Thoughts from the Dirty City

A year or so I got an email forward. I usually just throw those things away, unless they are the variety that have approximately 10 photos attached and little or no copy, i.e. no irritating inspirational agenda. Attached were photos by artist Peter Callisen.

For those of you not familiar with his work, Peter Callesen is a sculptor from Denmark that works almost exclusively with paper. I think this email chain went around the world twice so I am not going to go into a lot about Peter. However, his work is amazing so if you haven’t seen it you should check it out on his website.

I looked through the pictures, googled the name, checked out some of his other work, and pretty much forgot all about him. Not because it wasn’t interesting, quite the contrary. You know how it is with these email chains, they appear in your inbox, knock your socks off and then disappear beneath 20 image request, ad deadlines and (on a really good day) proposal requests.

While at work this week desperate for some spark of creativity and motivation, reading the latest from HOW magazine I noticed a small photo that looked very familiar. It was an article about the growing field of paper artists. I originally skipped over this article thinking it was yet another “ad” for some new fancy mill creation. These always just remind me of the limited budgets most of my clients have at their disposal. I am so glad I kept this magazine around and happened upon this photo.

I had no idea there was such a wide variety of things you could do to a piece of paper to make it beautiful! It was just what I needed. If any of you are desperate to while away an extra 20 minutes or so this afternoon, or are in need of some inspiration you can find a copy of article along with photos and links to other talented artists of the papering kind here.

One in particular that blew me away was Chris Natrop.