Making Art with Old Tax Returns

Recycling takes on a whole new meaning with artist Nava Lubelski! She creates cellular sculptures using tightly rolled paper scrolls made entirely of tax returns, rejection letters and other collected waste paper. Lubelski shares that her work explores the contradictions between the impulse to destroy and the compulsion to mend.

“[They] reconfigure a mass of paper that has been grouped and saved due to written content, into slabs reminiscent of tree cross-sections where the climate of a given year, and the tree's overall age are visible in a single slice," says Lubelski of her shreeded paper sculptures.

"Historical information is revealed in the colors of deposit slips, pay stubs, receipts and tax forms. The cellular coils spiral outward, mimicking biological growth, as they are glued together into flat rounds, which suggest lichen, doilies or disease. The re-use of paper, as well as the attempted 'repair' of the long-lost original tree, is an examination of feelings of despair about waste and unsustainability while simultaneously responding to the shadow impulse to hoard and keep what is no longer needed."

Unfortunately, this medium may not last long with the advent of new paperless tax software.





Nava Lubelski's website
via [This is Colossal]