Paper is a Lovable Material

Ever since paper was invented by the Chinese in 104 A.D., it has become one of the most treasured and accessible mediums for artists. Once an artist falls in love with paper, and there are many different kinds, they find multiple ways to use them artistically. To explore how artists use paper, I visited Alice Kenny at her studio on the fourth floor of ArtsWestchester’s historic building.

Kenny is an artist who seems to find limitless ways of working with paper. Initially a watercolorist, and then she earned a fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she refined her skills as an illustrator, practicing artist and art director. This path ultimately led her to a career working for high-end magazines, like Vogue and Vanity Fair. Kenny furthered her exploration of paper by becoming a botany artist, learning the fine strokes of creating a flower from line and color.

As an artist, no grass grows under her feet when it comes to using paper. She paints it, cuts it, folds it and even makes books from it. Yes, there is an art to bookmaking. One would say that origami is the most well-known paper folding practice. However, Kenny says many volumes have been written about how to fold paper and Kenny is exploring all of them, like The Art of the Fold by Hedi Kyle and Ulla Warchol. Some of her books unfold like an accordion to reveal images that she has drawn, written about, and created using various printmaking practices such as silverpoint. She even uses a Japanese paper marbling technique of Suminagashi, which I’m told means “floating ink.”

The drawing, printmaking and folding together reveal an unusual way to intimately discover a treatise on subjects as esoteric as species of plants, flowers, weeds and shells.

Photos: Books by Alice Kenny: circle origami book (top) and shell book (bottom)