Chasing Paper Amy

Greg Thorpe

This article has two subjects:

The artist Paper Amy, aka Amy Mathers, a globe-trotting paper sculptor from Northern Ireland.

The way art can unexpectedly bring people together.

November 2017.

An artist/writer walks into a bar and orders a pint. The bar is The Green Room, Belfast, the pint is most probably a Guinness, and the artist/writer is me.

I’m alone and I have just hit town for Outburst, the queer arts festival that takes place here each November and breathes radical LGBTQIA creativity into this beautiful and complicated city. Outburst seeks to showcase local, national and international art across a range of disciplines, highlighting the lives and creativity of communities under siege. At the time of writing there is no equal marriage in Northern Ireland, no legal bodily autonomy, and there has been no government in meaningful operation at Stormont since January. Politics is happening on the ground here, as is the evening’s torrential rain.

I’ve been invited to Outburst to deliver ‘A mile of black paper’, my workshop/teach-in/art installation that looks at HIV, AIDS, art, activism, and the complex entwined histories of those things. In the bustling environs of The Green Room, I clean the rain off my glasses and find a cosy corner from which to sip my stout. I resist the urge to be shy and stare into my phone (that’s not the Belfast way) and instead I admire the eye-catching exhibition installed on the main wall of the bar.

The curators of the collection are Us Folk, a local design studio and illustration agency co-headed by designer/illustrator/artist Jamie Baird. Us Folk has been commissioned by Outburst to work with local artists to produce a visual response to each of the elements in this year’s festival programme. It’s a genius commission called, simply, ‘Outburst: Illustrated’. The artists have taken cues from theatre, history, music, visual art and so on across the festival, and turned them into a series of unique visual responses. The collection is mostly made up of dazzling illustration work, but I am searching for one piece in particular, and I quickly spot it; if only for the fact it is not a flat drawing like the others, but a three-dimensional sculpture depicting a spool of paper spilling from a bold pink picture frame.

It is of course a piece based on ‘A mile of black paper’, made by artist Amy Mathers, aka ‘Paper Amy’. My installation centres on a vintage fax machine and lo and behold Paper Amy’s version includes its own little paper sculpture of just such a machine. As with all her work, the piece is fashioned entirely from paper that has been cut, folded, curled and fastened into place with delicate surgical precision. I am thrilled by it and suddenly feel very at home in Belfast and not at all shy. I look around the bar, excited, searching for someone to whom I can show this beautiful work.

November 2018.

In the intervening year since Outburst 2017, I become pals with Jamie at Us Folk. I also pitch a piece about Paper Amy to a new magazine that focuses on artists who work with paper. Amy’s miniature and miraculously detailed sculptures fall neatly into the Fourdrinier’s remit and our fortuitous connection offers an unusual backstory – it wins me the gig.

In November 2018, I’m back in Belfast once again for the festival and Jamie invites me to the Us Folk offices. We have a great conversation about art, Belfast, Outburst, and the roster of talented artists that Us Folk represents. A sculpture by Paper Amy occupies a prime spot in the foyer. It is a magnificently detailed scale model of Belfast Crescent Arts Centre, looking edible in pastels and primary colours, and cake-like in its perfection. It even has tiny paper birds alighting on the roof. While I’m there Jamie presents me with a gift. It is Amy’s ‘A mile of black paper’ sculpture and as I write this it takes pride of place on the study wall beside me.

I start chasing Amy to research my article. Looking at her work both online and in Belfast, I begin to think of her sculptures as talismans to our modern lives; tiny cacti, ring doughnuts, backpacks and Bialetti. I want to tell her about my trips to Belfast and thank her for her work. I enjoy making an international connection through art with someone I have never met in person. As I track her via Instagram, I see she is in Cambodia, before moving further through South East Asia. Later she pops up in Brisbane, Australia, where she stays for a while, before landing a residency, also in Queensland, on the Sunshine Coast, which is where I eventually catch up with her. We to and fro via email and Insta message and my article takes on an enjoyably meta aspect as I explain all about Jamie and the sculpture and returning to Belfast and the Fourdrinier and how it all fits and connects so serendipitously.

Hello Paper Amy! I’ve been thinking about my article and how we first connected. What do you recall about that particular commission for Outburst?

