perhaps a holdover from her computer science degree… computer science?!}, and I thought this piece, and the making of this piece, was a beautiful example to show how these perfect geometrics come to life:

Cra. Zy. Have I mentioned yet that she’s completely self-taught, and in fact, invented this technique? Yes. She did. Again, my mind is blown. And while we’re on that topic, I’ll show you this beauty:

It’s paper. I dunno. What I find even funnier, is that Gunjan claims she’s “not a very patient person”… UM, what!? She told me that in day-to-day life she is very impatient, but once she found this work, and while she’s immersed in it she becomes another person. She said it feels like someone else takes over, almost like a form of meditation. Here she is in action working on two HUGE “carpet” pieces:

Yeah. Not very patient. Right.

And now, on to the text pieces we were talking about… love it!

As if her technique isn’t brilliant enough, Gunjan’s reason for doing these text pieces just adds to the awesome-ness of this work. Such a smarty-pants.

Now, as usual, the speed round produced a few gems. Turns out she refuses to eat Vegemite, but claims to be a huge fan of anything dairy. Well, according to her Instagram feed, she wasn’t kidding:

Yep! Ice cream from around the world! Paris, Sydney, and Japan {and there are a lot more where these came from!}. If I make it to Sydney next year, I’m so making her take me to wherever that blue ice cream came from! Oh, another speed round tidbit – she would love to show her very analog work in Silicon Valley, so if you’re listening Facebook, Twitter, Google etc… CALL HER.

Ok, thanks so much to Gunjan for sharing her insanely inspiring story with us, thanks to Saatchi Art for supporting the episode, and thanks to you for listening! There will be more art for your ear next weekend. xo

Other links:

1. Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk
2. Japanese Paper Place, Toronto
3. Broken Hill, Australia
4. Munga Park, Australia

Oh, yes. Amazing flowers inspired by pencil shavings… but Japanese designer/artist Haruka Misawa went one step further than just being inspired by the pretty petals made by her pencil sharpener. She printed paper with pattern, wound that paper into tight cylindrical scrolls, and then put her sharpener to work… the result… her own unique, one-of-a-kind blossoms. Happy. Friday. Mic drop.

{via Colossal}

Yes, yes, yes. Strange compositions, beautifully cut found images… it’s work like this that makes me want to drop everything and run to my studio. This is the weird & wonderful work of Netherlands based collage artist Nicola Kloosterman. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and cut up some magazines. Immediately.

Just to be clear, I hate deviled eggs. As in, HATE… until I saw this beautiful little morsel. This is the work of South Korean born, New York based Mie Yim. Tiny food drawn in pastel on Martha Stewart paint chips! LOVE. She has a delicious Instagram feed full of these yummy little things, and it was actually kind of hard not to post all of them. Yep, anyone that can make me like the look of a deviled egg is clearly very talented.

{Thanks to Jeanne Heifetz for sending me the link to Mie’s tiny work}

So, I just added a “submit your work” button to my site {look up and to your left}, and boy oh boy am I glad I did! That’s how I got my hands on these collages. They’re part of a series titled, ‘Try Not To Overthink Things Dear’, by Scotland based artist Lauren McLaughlin. Clearly that title spoke to me immediately, as did the story that Lauren sent along with her submission:

“…I’m attaching a few collages from my most recent series titled ‘Try not to overthink things dear’ which were made as a response to the realisation that I was constantly overthinking what I was doing in my practice. After suffering from a creative block and massive confidence crusher of being rejected for several funding applications I decided to stop overthinking and just make…. so I locked myself in my studio for a week with a supply of vintage magazines, books and various cuttings I had collected over the past few months and these were the results.”

Yes, yes… YES!

It’s very hard to write about UK based artist Claire Brewster without including a bird, so that little guy is in there just for good measure! I’ve written about Claire’s beautifully cut birds several times … but earlier today I found her gorgeous botanicals and this post basically wrote itself. Vintage maps, intricately cut flowers, delicate shadows. Sigh. Enough said.

Oh. Tina Berning. I wrote about this fabulous Berlin based artist years ago… um, why haven’t I written again!? Well, I am fixing that right now. She creates beautiful illustrations for magazines etc, but her “diary” is what I can’t get enough of. It is filled, and I mean FILLED, with so many beautiful things. Found paper, inky lines, lovely women, strange groups of people that I want to know more about… and I just noticed a bit of embroidery! Sigh. So beautiful. Happy Friday.

May 4, 2016 – May 29, 2016. That’s how long paper artist Tiffanie Turner will be spending as the fabulous artist-in-residence at the de Young Museum in San Francisco! I had her on the podcast last year, while she was tucked away at another residency in a beautiful barn, and she talked about this… and now it’s finally here! If you’re in San Francisco, you can pop by to see “Nature Constructed”… you can see her giant flowers hung on the walls, watch her working on new pieces, talk about flowers, talk about paper, etc. And if talking’s not enough for you, you can get in on the flowery action:

During her month-long residency, museum visitors are invited to work on a giant communal botanical paper sculpture, learning how to stretch the paper into the proper shape and adhere it to the flower. The first two weeks will be spent creating something vibrant and beautiful, and the last two weeks will focus on taking the piece to a state of decay, inviting visitors to return to the gallery toward the end of the residency to see the piece’s transformation.

Beautiful, on every level. Pop by the museum if you can {tell her I say hi!}, and if you’re too far away then you can follow along on Instagram: #natureconstructedsf