Marcia Widenor : Shaper of Handmade Paper and Installations
Marcia Widenor is based in Sea Cliff, Long Island, and began working as a full time artist in 1984. She is known and highly regarded for installation work constructed out of handmade paper. During the 1970s, Widenor studied extensively with some of Long Island’s most accomplished artists and went on to experiment in making large-scale projects out of delicate paper.
Excerpt from Nada Marjanovich, Long Island Pulse (2016):
“For Widenor the appeal of working with cloth was the patterns, which is what led her to knitting. ‘I’m able to take an idea in my head and transform it into a three-dimensional thing. People make up their own stories about the work…. [But] you get the idea and then the materials take over and it isn’t that you’re thinking the whole time about the idea. You become enamored of your materials.’ Her first solo show, at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, was a springboard. Her statement from the exhibit focuses on the literal thread she’s weaving even today. ‘A length of linen cloth from a Pharaoh’s tomb, the linen bed sheets of my great-grandmother, a sheet of tough, translucent flax paper made in a New York City loft and a curtain of hand-spun flax string are all related. They come directly from organic materials. The picture formed in the mind’s eye gradually becomes a place, an enterable sculpture, a tent, a shelter, a hollow tree or cupboard. The installations emerge…from a yearning for safety and calm. The world is not safe or calm anymore.'”
Marcia Widenor 