If you think paper is just for notebooks and sketches, prepare to have your mind completely blown. Bristol-based artist Diana Beltrán Herrera is pushing the absolute limits of the medium, creating spectacularly elaborate sculptures of flora and fauna using bright, colorful sheets. Over the last few years, her incredible paper sculpture art has grown massively in both scale and subject matter. By introducing fresh materials like cardboard, paperboard, and thread, she’s managed to evolve her three-dimensional forms into something truly spectacular.
Lately, Herrera has moved from her gorgeous, signature flower structures and crisp leaf patterns into a totally new territory: mesmerizing coral formations. Coral reefs are famous for their complex, mind-bending geometry, making them a fascinating challenge to recreate by hand. To pull this off, she’s been using thread as a clever structural tool to sketch, connect, and build out dozens of colorful iterations packed with intricate tentacles and delicate skeletons. It’s a brilliant crossover where paper craft borrows techniques traditionally reserved for textiles!
When she isn’t busy creating pieces for her personal collection, she’s designing massive commissioned works for clients all over the globe. In fact, she is sending her very first family of coral research works to the Deutsches Museum in Munich for a huge installation opening at the end of June. Her spectacular paper sculpture art completely redefines what can be achieved with simple materials, and I am officially captivated by every single fold.
