Monday 20 April 2009

Paper Goddesses

I have a love of all things paper crafted, especially from vintage and recycled materials. Two Artists who just blow me away with their vision and skill are Jennifer Khoshbin and Lisa Kokin.


Lisa Kokin
Lisa’s fascinating work revolves around re-occurring themes we can all identify with such as loss, rescuing of memory, cultural and sexual identity and a critique of social values.


These are ‘pakaged’ in a variety of ways including, mixed media books, altered books, sewn, found photographs, sculptures and button works.

I particularly like the pieces using books, which she stitches, collages, layers and digs in to produce gorgeous aesthetic artworks, which evoke feelings and memories for me with their intriguing array of mixed media imagery.

New works, not yet on her web site and from her last exhibition at the Donna Seager Gallery in San Rafael, California, are more sculptural ‘art books’ or ‘reassembled books’ as Lisa herself calls them. Catalogues can be purchased by contacting the Gallery.

I am in awe of her imagination and creativity in turning a humble rectangular book into a passionate work of art involving many meticulous processes and statements about issues affecting many of us. It is easy to smile at the humour within these pieces, where she articulates her messages.

To see and read more about Lisa’s fascinating work see: http://www.lisakokin.com/

Jennifer Khoshbin
Jen’s beautiful and evocative work revolves around narratives; objects and symbols create meaning, both past and present and this is how she makes sense of things.

Jennifer’s work consists of ‘art books’ and sculptures. An avid reader, she delves into vintage books and by altering them explores their loss and recovery of meaning. By combining cut-outs with drawings and photographic images, she creates something more tangible, look at these:

To me these evoke nostalgia through her choice of subjects and meaning through her choice of word and imagery.

The circles or holes that she cuts have a quality which creates pleasure in looking; pleasure in seeing that one word at the bottom of that ‘pit’ like hole, like finding ‘treasure’ or a lost item at the bottom of your bag or in you pocket, and thinking about it’s meaning or memory. The word has been singled out or highlighted and I find this very intriguing and thought provoking.

Purchase a book for yourself at: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6229400

Other work includes, paper covered resin animal heads, birds and insects. Some of which were originally from a collaborative exhibition called ‘Off With Their Heads’. I would love to buy one of these stag heads! And just look at the little beetle!

Purchases can be made at: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5501066
To see more of her work see: http://www.jenkhoshbin.com/

Hope you enjoyed this post, I’ll be back in a few days, when hopefully I will have finished two new lamps I’m working on.

20 comments:

  1. Wow they're incredible, thanks for sharing, i'd never heard of either before.

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  2. Thank you Tracy for introducing two incredible artists.

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  3. How creative! Incredible artwork from these amazing artists!!....Hope you manage to finish your lamps..!!

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  4. thanks so much for such great selection of artists

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  5. Yet again i go to check out your fantastic recommendations and suddenly 2 hours have passed and i'm still on this computer! ,really interesting work and so inspirational.

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  6. I absolutely love these artists work; really inspiring and humbling at the same time...
    The Alice hole in the book is completely brilliant.
    I'm a big chess fan/player too, so the chess images fascinate me aswell...
    Really lovely, thankyou
    x Philippa

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  7. Thanks for the post on Lisa Kokin. You can see her recent exhibition at http://tinyurl.com/c2uwmy. She also has works in the Art of the Book Exhibition. http://tinyurl.com/d8dmwb. The books are up until the end of May. You can see a lot of them on the website. Thanks so much!

    Donna Seager

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  8. Oh! That beetle.. I adore it:)

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  9. Oooh, thanks for introducing me to Jennifer Khoshbin. I love what she does! Have a nice weekend.
    Kerry.

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  10. Those artists are pretty inspiring
    You may have heard of her, but just in case I thought I'd recommend Illustrator Polly Becker http://www.pollybecker.com/
    a clever thinker who has a talent at putting .."stuff" together

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  11. Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm, I'm so glad you are as inspired as me., and Super Beck, thanks so much for reminding me about Polly's work, we were introduced to her when i was studying Illustration at Uni. but I'd completely forgotten how good she is and haven't seen her work for ages, thank you for re-introducing it :-)

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  12. Loved these so much that I went out to a yard sale and bought books to play with for art.xo
    ~dee

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  13. Hi Trace, just wanted to let you know that I have nominated you for an award - it´s on my blog, can´t find out how to send a proper link, have to get Bjarne to link you properly later!

    See you!

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  14. Wow, what a great variety! Truly talented :)

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  15. Great work - I love them both but especially Lisa's. xv

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  16. What a marvelous amazing post!
    thank you!

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  17. Wow - these are lovely and I've never heard of them before. Have you seen Su Blackwell's work. She's amazing too.

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  18. Hello Tracy..
    What a wonderful discovery your blog is to me..
    So many details that appeal to my heart... especially Jennifer's work.
    It is so witty and inspired....

    Look forward to seeing more of your fabulous work now that I have found you..

    Michele

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  19. Hello,
    I love your blog, and this paper books/work, from now on a daily stop!! I just add it to my blogroll!!

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