Papercraft Research Assignment

 

Papercraft Research Assignment

Marina Dawson

    Papercraft and origami has been an artform practiced by humanity for hundreds of years, and is ever evolving. I personally find this artwork to very intriguing as it is very detailed and takes countless hours of work. Artists Lucie Thomas and Thibault Zimmerman have elevated the papercraft artform and are currently exhibiting their works for Hermes. 

What I understand about Zim &Zou's artwork is that the colors that are chosen must integrate themselves properly with the folds and cuts in the paper so that way the minuscule details can be showcased. If this is not done, these folds would blend into each other and the details would be lost through the lens of the camera, which is a key component to their work. It was documented that most of their pieces are normally photographed by Zim &Zou over 60+ times, either to select the perfect shot, or to create a stop motion picture showcasing their masterpiece.

Zim &Zou's artistic process, as shown above appears to be a meticulous process where the exacto knife cuts out a template of each design and hundreds of these forms are reproduced. I can imagine the time this would take and how tedious this would be, not to mention, once these tiny forms have been cut, they must also be individually glued onto each other and then dried. Learning and understanding this process as a whole has been baffling, as I once believed that papercraft was simply folding a paper to create origami or cutting into paper to make designs. Yet, learning about Zim &Zou's artwork I now have a new appreciation for papercraft.

Initially, I chose Zim &Zou's artwork because I believed that it was eye-catching and the colors they had chosen played around with each other and sparked an interest within me that made me ask questions such as; how long would that had taken them? what tools did they need? how many other models have they made? And as such I realized that their work inspired me, because I realized that there's always room to improve an artistic field and elevate your craft to a level that most people never saw possible. Plenty of people believe that painting has progressed far enough throughout hundreds of years to a point that there is nothing more to explore, but after researching Zim &Zou's artwork I now believe that there may always be another way to elevate my craft and my artwork as well.