Paper Art

This is one of the displays at our local museum's current exhibit entitled "Unhinged: Book Art on the Cutting Edge".  

The artist, Claire Dannenbaum of Eugene, Oregon, explains:
The idea for a quilted coverlet simmered for weeks before I could come up with a method to actually make it work..  This coverlet is made from the pages of "Fragments d'un discours amoureux (or A Lover's Discourse: Fragments) by Roland Barthes.  I used a French edition published in 1978.  The pages are soft and feel like flannel.  I carefully crumpled each page until the paper was pliable and flexible enough to sew together.  I learned this method as a child in Texas making 'Indian clothes' from brown paper grocery bags.  The rigid paper bag gets more flexible as it is repeatedly crumpled and distressed, creating a leather-like fabric.  The quilted pages are sewn in straight rows of rectangles (trimmed minimally) from the original pages.  There is a felt layer and cotton batting between the readable surface and the cotton backing. The edges are trimmed with blanket binding tape.  

To me, there's something compelling about art like this.  I'm a big fan of paper art in the first place and find some of the things being done to and with old books fascinating.  This was a really interesting exhibit so I may go back and get myself another blip.