Book artist, paper engineer, artist, photographer, teacher
Awards
Fulbright Scholarship, Leeway Transformation Award, En Foco New Award, Puffin Foundation Artist Grant, Society of Photographic Education Achievement Scholarship, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artist Fellowship
Colette Fu is a photographer, book artist and paper engineer based in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who makes pop-up books from her photographs. She teaches pop-up courses and community workshops with marginalized populations at various art centers, universities and institutions internationally.[3] Her large-scale, three-dimensional pop-up books feature photographic images which extend towards the viewer for many layers. During an artist residency in Shanghai, Fu designed China's largest
pop-up book. Pop-up and flap books originally illustrated sociological ideas and scientific principles; she constructs her own books on how our selves relate to society today. In 2008, Fu was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to create a pop-up book of the 25 ethnic minority groups residing in Yunnan Province, China, from where the artist's mother's family descends. 25 of 55 minority tribes of China reside in Yunnan and comprise less than 9% of the nation's population, with the Han representing the majority. She uses her artistic skills to spread knowledge and provide a brief portrait of their existence.[4][5][6][7]
Biography
Fu, born in
Princeton, New Jersey, is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. After graduating from the
University of Virginia, Fu traveled to China with a student tour and shortly returned for three years to teach English and, later, to study Mandarin and art. Fu traveled throughout
Yunnan, where her mother, member of the Nuosu
Yi community, was born, photographing various people in ethnic dress.[8] After returning to the United States, Fu studied photography at
Virginia Commonwealth University and
Rochester Institute of Technology, where she began collaging images into detailed hyperreal fantasy scenarios.[8]
We Are Tiger Dragon People, started in 2008, is a series of pop-up books showcasing the diversity of ethnic minority communities in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. The books feature aspects of the local culture: festivals, clothing, dance, folklore, deities, and people.[8]
Tao Hua Yuan Ji,[9] created at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, is the World's Largest Photo Book measuring 13.8 x 21 feet, and 5 feet high. People could enter into the pop-up book.
Fu's commercial clients for paper engineering have included LVMH, Vogue China, Canon Asia, Greenpeace and Children's Medical Center in Texas.[10] Fu's books are in collections including Library of Congress, Yale University, Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Technique
On a visit to her local
Borders Book Store, Fu stumbled onto
Robert Sabuda's Wizard of Oz pop-up book and was instantly enamored.[11] Fu then learned paper engineering mechanics by reverse engineering pop-up books purchased on eBay while attending numerous artist residencies.[12][13]
Each of Fu's pop-up books are a single, large format spread. A good variety of her pop-up books are based on her experiences traveling to China and learning about her culture. Fu creates a digital collage using her own photographs on her computer, then "works on the pop-up mechanisms that cause her composition to explode from the page."[14] Fu does all the work herself, including printing and binding, and each pop-up element is cut by hand. Some books include up to 40 photographs and measure 3 x 4.5 feet.[11] An average pop-up can take up to four weeks to design and build.[15]
Extended study of Chinese minorities
Colette Fu's projects have taken her across the globe and can take years to fully materialize. With the help of a Fulbright fellowship, a recent endeavor found her in southwest Yunnan Province, China, where she studied the local population, learned about their culture and immersed herself in the daily life of its people. The project took ten years to complete, but resulted in some of Fu's most notable work.[17][18]
Exhibitions
Year
Title
Location
2022
Medium & Message: The Book Art of Colette Fu and Lothar Meggendorfer[19]
The Rosenbach, Philadelphia, PA
2021
What the Butterfly Dragon Taught Me: Dimensional Stories in Paper[20]
Society of Photographic Education Achievement Scholarship, 2002[29]
Book contributions
Making Books with Kids: 25 Paper Projects to Fold, Sew, Paste, Pop, and Draw[38] by Esther K. Smith, 2016. Fu's Spinning Flower Pop-Up, page 83.
Playing with Pop-Ups: The Art of Dimensional, Moving Paper Designs[39] by
Helen Hiebert, 2014. Fu's pattern for a pop-up version of Philadelphia's First Bank of the United States is on pages 60–63.
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