We recently connected with Alex Wolf and have shared our conversation below.
Alex, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I started cutting paper my senior year of high school. I would make paper stencils by hand with an X-Acto knife as a way to transfer an image to ceramic. The stencils were simple, with a focus on contour. I used copy paper from the printer and each stencil was unusable after a single application. If the kiln process failed it meant creating another ceramic piece and another stencil. In that year, I made roughly fifty stencils.
After I graduated high school I didn’t cut paper until my senior year at Georgia College when I had to take a Drawing 1 class to complete my Art History major. I had a wonderful teacher who had pushed me to draw more than I had in my entire life. Our final project was to create a zine around a single theme using any medium of our choosing. I saw a stack of magazines and started flipping through an old National Geographic. I found myself looking at the photography. It was then that I thought I could make a stencil from the female figure in the photograph and overlay that onto another image from the article. The woman that emerged was abstracted, but defined by the contrast of the background image. The zine ended up being made of cut paper and collage focusing on the term “Mother Nature.” I finished the project, turned it in, and knew I found something I wanted to keep doing. I didn’t know what to call it until I found other paper artists on Instagram.
Looking back on my artistic journey I could have sped up my learning process if I had been less fearful and more willing to form personal connections.
I think that interpersonal skills and confidence are essential. Looking back, knowing what I know now, I think that I should have put myself out there more. I should have gone to more shows, more installations, more events.
It wasn’t until this last year and a half that I started really holding myself accountable and taking steps to better myself and my work.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I am an Atlanta-based paper artist creating original hand-cut paper art for gallery spaces, hotels, and homes. My style is linear and my subject matter is organic. Each piece is original, each subject drawn digitally using a continuous line, cut from paper by hand using an Ergo Kiwi and X-Acto blade, painted, and usually displayed in a floating frame.
I prefer to display my work in floating frames because it casts a shadow onto the wall or floor.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I believe that society can best support artists and the creative ecosystem by engaging with art and encouraging others to do so as well. By engaging with art I mean showing appreciation for art and artists and respect for art programs by: -visiting a gallery
-following and liking an artist’s work
-making a donation to an art program
-encouraging the next generation to express themselves through art
-vocalizing your interest in an artist’s work to anyone
By engaging with the community you are supporting artists and their creative process, and encouraging those that wish to pursue artistic endeavors in future.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I had utilized instagram in a more thoughtful manner, sooner. I know most people are angry with the algorithm, and I am not an advocate for it. But, despite all the trouble I have gone through for a limited social following, I am grateful for Instagram. It’s essentially a large visual search engine, an artist’s dream for research and study. Simply clicking on hashtags helped me to better define my process and style, as well as find and learn from others within my niche. As someone who struggles to put their work into words I found it very helpful.
Contact Info:
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Instagram: @[email protected]