A textile designer with a life-long penchant for all things paper, there are few materials we love more. Imagine them used in combination and the possibilities soar. Cue Karen Barbé and her paper studies – one part textile structure, one part ingenious work of art.
Barbé, a designer based in Chile, specializing in woven and embroidered textiles, creates a world of pattern and color in her work. To a trained textile eye, these simple paper studies capture the foundation of woven color effect, patterns created by the interlacing of ‘yarns’ in a sequence predetermined by the weaver. To admirers from afar, intricate layers of material transparency. Add a palette cool and crisp as the coastal surf, and each is as graphically different as one beach from the next.
Images courtesy of Karen Barbe.