Since 2014, when she created a huge hand-cut paper backdrop for the ELLE Style Awards in Denmark, she changed course in her artistic career, turning her attention to paper as her chosen medium. Marianne turns paper into voluminous, multi-colored and multi-layered formations shaped as flowers, organic growths and fantastical creatures.
To achieve this riotous expression, she eschews templates or measuring and relies on 3D freehand cutting and draping, finding inspiration in hands-on work with her material. Building upon her slogan from her former Daughters of Style fashion label, she now transforms standard printer paper, tissue paper and other commonplace paper into lush, dream-like artistic objects.
To reach as wide an audience as possible, she favors the public realm over museum exhibitions, and has had her paper artworks exhibited in shops and shop windows from Copenhagen to Sydney with selected clients such as: Karl Lagerfeld/Fendi, Elie Saab, Elle Denmark, Fiskars, Ganni, Georg Jensen, Hermès, L’Oréal, MAC Cosmetics, Max Factor, Narciso Rodriguez, Ole Lynggaard Copenhagen, Pandora/Disney Jewelry, Royal Copenhagen and Viktor & Rolf.
I am a paper artist and work in a backyard in Frederiksberg. My microscopic workshop is stuffed to the brim with paper, and no matter where you look, you spot works I have created from paper: roses, leaves, large masks and a network of plant roots that grow from the ceiling.
I often say to visitors, while showing them my papers and running my hands over the tissue on my desk, “Just as you need food in your stomach and clothes on your body, so do you think you need beauty. Not necessarily a streamlined minimalist beauty, but a beauty that requires no preconditions and which, regardless of background and age, just seems beautiful.”
My beauty hangs right above my head. It is a huge rose that I have created from millimeter-thin layers of tissue paper. About 1000 pieces of paper have gone to the rose, and I dare not think at all about how many hours I have spent creating it. But it also doesn’t really matter.
For the past five years, everything has been about paper in my working life. My large flowers are used in the windows of Royal Copenhagen at Amagertorv in Copenhagen. Designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Viktor & Rolf have used my flowers. I have exhibited at Voergaard Castle and at Homo Faber, Best of Europe, for the Michelangelo and Cini Foundations in Venice, Italy as well as at Mindcraft ’17 for the Danish Arts Foundation
in San Simpliciano, Milan, Italy. Fashion stores and beauty shops love my expression, and unfortunately I have to say no to more opportunities than I say yes.
I work mainly with a classic silk tissue paper. I buy it locally in Scandinavia and in the same colors that anyone can get. I could not dream of buying something precious like a very special colored paper in Japan that was only created for me. I’d rather use what’s available. If I could design the paper myself, it wouldn’t inspire me. Now I have to make every effort to get something flavorful out of all these ordinary colors. I really like that. I’ve always been more of a maximalist than a minimalist.
As a starting point, tissue paper is rather weak, but my large flowers are so strong that they can withstand a little pressure. If they fall down and land on their heads, they won’t break. The many layers of paper reinforce each other, which means that when I create my flowers, I actually transform a weak material into something strong. I change a humble material that no one thinks much of to become a luxury object.
I do not work from sketches, but I do have an inner picture of what my works should look like. Before creating a work for a customer, I interview the person and may visit the place where my flowers should hang, so that I can match colors to the contexts in which they are to be displayed.
I “paint” with the layers of colored paper that should be in the flowers, and I set limits for myself. For example, I can decide that there should be only three colors in a flower, which I have to make into a fourth color. If I have a completely free frame, I end up hyperventilating and having trouble creating something.
I’ve decided that the bit of beauty I might have inside just goes out.
I am also a trained clothing designer from the Danish Design School. I chose the unique institute of the program (and not the industrial institute) and moved in an artistic direction. Already back then, I was a little away from the fact that things needed to be physically necessary, and I had to invent some reasons why I should do unicating if I was to survive in the fashion industry. By creating clothing that was considered to be avant-garde–thanks in part to the dark colors and the heavy use of leather–I became part of the Danish fashion scene under the brand Daughters of Style.
