wood+paper+box in your hands
2023 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Gift Print
October 3, 2023–May 3, 2024
Virtual exhibition launch: spring 2024
Katie Baldwin, Mariko Jesse, and Yoonmi Nam are the artists behind the collective called wood+paper+box. They are also the creators of this year’s Gift Print and the focus of the exhibition wood+paper+box in your hands.
Works by this artist-collective engage their audience not only visually but also through touch and interaction. The exhibition features the four works created to date, each a handmade box approximately 10 x 8 inches in size, containing several prints. Many of the prints reside in a sleeve or envelope and require viewers to pull them out and unfold or unroll them. Each artist starts by making one work and sending it to the other two. They respond by creating and mailing their next prints. The exchange repeats three to six times. The process requires all works to adhere to the requirements of U.S. Postal Service mail, that is, be able to be flattened and small enough to fit in an envelope.
In the exhibition, visitors can handle and interact with a sample gift print, Mise-en-Scène. The title refers to stage design and the arrangement of actors in a theatre or film production. Viewers can contribute to wood+paper+box’s ongoing visual dialogue by posting images of their own arrangements of prints from the box on Instagram, using the hashtag #woodpaperbox.
The idea of creating art through dialogue started when Baldwin, Jesse, and Nam attended a mokuhanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing) residency in Japan in 2004. They decided to extend the benefits of working and living together by forming the collective. Each year the artists reunite to create work and inspire one another. The model they practice is based on a willingness to let go of individual authorship to create art founded on friendship and mutual care. In the current challenging social and political time, wood+paper+box offers a moment to slow down and share in the beauty and comfort of communal creativity.
The 2023 Gift Print Mise-en-Scène is available to the public for purchase. Friends of the Beach Museum of Art at any level receive a 25% discount on the price. For more information about becoming a Friend or purchasing a gift print, please call 785-532-7718 or email beachart@ksu.edu.
Major Sponsors: The Alms Group, Greater Manhattan Community Foundation’s Lincoln & Dorothy I. Deihl Community Grants Program
Click here to view the wood+paper+box in your hands exhibition brochure
Related event
wood+paper+box Artists Talk by Katie Baldwin, Mariko Jesse and Yoonmi Nam
Thursday, November 2, 2023, 5:30 p.m.
Beach Museum of Art
Free and open to the public