The sought-after Brooklyn artist makes her living creating
sculptures out of paper. Although she’s well known for
dresses, fruits, and stars, some of her most exceptional work
has been with flowers. “My priorities in making art have
always been beauty, color, and silhouette. Flowers have
all three.”
I also collaborated with Ruffian on a
third historical costume paper dress
for the opening gala of the “Slash:
Paper under the Knife” exhibition at the
Museum of Art and Design.
I am constantly attracted to the place
where fashion and art hold hands.
Where did you start your career? I worked on a windows/visual team in Chicago
for Saks Fifth Avenue. It was there that I met Brian and Claude from Ruffian and
stayed in touch with them over the years. When I moved to New York I helped them
out for a couple weeks before fashion week, and assisted backstage for their SS06
collection show, and since that collection I’ve tried to helped them every fashion
week I could.
The first project we collaborated on was an event that the New York Observer
was hosting. The party was a paper soirée and Ruffian asked me to collaborate
with them to create a historical costume paper dress that would be on display at
the party.
That was the first paper dress I built. The next one was for Anthropologie. That
dress was on display at the New York City flagship store and was a Baroque design
inspired by the Velázquez painting Las Meninas.
How did you start making flowers?
I have been really lucky to work with
Macy’s, one of my favorite clients! I had
been in contact with Macy’s because
I was very eager to work with them
and they asked me if I had ever done
flowers, so after a lot of trial and error,
I was able to start coming up with
shapes that worked. So then I (and
my team of very talented assistants)
created thousands of paper flowers
that we assembled into garlands and
headdresses for the mannequins that