In 2013, however, I could no longer stay away from the paper I had always gravitated to and which I threw myself into as a child, drawing on brochures, newspapers, magazines and any other paper I could get my hands on. When I was going to a big birthday that year with my cousin, Jesper Eis Eriksen, I decided to create something for him out of paper. I didn’t know what to give him, but I had always saved gift wrap, so from my stock of that I created a huge collage–a life tree that he became very fond of.
It gave me “blood on my tooth,” and I showed the tree to Royal Copenhagen and Birger Christensen, both of whom have flagship stores in the middle of Copenhagen city. They got so excited that I ended up decorating the Christmas windows at Birger Christensen and later the Easter windows at Royal Copenhagen. In the spring of 2015, I happened to get a concussion and could not look at a mobile phone or a computer, but I could always work with paper. And I have been doing that ever since.
Something must be small before it can be big, humble before it can be flashy–it is the contrast of nature that carries opulence within it and triggers our imagination.
I love “baking” with the paper. Making life with it. When I make a flower it’s about getting a lot of sheets of tissue on the table and then figuring out what I can get out of them. Then I forget about time and place. I always make one-off paper creations. I have rarely let myself be dictated by tradition or convention in my work with paper, or any other material. This is, in part, probably my artistic justification. Personally, I feel that I work in a field where arts and craft overlap liberally.
I work artistically and intuitively but on the basis of a very wide and lifelong crafting experience. I would hardly have been able to work so intensely and so artistically far into a given material had I not also been trained as a craftsman. I use (or choose not to use) both when I seek out a new interpretation of a material or when I develop new techniques. It’s all in the hands, so to speak. I want to enter into a dialogue with the material. Work my way into it. I enjoy exploring and investigating rather than mere re-working. How far can I “stretch” paper?
To me, my flowers are the symbols of me starting all over again as an artist.
My artistic sphere is like that of nature: numerous little individual parts that make up a whole, from cell to organism. Micro to macro. Contrasts, symmetry, harmony. By my hand, the paper is returned to the organic material from which it originates. It is given the tactility and texture to resemble wood, plant parts, papyrus. I treat the paper firmly as if it were rope, bark or branches–I also treat it delicately like dried grass or porous petals.
My approach is rooted in my upbringing in the countryside and I feel that my artistic expression is anchored in nature and in Danish folk art. Thrift, hard work and industry are required in order for my artworks to grow into something other than the tissue they were. In my re-working, the tissue paper may become roots of the triffid, a large, invasive or menacing-looking plant, or may also become that of the rose.
I don’t currently ship internationally, but I’m searching for business partners that can make this a cost-effective option for me. I work in the intersection between art and craft, and I believe there are many possibilities in each direction. I’m open to any proposal in this arena. Having the ability to ship my art to international customers would be a dream come true!
Photo by Marie Louise Munkegaard
Since 2014, when she created a huge hand-cut paper backdrop for the ELLE Style Awards in Denmark, she changed course in her artistic career, turning her attention to paper as her chosen medium. Marianne turns paper into voluminous, multi-colored and multi-layered formations shaped as flowers, organic growths and fantastical creatures.
To achieve this riotous expression, she eschews templates or measuring and relies on 3D freehand cutting and draping, finding inspiration in hands-on work with her material. Building upon her slogan from her former Daughters of Style fashion label, she now transforms standard printer paper, tissue paper and other commonplace paper into lush, dream-like artistic objects.
To reach as wide an audience as possible, she favors the public realm over museum exhibitions, and has had her paper artworks exhibited in shops and shop windows from Copenhagen to Sydney with selected clients such as: Karl Lagerfeld/Fendi, Elie Saab, Elle Denmark, Fiskars, Ganni, Georg Jensen, Hermès, L’Oréal, MAC Cosmetics, Max Factor, Narciso Rodriguez, Ole Lynggaard Copenhagen, Pandora/Disney Jewelry, Royal Copenhagen and Viktor & Rolf.
I am a paper artist and work in a backyard in Frederiksberg. My microscopic workshop is stuffed to the brim with paper, and no matter where you look, you spot works I have created from paper: roses, leaves, large masks and a network of plant roots that grow from the ceiling.
