Twist, fold, cut, glue paper, and out comes a beautiful multicolored pyramids wall art, a whimsical snowy village or a teddy bear napping on a cloud. We sat with Galia to learn about her paper art, the creativity behind it but also the mathematics.
Observe your surroundings, a tree, a bird, a balloon, the tiny little details that make up their forms, and close your eyes, can you now see it in your mind? Galia has a knack for seeing the essence of what’s around her, capturing a 3D shape in her mind, dissecting it into bits and pieces on 2D paper, only to reassemble the pieces to create her art. On recyclable paper made in Italy, Galia sketches, mainly polygones, but also other geometric shapes, one after the other, they are numbered, cut sometimes by laser, folded, glued or taped, and meticulously finished. The result? A sweet teddy bear to place in a child’s bedroom, a stork carrying a baby to adorn a wall, a woman in a little black dress carrying a shopping bag placed in a boutique, a wall transformed into the sky with hot air ballons, clouds and a little bit of sunshine, or a muticolored piece of art made up of pyramids in repetitive patterns, a play with shadows and light that makes the piece seem like it is in motion. But before moving to paper, Galia first works on her PC, shifting from one software to the other, Autocad, Illustrator and the likes ‘each one makes things easier in a way.’ She carries her pantone catalogue of colors, made out of all the papers she’s used over her projects, and sends color options for a custom piece. Origami, honeycomb technique, or assembling discarded nespresso capsules to create wall art, Galia loves to experiment, making sense out of small pieces, and crafting a beautiful, larger picture.
She shows us a little mouse’s face, and explains ‘the more curves there are, the more polygones are needed.’ This little mouse went to Dubai along with an elephant and a giraffe as the mascots for a pharma company’s convention there. In fact, more and more of her orders are for corporate events as companies embrace more sustainable materials, including for their marketing props. Galia has always loved looking at things around her, figuring the engineering behind them, how to recreate what she sees. She remembers during her brevet exam, after classes she would help her father who had a plexi factory in Syria, working on design softwares, laser cutting or showing the craftsmen how to assemble a piece. She learnt the craft on the job even before studying it. She moved to Lebanon where her grandmother lived, when the war began in Syria, and joined a plexi factory here. She remembers the first paper project they had, which consisted of creating five hundred flying birds for a convention. During the covid crisis, she had more time on her hands, and took her paper art to the next level. She began to do more research, and whenever she would spot an image she liked on Pinterest, she looked at how to make it; anything in 3D, how to convert it in 2D, then back to a 3D sculpture. Her art has traveled the world, to homes, weddings and events from Canada, to Ghana, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, and with her limitless creativity, Galia is always up for a new challenge, figuring out how to make art out of the world around us.
