Building Blocks

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 11, 6-8pm at Open Studio

Eighty fully dimensional cardboard houses were constructed to be photographed as illustrations for a picture book. The original shoebox-scale structures were detailed on all sides, yet nearly all would appear only face-on and no taller than one inch in the final publication. In Building Blocks, Claudine Crangle constructs, deconstructs, and reconstructs these original ephemeral works using only the one-sided information that remains. The project explores an adapted approach to building only what is needed to tell the story, and through this process, Crangle reflects on her own creative practice, questioning what drives her to overbuild when so much of the work is ultimately lost in translation.

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Claudine Crangle is a multidisciplinary artist who writes and illustrates picture books for children. Her books have been published in Canada and the United States and translated internationally. Beyond traditional publishing, she creates artist books, sculptural prints, and other oddities that combine intaglio and screenprinting techniques with built paper structures.