I often say to visitors, while showing them my papers and running my hands over the tissue on my desk, “Just as you need food in your stomach and clothes on your body, so do you think you need beauty. Not necessarily a streamlined minimalist beauty, but a beauty that requires no preconditions and which, regardless of background and age, just seems beautiful.”
My beauty hangs right above my head. It is a huge rose that I have created from millimeter-thin layers of tissue paper. About 1000 pieces of paper have gone to the rose, and I dare not think at all about how many hours I have spent creating it. But it also doesn’t really matter.
For the past five years, everything has been about paper in my working life. My large flowers are used in the windows of Royal Copenhagen at Amagertorv in Copenhagen. Designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Viktor & Rolf have used my flowers. I have exhibited at Voergaard Castle and at Homo Faber, Best of Europe, for the Michelangelo and Cini Foundations in Venice, Italy as well as at Mindcraft ’17 for the Danish Arts Foundation
in San Simpliciano, Milan, Italy. Fashion stores and beauty shops love my expression, and unfortunately I have to say no to more opportunities than I say yes.
I work mainly with a classic silk tissue paper. I buy it locally in Scandinavia and in the same colors that anyone can get. I could not dream of buying something precious like a very special colored paper in Japan that was only created for me. I’d rather use what’s available. If I could design the paper myself, it wouldn’t inspire me. Now I have to make every effort to get something flavorful out of all these ordinary colors. I really like that. I’ve always been more of a maximalist than a minimalist.
As a starting point, tissue paper is rather weak, but my large flowers are so strong that they can withstand a little pressure. If they fall down and land on their heads, they won’t break. The many layers of paper reinforce each other, which means that when I create my flowers, I actually transform a weak material into something strong. I change a humble material that no one thinks much of to become a luxury object.
I do not work from sketches, but I do have an inner picture of what my works should look like. Before creating a work for a customer, I interview the person and may visit the place where my flowers should hang, so that I can match colors to the contexts in which they are to be displayed.
I “paint” with the layers of colored paper that should be in the flowers, and I set limits for myself. For example, I can decide that there should be only three colors in a flower, which I have to make into a fourth color. If I have a completely free frame, I end up hyperventilating and having trouble creating something.
I’ve decided that the bit of beauty I might have inside just goes out.
I am also a trained clothing designer from the Danish Design School. I chose the unique institute of the program (and not the industrial institute) and moved in an artistic direction. Already back then, I was a little away from the fact that things needed to be physically necessary, and I had to invent some reasons why I should do unicating if I was to survive in the fashion industry. By creating clothing that was considered to be avant-garde–thanks in part to the dark colors and the heavy use of leather–I became part of the Danish fashion scene under the brand Daughters of Style.
In 2013, however, I could no longer stay away from the paper I had always gravitated to and which I threw myself into as a child, drawing on brochures, newspapers, magazines and any other paper I could get my hands on. When I was going to a big birthday that year with my cousin, Jesper Eis Eriksen, I decided to create something for him out of paper. I didn’t know what to give him, but I had always saved gift wrap, so from my stock of that I created a huge collage–a life tree that he became very fond of.
It gave me “blood on my tooth,” and I showed the tree to Royal Copenhagen and Birger Christensen, both of whom have flagship stores in the middle of Copenhagen city. They got so excited that I ended up decorating the Christmas windows at Birger Christensen and later the Easter windows at Royal Copenhagen. In the spring of 2015, I happened to get a concussion and could not look at a mobile phone or a computer, but I could always work with paper. And I have been doing that ever since.
Something must be small before it can be big, humble before it can be flashy–it is the contrast of nature that carries opulence within it and triggers our imagination.
I love “baking” with the paper. Making life with it. When I make a flower it’s about getting a lot of sheets of tissue on the table and then figuring out what I can get out of them. Then I forget about time and place. I always make one-off paper creations. I have rarely let myself be dictated by tradition or convention in my work with paper, or any other material. This is, in part, probably my artistic justification. Personally, I feel that I work in a field where arts and craft overlap liberally.
