Liz Jaff
Statement
Paper's versatility is what attracted me to it as my primary medium. Its structural and aesthetic possibilities reveal themselves through my continuous experimentation. I am in love with paper.
I have been folding paper for 12 years. I like repetition and rhythm. My first paper piece was conceived during a stay in Las Vegas and made with hotel stationary: The project folded up and stowed away in the bottom of my suitcase. At that time I began working more abstractly as a way of representing my impressions of places and recollections. Paper became the perfect material to convey ephemeral experience and the ultimate intangibility of memory.
Transforming a two-dimensional surface into a three dimensional shape offers a variety of arrangements for the play of light and shadow on different flat planes. I use folding to investigate these opportunities, and the circle acts as a character to reveal and conceal form. When repeated, these forms are my substitute for the geometric grid, my response to the squares of Sol Lewitt and Carl Andre and homage to Agnes Martin's rectangles.