sheryl Oppenheim
Paper marbling is a form of self-expression that is non-representational* yet references patterns that are observable in the universe from the microscopic level to the greatest scales of space. Marbling puts us in touch with these universal patterns. It also provides, like much great art, an armature for color and form, which are in turn a space where it is possible to encode feeling, meaning, time, and touch. My work is the meeting place between the craft of paper marbling and an artistic practice (which includes collage and oil painting) that strives for this encoding of meaning into color, pattern, and form.
*Turkish marbling (ebru) can be representational
My work is rooted in an aspiration to practice marbling techniques at the highest skill level, combined with a devotion to beauty, surprise, and feeling through color and form.
Bio:
Sheryl Oppenheim was born in 1983, raised in Orlando, Florida, and now lives in New York City. She is a paper marbler and maker of illegible books, an idea she first became interested in after seeing the work of Bruno Munari, and through her proximity to books, bookbinders, and marbled paper at her first job in New York, at a bookbinding supply house. She began marbling paper in 2011, and began learning suminagashi in 2016.
Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library, the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art Library, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, among others. Her artist books are available through Small Editions, her friends and frequent collaborators.
Do you know the great thing about a public collection? It is your collection. This link will take you to World Cat, where you can find one of my books in a library (hopefully) near you.