I work artistically and intuitively but on the basis of a very wide and lifelong crafting experience. I would hardly have been able to work so intensely and so artistically far into a given material had I not also been trained as a craftsman. I use (or choose not to use) both when I seek out a new interpretation of a material or when I develop new techniques. It’s all in the hands, so to speak. I want to enter into a dialogue with the material. Work my way into it. I enjoy exploring and investigating rather than mere re-working. How far can I “stretch” paper?
To me, my flowers are the symbols of me starting all over again as an artist.
My artistic sphere is like that of nature: numerous little individual parts that make up a whole, from cell to organism. Micro to macro. Contrasts, symmetry, harmony. By my hand, the paper is returned to the organic material from which it originates. It is given the tactility and texture to resemble wood, plant parts, papyrus. I treat the paper firmly as if it were rope, bark or branches–I also treat it delicately like dried grass or porous petals.
My approach is rooted in my upbringing in the countryside and I feel that my artistic expression is anchored in nature and in Danish folk art. Thrift, hard work and industry are required in order for my artworks to grow into something other than the tissue they were. In my re-working, the tissue paper may become roots of the triffid, a large, invasive or menacing-looking plant, or may also become that of the rose.
I don’t currently ship internationally, but I’m searching for business partners that can make this a cost-effective option for me. I work in the intersection between art and craft, and I believe there are many possibilities in each direction. I’m open to any proposal in this arena. Having the ability to ship my art to international customers would be a dream come true!
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Photo by Marie Louise Munkegaard
Since 2014, when she created a huge hand-cut paper backdrop for the ELLE Style Awards in Denmark, she changed course in her artistic career, turning her attention to paper as her chosen medium. Marianne turns paper into voluminous, multi-colored and multi-layered formations shaped as flowers, organic growths and fantastical creatures.
To achieve this riotous expression, she eschews templates or measuring and relies on 3D freehand cutting and draping, finding inspiration in hands-on work with her material. Building upon her slogan from her former Daughters of Style fashion label, she now transforms standard printer paper, tissue paper and other commonplace paper into lush, dream-like artistic objects.
To reach as wide an audience as possible, she favors the public realm over museum exhibitions, and has had her paper artworks exhibited in shops and shop windows from Copenhagen to Sydney with selected clients such as: Karl Lagerfeld/Fendi, Elie Saab, Elle Denmark, Fiskars, Ganni, Georg Jensen, Hermès, L’Oréal, MAC Cosmetics, Max Factor, Narciso Rodriguez, Ole Lynggaard Copenhagen, Pandora/Disney Jewelry, Royal Copenhagen and Viktor & Rolf.
I am a paper artist and work in a backyard in Frederiksberg. My microscopic workshop is stuffed to the brim with paper, and no matter where you look, you spot works I have created from paper: roses, leaves, large masks and a network of plant roots that grow from the ceiling.
I often say to visitors, while showing them my papers and running my hands over the tissue on my desk, “Just as you need food in your stomach and clothes on your body, so do you think you need beauty. Not necessarily a streamlined minimalist beauty, but a beauty that requires no preconditions and which, regardless of background and age, just seems beautiful.”
My beauty hangs right above my head. It is a huge rose that I have created from millimeter-thin layers of tissue paper. About 1000 pieces of paper have gone to the rose, and I dare not think at all about how many hours I have spent creating it. But it also doesn’t really matter.
For the past five years, everything has been about paper in my working life. My large flowers are used in the windows of Royal Copenhagen at Amagertorv in Copenhagen. Designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Viktor & Rolf have used my flowers. I have exhibited at Voergaard Castle and at Homo Faber, Best of Europe, for the Michelangelo and Cini Foundations in Venice, Italy as well as at Mindcraft ’17 for the Danish Arts Foundation
in San Simpliciano, Milan, Italy. Fashion stores and beauty shops love my expression, and unfortunately I have to say no to more opportunities than I say yes.
I work mainly with a classic silk tissue paper. I buy it locally in Scandinavia and in the same colors that anyone can get. I could not dream of buying something precious like a very special colored paper in Japan that was only created for me. I’d rather use what’s available. If I could design the paper myself, it wouldn’t inspire me. Now I have to make every effort to get something flavorful out of all these ordinary colors. I really like that. I’ve always been more of a maximalist than a minimalist.
