JOCELYN CHÂTEAUVERT
Mount Vernon, Iowa
Bio
Jocelyn Châteauvert (b. 1960, Des Moines, Iowa), raised and educated in Iowa City, Iowa, is a paper artist who creates jewelry, lighting, sculpture, and installations from the paper she makes by hand. After earning an MFA from the University of Iowa, she taught electro-forming at Middlesex Polytechnic in London, and then established her career in San Francisco. Since 1999, she has devoted herself to handmade paper. She is recipient of a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship and the Craft Fellowship award from the South Carolina Arts Commission. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Mint Museum (Charlotte, North Carolina), South Carolina State Museum, and the Medical University of South Carolina.
Contact
Wildwood, 2020, Artist-made abaca paper, pigment, and linen thread, 87x48x40 in., Courtesy of the artist
Wildwood seeks to interpret the natural world from the most common
and least known material: paper. The ritual of hand papermaking is ancient, scientific, and rhythmic. I merge this science with my curiosity to explore organic structures using paper’s inherent strength and capacity to be self-supporting.
Air-drying these pieces adds the unexpected: the paper shrinks and cockles, bringing vitality to my designs with more intricate, and subtle textures. The undulating surface and translucency diffuses light through the trio of treelike forms into a tapestry of color, layering the palette with density and changing hues to suggest abstract painting in three-dimensions.