Paper-I-Fils
Ornamented paper adornments handmade in Virginia.
Paper i fils means paper and threads in Catalan. My father’s literal and agricultural roots lie beneath what is today’s Barcelona airport. My mother's family was Sicilian and Milanese. But they met and had me in Buenos Aires. I married a man with equally diverse heritage and have two creative and well travelled sons.
Paperifils is the embodiment of my cross cultural genes. My products emerge from ancient iridescent Roman glass, Byzantine mosaics, the jewelry and brocades of Renaissance portraits and the architecture of Modernist Catalunya. In the painted and stencil pieces I look towards the street art and textiles of the Americas.
I wanted to create and share something beautiful and joyful, hence Paper i Fils was born. I hope you enjoy your one of a kind work of art as much as I enjoyed making it.
Process
My process was arrived at after years of collecting art and craft techniques and teaching art. Teaching kids gave me a multidisciplinary approach to art-making and an appreciation for the less sacred yet still valid forms of art. My own schooling in art history and travels give me a panoply of visual sources to draw from.
Almost by accident, I started sewing together leftovers from a piece that had been in a quilt show, when I reached the eureka moment. I had created one long loop of a necklace that could be doubled or tripled...or layered with others. Easy to wear, adaptable and resilient without being fuzzy but remain elegant. I elaborated further with techniques I had learned from working with printmaking, polymer and paper clay, painting and fiber. These evolved into one process of creating decorative, lightweight but heavy-duty paper designs that are each one of a kind.
The leather like paper is composed of wood fibers (cellulose) that is bound with polymer. The paper is water resilient, easy to care for and can be hand washed. The paper is embossed or stencilled using the highest grade acrylic paints on both sides with at least three layers of paint per side. The sheets of paper are then cut into shapes or components. These are then composed into designs that are sewn using variegated or metallic threads into wearable adornments and accessories. Given the process, each piece is unique.