As a starting point, tissue paper is rather weak, but my large flowers are so strong that they can withstand a little pressure. If they fall down and land on their heads, they won’t break. The many layers of paper reinforce each other, which means that when I create my flowers, I actually transform a weak material into something strong. I change a humble material that no one thinks much of to become a luxury object.
I do not work from sketches, but I do have an inner picture of what my works should look like. Before creating a work for a customer, I interview the person and may visit the place where my flowers should hang, so that I can match colors to the contexts in which they are to be displayed.
I “paint” with the layers of colored paper that should be in the flowers, and I set limits for myself. For example, I can decide that there should be only three colors in a flower, which I have to make into a fourth color. If I have a completely free frame, I end up hyperventilating and having trouble creating something.
I’ve decided that the bit of beauty I might have inside just goes out.
I am also a trained clothing designer from the Danish Design School. I chose the unique institute of the program (and not the industrial institute) and moved in an artistic direction. Already back then, I was a little away from the fact that things needed to be physically necessary, and I had to invent some reasons why I should do unicating if I was to survive in the fashion industry. By creating clothing that was considered to be avant-garde–thanks in part to the dark colors and the heavy use of leather–I became part of the Danish fashion scene under the brand Daughters of Style.
In 2013, however, I could no longer stay away from the paper I had always gravitated to and which I threw myself into as a child, drawing on brochures, newspapers, magazines and any other paper I could get my hands on. When I was going to a big birthday that year with my cousin, Jesper Eis Eriksen, I decided to create something for him out of paper. I didn’t know what to give him, but I had always saved gift wrap, so from my stock of that I created a huge collage–a life tree that he became very fond of.
It gave me “blood on my tooth,” and I showed the tree to Royal Copenhagen and Birger Christensen, both of whom have flagship stores in the middle of Copenhagen city. They got so excited that I ended up decorating the Christmas windows at Birger Christensen and later the Easter windows at Royal Copenhagen. In the spring of 2015, I happened to get a concussion and could not look at a mobile phone or a computer, but I could always work with paper. And I have been doing that ever since.
Something must be small before it can be big, humble before it can be flashy–it is the contrast of nature that carries opulence within it and triggers our imagination.
I love “baking” with the paper. Making life with it. When I make a flower it’s about getting a lot of sheets of tissue on the table and then figuring out what I can get out of them. Then I forget about time and place. I always make one-off paper creations. I have rarely let myself be dictated by tradition or convention in my work with paper, or any other material. This is, in part, probably my artistic justification. Personally, I feel that I work in a field where arts and craft overlap liberally.
I work artistically and intuitively but on the basis of a very wide and lifelong crafting experience. I would hardly have been able to work so intensely and so artistically far into a given material had I not also been trained as a craftsman. I use (or choose not to use) both when I seek out a new interpretation of a material or when I develop new techniques. It’s all in the hands, so to speak. I want to enter into a dialogue with the material. Work my way into it. I enjoy exploring and investigating rather than mere re-working. How far can I “stretch” paper?
To me, my flowers are the symbols of me starting all over again as an artist.
My artistic sphere is like that of nature: numerous little individual parts that make up a whole, from cell to organism. Micro to macro. Contrasts, symmetry, harmony. By my hand, the paper is returned to the organic material from which it originates. It is given the tactility and texture to resemble wood, plant parts, papyrus. I treat the paper firmly as if it were rope, bark or branches–I also treat it delicately like dried grass or porous petals.
My approach is rooted in my upbringing in the countryside and I feel that my artistic expression is anchored in nature and in Danish folk art. Thrift, hard work and industry are required in order for my artworks to grow into something other than the tissue they were. In my re-working, the tissue paper may become roots of the triffid, a large, invasive or menacing-looking plant, or may also become that of the rose.
I don’t currently ship internationally, but I’m searching for business partners that can make this a cost-effective option for me. I work in the intersection between art and craft, and I believe there are many possibilities in each direction. I’m open to any proposal in this arena. Having the ability to ship my art to international customers would be a dream come true!
The Women Create Foundation is a catalyst for small but significant strides to empower women creators through grants that help bring projects to life and foster innovation.
