Papercraft Werk It

Papercraft Research

The artist I chose to research was Yulia Brodskaya, as her paper quilling work immediately struck my eye as the flow of the paper is incredibly mesmerizing. Since this research is about finding an artist who inspires you or you want to write about, she is the perfect choice as her work makes me want to create. 

  

Yulia's work started as she decided to move away from digital means as well as traditional drawing and found her groove within her own way of paper quilling. Yulia also has always had a fondness for paper and has always enjoyed working with in in some form so being able to create with it is a great passion for her. She was originally a graphic designer, however she found more joy within creating 3D paper illustrations that passed time by easily. Starting out, she would just take large strips of heavy duty paper and glue them down, as if she was drawing. However, her process is quite time consuming as she has to measure the strip she wants to use, cut it, decide where it should be placed, then paste it. She enjoys this process as it allows her to express her individuality as she draws with paper instead of on it. Yulia's choice of tool to create these paper illustrations is a tool called a cocktail straw, which she uses to bend the paper around making loopy designs. Whenever she finds a piece of paper she thinks about some way to incorporate it into one of her works, as if she's putting a little piece of herself into each illustration. She also states that her work is influenced by Gustav Klimt as his work involved gold leaf and Yulia enjoyed the decorative feeling using the small intricate details that bring the whole piece together. 

Yulia's biggest passion through her quilling work is her personal projects that involve a theme of aging and the beauty around it. She enjoys creating portraits of old people as an expression for her love of the beauty of aging, her goal is to capture the essence of aging. She believes that there is so much to tell about their story from their faces, and they hold the secrets of each individual she does a portrait of. Yulia enjoys portraying these people's stories through a situation they might be in or something they are interested in as this shows their inner and outer beauty. There are so many ways to interpret someone's life through their faces, and she especially enjoys crating the wrinkles in paper. Old age should be respected and appreciated  rather than put down just because they're older, and Yulia finds this is common in our western youth driven society. Her technique when creating these works is slightly different, as she bends a singular strip multiple times and pastes it in a directional way in order to achieve a more sketchy look to the faces. She likes to think of each strip representing a wrinkle is like a ring of a tree, symbolizing how many years and experiences that person has gone through on this earth. In these works, rather than drawing with the paper as she normally does in her other work, she is almost painting with the paper. 

Yulia's work inspired me the moment I saw it, as I loved the way she created movement within the paper, something that normally you don't see in paper sculptures. Reading further into her work and experiences made me like her work even more because she creates in a way that she enjoys and it shows through how passionate she is about her illustrations. Doing art in a way that is unconventional really interests me, and that is another reason why I enjoy growing through her collections of artwork. Her use of vibrant colours drew me in because they weren't insanely abrasive and in your face, rather they work against each other to make a pleasing composition of colour. The texture of the paper has a quality that sucks the viewer into the work allowing them to get lost in the intricacies of each piece of paper. All these qualities to her work is something we don't see very often in a way that is unique like this, and that in itself is inspiring to me. Her way of using a medium in a non traditional way is admirable and makes me want to experiment with mediums in a way no one has ever done before. Her work inspires me colour-wise as colours are tricky but if they're used properly they can invoke emotions within people very easily as her work does. Even though her work may look simple to some as its 'just paper', the intricacy of the strips of paper brings a likeness to her works that most wouldn't notice right away. I also am inspired by how the paper strips work through and around the form of whatever the subject matter is, as it makes the flow of the piece easy to follow. 

Some articles about her fantastic work:

https://www.arcticpaper.com/inspiration-news/paper-passion/2017/yulia-brodskaya/ 

https://mymodernmet.com/yulia-brodskaya-old-people-portraits-quilled-paper/