When the commission came through from Jamie, I hadn’t heard of ‘A mile of black paper’, but this didn’t stop me from researching it and I was blown away. Such a brilliant idea! So, I wanted to do this commission justice. I can’t take all the credit; Jamie was the frontrunner. We wanted to create something that would convey something of the amount of paper and for that to be the main focus of the piece. By having it in three-dimensions and dropping out of frame it really draws your eye to the continuous roll of paper.

I want to ask you something basic about your work first, which is: what’s so great about paper?

Paper is where all ideas begin! No matter how technology improves or takes over our lives, it will never be able to recreate the feeling of putting pen to paper, opening a new book, reading the newspaper or even making a paper aeroplane. Paper will always have those nostalgic feelings which is probably why I love using it so much. It is also restrictive, and that can be challenging when making 3D models.

Before I even put pen to paper or start to experiment with 3D modelling, I piece it all together in my head. I was told once, ‘You’re the worst at starting a project, but once you get the idea, you fly through it.’ Basically, I think too much and I need to figure the puzzle out mentally before I can start. It’s not the best way to do things but I’m working on it.

One of the main questions I get asked is ‘What 3D computer software do you use?’ The answer is always, none. The way the measurements and angles are made is through trial and error; folding, cutting, sticking and repeat. I then take those measurements and draw the flat design in illustrator so I can print the straight onto paper. My way might not be the ‘right’ way or the ‘best’ way, but it’s how I do it. Through the years my techniques have improved and maybe, as years go on, I might start to use 3D software but for the moment, the puzzle is the enjoyment.

I’m interested in the skillset required to make this kind of work, but also how you decide what to build? How does one learn to be a paper sculptor, did you train, what was that experience like? When you’re making new work, how do you process your influences and inspirations for a finished product?

In terms of formal training, I went to art school where I had my share of ups and downs like everyone else. Most people will say the same thing: ‘I learnt more on the job’. It’s really true, you do learn more in the real world than you do in education. But having said that, I loved my art education. It’s where I learnt all of the basics, how to think outside the box and, most importantly, it’s where I met my lifelong friends. The connections you can make in your education are the most important ones because it’s those people that will encourage you from the very start and at every step afterwards.

In terms of making the work, I tend to take inspiration from everything around me. I know that’s a cliché answer but for me it’s true. I think about places I’ve been, the objects I’ve seen, and the various artists and designers I’ve discovered. My biggest inspirations are probably the people that I meet though. Seeing and speaking to other designers and artists gives you a real boost to do better in your own work, but not for competitive reasons, it’s just exciting to be part of something.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about as I’ve followed your practice and your travels, and throughout our exchange, is the different ways we tend to write about art and artists; their influences, their politics, their personality, the work described in detail. Part of my practice has been to experiment with these things to see what has impact and value. I’m curious, what is it like to be on the receiving end of all that? To be the person being written about? Especially via this odd connection we have?

While I’m sitting here thinking of what to say, looking over the glorious hills of Kenilworth in Queensland, on the porch of my current living situation, I’m also thinking, ‘I’m not very good at all this stuff’! When I make my work, I just drink my coffee (always black) and eat chocolate biscuits to try and keep my focus on the current goal of whatever it is that I’m making.

Right now, I’m also thinking how lucky I am to still be in contact with such wonderful, talented and creative people from back at home, and here in Australia. It’s an absolute pleasure to be working with you again Greg. I hope that someday we will grab a coffee together and discuss the next project!

November 2019

Sometimes when you set out to write an article you might, at some point, falter, and wonder: what if this thing that is interesting to me, isn’t as interesting as I think? Is Amy and my connection about art or actually about my ego? Art certainly brought us together and, in my writer’s mind, this article was going to take the form of a snapshot of Amy’s journey from Belfast to Queensland, using our correspondence and discussing our connection through and about art, interspersed with reflections on Amy’s practice, the significance of working with paper and her love of the miniature. Some of that remains, some has changed.

I hoped to make a neat theoretical link to the metaphor of the fax machine as a connecting force; the communicative technology of yesteryear that still somehow managed to bring us together. Maybe I have.

I was worried I might not bring anything new or interesting to writing about Amy’s practice, that I couldn’t do it justice without having her intricate works to hand. When I think now about Amy’s work, and also about writing on art, both begin with a blank piece of paper. Anything is possible but not everything is going to work. Amy talks about “the way the measurements and angles are made … through trial and error” and this is where I think our practices most closely intersect; artist and writer, each trying to find our angle.