Statement

​

My paper sculpture, created by carefully cutting, folding, and gluing small pieces of paper into designs, is contemplative and meditative.  I play with pattern and repetition, geometry and rhythm, light and shadows.  What looks airy and ephemeral from one angle is heavy and harsh from another.  From afar the pieces might seem perfect, but closer inspection reveals that hand-folded and hand-cut shapes leave little room for perfection.

 

My most recent series comments on how quickly we can move from a sense of order and stability to chaos.  Long, thin strips of paper engender soft curves or hard angles.  Using a backdrop of fine ink lines, I obscure elements and reveal others.  Breaking from the regular cadence of folds, I create movement, ruptures, and shifts, showing how structures we have taken for granted begin to fail.  

 

Bio

​

Marisa Gonzales Silverstein received a BA in Art History from Yale College in 1992 and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 1999.  Marisa spent years leading after school programs in the arts for teenagers, including the acclaimed, city-wide After School Matters program in Chicago.  She began folding paper in 2013 and has shown her work in galleries in Westchester, Rockland, and Orange counties, as well as in New York City.

In 2016, Marisa received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts for the photography of her sculpture series called “92 Americans. Every day.”