The Cross-sectioned Paper Sculptures of Lisa Nilsson
Surrounded in her Massachusetts studio by pins, glue, and piles of brightly colored paper strips, a visitor might initially mistake Lisa Nilsson for a reclusive arts and crafts teacher. But as her nimble hands purposefully curl the paper into shapes, and then magically weave the shapes into identifiable forms, a new impression emerges. Nilsson is revealed as a highly skilled visual artist who has resurrected a nearly forgotten technique of image making—and to extraordinary ends—by using it to recreate anatomical cross-sections. With her humble materials, she is looking into the deepest, most intimate recesses of the human body, to expose not gore, but rather glorious abstract patterns of spirals and folds.
Nilsson’s cross-sections are constructed through a process known as quilling. Originally popular with nuns and aristocratic women in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, the technique involves combining decorative coils of paper into images that have a filigree-like effect. Her mastery of the archaic medium extends to a variety of forms and marks, created by cutting and pressing the colorful strips with knives, pins, needles, tweezers, dowels, and drill bits. The result is a series of roughly life-sized images of about a quarter inch thickness, which mimic the anatomical models on which her works are based.
This unique series was born in 2008, when Nilsson discovered an old Crucifix made of quilled paper in a second-hand store. She was intrigued enough by the medium that she began experimenting with it for some assemblages as a way to add to her decorative vocabulary. Soon after, she was given a link to a website which included an early twentieth-century anatomical cross section by the French surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen.
The timing was fortuitous. Nilsson had already found an organic quality in experimenting with paper, and had begun to think of the springy coils as an analogy for human flesh. “The fleshy, malleable quality struck me early on,” she explains. “I made a little experiment creating the internal organs depicted in a small anatomical engraving out of quilled paper even before encountering that first inspirational French cross-section image. It was the paper’s willingness to conform in shape to fill a cavity and its springy, bouncy quality when coiled that made me think of flesh and anatomy.”
She decided to have a go at recreating Doyen’s image completely out of quilled paper, and the result was the first in the series, titled “Female Torso.” This was soon followed by another, a partner to the first, called “Male Torso.” Nilsson’s search for more source material then led her to the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s Visible Human Project, in which prepared male and female cadavers were photographed in millimeter thin slices, resulting in a cache of nearly 2000 cross sections covering all aspects of the body. The catalog of images provided an almost inexhaustible resource, which the artist augmented with medical illustrations to inspire more quilled reconstructions.
Along the way, she also came up with a title befitting the series: Tissue. The name offered a richness of meaning, since it provided obvious references to both paper and flesh (“human tissue”), but also implied complex webs of connectivity which are fragile and delicate. The latter connotation especially appealed to Nilsson, a meticulous craftsperson who is attracted to time-consuming processes which allow her to become connected to her work on a material and tactile level.
“Part of the deep connection I feel to the objects I’m making has to do with the sheer time involved. I spend up to two months on a larger piece,” she divulges, and this creates a deep reverence and devotion for not just the objects she depicts, but the materials of which they are made. “I have a great respect for materials and the ways they behave, what they ‘like’ to do, what comes naturally, and what can be coaxed or forced to happen. In this way I commune with the materials I am working with. I try to listen and observe and honor… Art making is often talked about in terms of an artist expressing oneself. I think of myself more as a listener than a talker. I like the material to express itself. In this way, I can be in service to the material, ego-less, absent.”
It was the paper’s willingness to conform in shape to fill a cavity and its springy, bouncy quality when coiled that made me think of flesh and anatomy.”
I am so struck by the aesthetic and graphic beauty of anatomy—and cross-sections in particular that I remain largely unaware of the morbid aspect. I have to occasionally remind myself that I’m looking at people.”
This diligent and selfless labor results in images that transform her source material. Nilsson’s technique of rendering anatomy through beautifully coiled paper causes any residue of the macabre to lost in beautifully rendered passages of swirls. Even the artist herself sometimes loses sight of her subject matter. “I am so struck by the aesthetic and graphic beauty of anatomy—and cross-sections in particular” she says, “that I remain largely unaware of the morbid aspect. I have to occasionally remind myself that I’m looking at people.”
The finely wrought cross-sections have also caused Nilsson to become an object of attention in her own right, not only in the art world, but also the medical community. Intrigued anatomists around the world have contacted her, and she enthusiastically comments on those interactions. “Working with this subject matter has brought me in touch with very smart people who do very interesting things,” she notes. “Their generosity in taking the time to write and share what they are doing is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.” She was even invited to give a talk about her work for science and medical innovators at last year’s TedMed convention in Washington, D.C.
For now though, Nilsson is confined to her studio, amidst her strips of delicately and lovingly cut paper. She has a show opening on October 10, 2013 at Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York. Six pieces are already finished, among the latest a “Male Pelvis” and a halved dog, “Canis lupis familiaris.” But for an artist who may spend up to two months on a single piece—and hopes to complete eight more—this is already the stretch run. “I will be working on them up until the delivery date,” she admits, and acknowledges that after the New York show she will probably take some time to assess ways to further evolve her technique and practice. But Lisa Nilsson’s work is a labor of love, and whatever comes next will no doubt be related to what she is doing now. “Anatomy is so compelling,” she reflects, “I expect that it will always remain an aspect of what I’m doing.”*
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