The paper sculptures of Crissy Arseneau’s ‘Cloud City’ are inspired by the reflections in the glass towers that fill Vancouver, with the cloud-filled sky they obscure mirrored back through an infinity of windows.

Most prominent are repeating cloud formations, layered through and upon one another, with slivered gradients of colour peeking through. Intertwined with them are hard-edge geometrics, both cut and debossed, that represent our human interventions. Although leaving their mark, their small role denotes our place in the vastness of the more than human world.

Constructed with hand-cut and hand-painted watercolour paper, these delicate materials come together in each piece in support of one another. Though more robust as a whole, they retain some of their fragility and must be handled with care. Floating on a solidly coloured background and protected behind glass, each dimensional piece becomes a crystalized instant, inviting the viewer to look closely, to consider, to contemplate.

The resulting compositions reflect our desire for order and material comforts while giving prominence to the vastness and beauty of the natural world – that which truly sustains us. Each piece appeals to the viewer to look up and take in the world deeply, at the pace of nature.

Artist Bio

Born in Quesnel, British Columbia, Crissy Arseneau is a Canadian artist who lives and works in Vancouver. Working primarily in hand-painted and hand-cut paper, her paper sculpture and collage work explores attention and contemplation, order and repetition, memory and place, our relationship with nature, and the spaces where the natural and built environments meet. The stylized and
abstracted elements in her multi-plane paintings rise above each other, supported with colour, shape, line, and shadow, to create quietly thoughtful scenes for looking at and into.

Arseneau is a member of the All Together Artist Collective with whom she shows regularly. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and alternative art spaces in British Columbia, including the Vancouver International Airport, with pieces held in private collections in North America and the UK.