Paperphile Artist Creates Cool Collages From Old Books and Photographs

By
Jas C
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Hollie Chastain is a Chattanooga-based “paperphile artist and illustrator” who has a goal of giving old books and photographs a new life by turning them into cool collages.

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Hello, all! And welcome, new friends. Over the last few days I've had a lot of questions come in about my paper weaving process so I went back into the very official studio documentation archives (random stuff on my phone) and found a few early images. This was the first woven piece that I put together and it wasn't planned out in advance. I was just antsy and bored from winter days and wanted to settle into a tedious process and started weaving together all the scraps and clippings on my desktop at the time. The textures are fun to build up and patterns and shapes reveal themselves in surprising ways as you go. I'll be teaching a series of workshops this coming year and this process will be a large part of that including a whole week at @arrowmont_school in July. Registration is open now and you can find that link through their website or it's also linked on the workshop page on my site in my profile. I'll keep all upcoming dates there and if you have a favorite space that offers classes in your area and want me to check it out let me know and we'll see if we can get it set up!

A post shared by Hollie Chastain (@holliechastain) on

According to this talented Tennessean, she was always intrigued by paper and would often collect it in various forms. Using it to make art was a natural step forward for her.

Chastain says that all her works have a story-telling quality, as she aims to create both visually pleasing artwork, but also one that will encourage the viewer to dive deeper into its message.

“What I adore about collage as a medium is the complete versatility and the allowances that it gives first time creators to play around with color and texture and composition without any “but I can’t draw” and “I’m not an artist” hang-ups,” Chastain explained in a recent interview with Colossal.

Check out some of her works below.