With spring in full bloom, staying quarantined this time of year is especially tough (if necessary!). But thanks to paper artist Diana Beltran Herrera you can enjoy springtime, at least in spirit. Born in Colombia and currently based in the UK, Beltran Herrera has come to be recognized for her incredible paper renditions of all things nature, with a special focus on paper flowers.
According to Herrera, her work is a way of bridging the gap between man and nature, repairing this broken relationship by reproducing its elements in paper form. Her sculptures portray the ideal state of a thing and also act like a model of representation of a reality that doesn’t suffer any change. Her work is, therefore, is also an act of resistance against the passage of time.
“When I started to work with paper, I was developing very structural elements,” she told My Modern Met, relaying her creative process. “I used to have a lot of strips of paper that I used to cut and glue to form a volume.” According to Herrera, this process is very flexible, as almost any shape can be created with paper. “I spend a lot of hours collecting images of the subject in different positions,” she says, “then I do some reading to find the right measurements.”
According to her personal website, her interest in economic materials (mainly paper, but also wire, cardboard, and plastic), is based on their potential of transformation. Much like patterns found in nature, her sculptures comprehend massive groups of elements that together compose a major complex system.
Take a closer look:
