Snow drifts and paper crystals: Kiersten Hassenfield

The Snow Queen, Illustration by Pauline Hohly

"The palace walls were drifting snow, and the windows and doors made by cutting winds. There were a hundred halls depending on the way the snow drifted. The biggest stretched for many miles. All were lit up by the fierce Northern Lights, which flashed so regularly that you could tell by counting when they were at their highest point and when they were at their lowest. In the middle of the empty, endless halls of snow, was a frozen lake. It had cracked into a thousand pieces, but each was so exactly like the next that it was quite a work of art..." - The Snow Queen, Hans Andersen, 1845

I recently dreamed of a paper house being folded in half. Peering outside our apartment in the morning the backyard landscape had shifted in the night - becoming piled with new sculpted forms, drifts and peaks of downy white snow. Montreal's snow banks have fluctuated this past week from blizzard heights to spring melt heaps and back again, emphasizing pink and blue tricks of light in their shadowed hollows. Vaguely haunted by shifting light and paper houses I was pleased to receive images of work by Kiersten Hassenfield from bespoke web designer Kevin Finlayson (www.dustandmold.net). Kirsten Hassenfield's translucent paper garlands, honeycomb spheres and paper crystals form large and small scale installations imbued with myths, fairytales and "archetypes of femininity, and ideas of chivalry". Her imaginary landscapes with their "constantly shifting sense of scale" and inter-folding detail create a shimmering paper world of Fabergé intensity.


Kirsten Hassenfield, Untitled (Hill) 22 x 16 x 16 inches, Paper with mixed media, 2007


Kirsten Hassenfield, Dollar Dreams 9’ x 12’ x 8’, Mixed Media, 2002


Kirsten Hassenfield, Pearl 25” x 34” x 34, Paper with Mixed Media, 2004


Kirsten Hassenfield, Untitled (Branch) [detail 2] Approx. 88 x 53 x 53 inches, Paper, polystyrene board, acrylic, pipecleaners, light fixture, Commissioned by Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, Texas/Photograph by Nash Baker, nashbaker.com, 2007

Kirsten Hassenfield is a New York based artist and is represented by the BellWether gallery (www.bellwethergallery.com).