Jocelyn Châteauvert (February 16, 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 1994, 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 can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC), South Carolina State Museum and the Medical University of South Carolina
Steeped in tradition I am a hand papermaker. I make unexpected paper. Unfamiliar and mysterious appearing like gut or some ancient idea of vellum. It suggests that it was born not grown or made from a plant, not fiber but fauna. Over 30 years of papermaking and it’s still a journey. Paper holds my imagination to find new ways of expressing the natural world through shaping the material. My working techniques abandon the traditional sequence and separates itself from the making of most paper art. I gather it up and work with the sheets still damp and in their most pliable state. The paper flexes with each crease, twist, or roll in multiple directions. These manipulations integrate structure into the paper itself, making the forms self-supporting and adds texture. After this stage the paper is air-dried, unrestrained allowing the sheets to contort as they dry, called cockling. This method softens the finished shapes, lines, and architecture by creating more surface variations. It becomes a paper landscape absorbing light with a topography of deep shadows that changes through the course of day. Paper craves light. The ability of the paper to diffuse light is directly related to formulating the length of time the plant fibers are beaten or cut, where longer beating times yields shorter fibers and makes the paper more translucent even glass-like. Making the materials for my sculpture from the ground up provides a pathway to engage with history. Humble and under-appreciated yet strong and long-lasting paper yields designs beyond my expectations in beauty and depth. My world, the worlds I create stem from this simple source material.
Artist-made flax paper, pigment,
dimensions variable. Lily pads size range: 11” dia to 50” dia
Permanent installation in the ecumenical chapel of the Medical University of South Carolina
Artist-made abaca paper
dimensions variable, morning glories size range: 2”dia, - 60”dia
The Hand Making Paper Secrets by Artist Jocelyn Chateauvert
