Scratch

Date: 2006
 * [[image:http://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=http://americanart.si.edu/images/2008/2008.11_1a.jpg&max=460 width="226" height="286" link="@http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=76219"]] || Title: **Scratch**

Artist: **Jocelyn Chateauvert** Born: 1960

Medium: abaca, copper, walnut dye, pigment, and thread Dimensions: 144 x 120 x 12 in. (365.8 x 304.8 x 30.5 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Jacqueline Blank, Shirley Jacobs, Marilyn and John W. Barrett, Sherley and Bernard Koteen, Lois and Dirk Jecklin and museum purchase through the Renwick Acquisitions Fund

Accession: 2008.11 || Originally worked in metal. Studied with Chunghi Choo (See //Blooming Vessel//). Then moved to handmade paper from abaca fibers (from banana plant). Enormous paper curtain in 3 layers with walnut and red pigment dyes on two of them. Warmth and contrast to natural layer. Paper is perforated, pleated, dimpled and aggressively manipulated. Rustles when moved. - [Source: Notes from Curator-led Walk-Throughs in the Gallery and various Catalogs]
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Jocelyn Chateauvert is a master silversmith -- she earned a master's degree in jewelry and metalwork at the University of Iowa -- and a visionary papermaker who creates witty wearable art as well as large installations referring to reeds and flowers. One pun is, of course, that paper comes from nature (Chateauvert uses mainly abaca fibers from banana plants but also flax). That her last name could be translated as "greenhouse" makes it even more fun.
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Chateauvert uses her jewelry to poke gentle fun at human pretense: She has two pendants of abaca fig leaves that hang, more of less, at hip level, titled "Adam" and "Eve, (Clothes Optional)." ("Ophelia" is a wreath of leaves, the only crown that unhappy prince's fiancee ever wore.) Chateauvert juxtaposes "industrial art" and personal adornment with a pin called "Electrolux" - it could be an elegant insect as easily as a canister vacuum - and companion earrings that are uprights. "Volume I, Pulp Fiction Series" is a miniature book whose sterling silver cover is covered in what could be cave drawings, twigs, code or a landscape half-erased by snow: You write the story.

In her largest pieces, Chateauvert requires the viewer to transplant herself, in a way. She makes a sunflower into a wall sconce -- like Alice, we are blossom-high -- and lights a canoe-like bed of reeds from below so the "ground" seems to be shifting beneath us. "Lily Clouds" is an overhead installation of parasol-like flax flowers; we could be underwater in a lily pond or in a field beneath the skies. It is ineffably peaceful. -- [At the Renwck, Beauty Grounded in Nature, By Eve Zibart, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, April 13, 2007]

''As the hand papermaker for my lighted sculptures, I am in continuous dialogue with the material itself. I allow my hands to respond to the paper and inform me.''

Jocelyn Châteauvert works facing the ocean which is just minutes from her studio. She makes all of the paper for her lighted sculptures with her own hands. As her hands draw the paper pulp mold through the vat, her motions mimic the waves of the sea. Once the pulp has been drawn from the vat, she rolls the mold onto woolen blankets. She presses the mold firmly in order to mingle the fibers into sheets. Her fingers work the fibers to imprint, crease, fold, and pinch the paper into form. The paper responds to her touch and to the air as it takes form. Châteauvert uses traditional papermaking techniques and plant fibers such as abaca, Manila hemp, or flax. She works with the paper while it’s still wet so the textures will become intrinsic to the paper. The paper itself is archival and with proper care, will last for hundreds of years.

[|Artist Biography] SAAM Collections Page
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