For her latest work, carved sculptural vessels that explore patterns in nature and the beauty of line, the Colorado artist Jennifer Falck Linssen has drawn on the venerable Japanese craft of katagami. These are the hand-carved paper stencils used in the printing and dyeing process called katazome, in which handmade mulberry paper is carved and printed through with rice paste resist on lengths of kimono fabric. Linssen, who has a degree in textile design from the University of Wisconsin and worked for several years as a designer of jacquard textiles, studied stencil carving with a master dyer and found herself drawn to this delicately wrought tool. “During the time I was practicing traditional katazome and katagami carving,” she says, “I began to feel the need to show and express the individuality and identity of the paper carving itself.” In the works for this show, Linssen has “recontextualized” the katagami stencil by playing out its sculptural, often basketlike, possibilities, combining the tracery of the carved paper with metal and natural woven elements, as seen in Beauty Within, 2007.

Linssen develops each piece through a series of sketches in which she refines its form and pattern. The final work is “engineered” out of flat paper—both handmade and found archival examples. She mocks up multiple pattern pieces to determine the shape of the sculpture, hand-carves the pattern pieces, which are then stitched and woven with metal and waxed linen. Her final steps are to dye, paint, patinate and varnish the piece.

What one notices most in these works is the artist’s preoccupation with patterns, especially those derived from nature. “I am particularly interested in how pattern lends overall strength to an object,” she says, “such as the veining in plant leaves, the structure of a moth’s wing, or the crystal formation of snowflakes.” Also integral to these pieces are the interaction of light, shifting shadows and the movement of the viewer, all of which keep Linssen “fascinated and motivated in my observation of the world around us.”