Jill Sylvia is extremely interested in financial data and transactions, but not in the way that you might think. The artist takes sheets of lined paper found in ledgers and other financial paperwork and meticulously cuts out bits of the page to build these incredible three dimensional paper sculptures. Using a drafting knife, she carefully removes all of the blank boxes, leaving just the lines to form the basic structure of the page, and sculpts them into these exceptionally detailed buildings.
When asked about the theme of her work, she said, “I’m interested in exploring ideas about serial structure, currency, our financial architecture, capital as an ungrounded sign (the dematerialization of capital), and ‘value’ in general.”
The function of the paper changes as each sheet becomes part of an intricate framework for complex architectural structures including the New York Stock Exchange, The Jefferson Memorial, the U.S. Capitol Building, The White House, and the U.S. Treasury Building. The San Francisco-based artist says, “The skeletal pages drape and accumulate, demarcate the time cost for their creation, and become the buildings for which they have laid the groundwork.”
