Joanna White: Artist Statement

The origami box form, with its consistent proportions and vessel-like construction has become a key building block and formal device in my sculptural and installation-based work. Ranging in size from a quarter-inch to eighteen inches across, the boxes are hand-folded from thin, transparent papers, or discarded materials such as used Post-it notes, junk mail, or my students’ abandoned drawings.  Though the form suggests solidity, the material is fragile and vulnerable.  I’m fascinated by the container aspect of the box, and the weird subversion of the perfect, crisp geometry of the structure by the sagging, fragile nature of the paper. Exploring material contradictions, I also combine flimsy, transient materials such as clear plastic, onion skins, and thread with opaque materials such as thick paper, gesso, and oil paint.  The boxes may function as several things at once – as houses, bodies, a time sequence, or segments of a greater whole.  My work addresses concepts of mortality, eternity and corporality.