Yaniv’s surprisingly colorful dolls are made solely from scraps of newspaper (and no paint!).
Israeli artist Liat Yaniv‘s creativity – like that of many before here – was fueled by a shortage of materials and resources. When she was an art student in Denmark she had limited funds, and so she began to find ways to use the ubiquitous and free materials around her – such as the daily newspaper. She did not use the newspaper to create papier mache, though, which is what many end up doing with newspaper. She used the colored sections of the newspaper to make idiosyncratic eco-friendly dolls with surprising amounts of character and presence.
A self-proclaimed “Paper Worker”, Yaniv has developed her technique and builds her dolls from rings of paper with glue. She waits for each ring to dry before adding the next, until the rings are firm and create a hollow form for the dolls. The dolls are then covered with a surface made out of carefully selected pieces of colored newspaper.
Each doll can take several weeks to complete.
In her own words, Yaniv says that “I do not produce garbage. I work entirely from things I have at home. In the morning I get the newspaper, and in the evening, I cut out all the color pieces from it. This process has been going for over 9 years, and I manage to collect a wide variety of colors. This is a range of colors I would not be able to find in any store.”
“The materials that I love the most are those that are in daily use, that people take for granted and do not pay attention to,” she says. “It is my goal to make people look at them differently. Some people find it hard to believe that such colorful work is made from the newspaper they read every day.”
To learn more about Liat Yaniv and her work, visit her website.
Read more about eco-friendly doll designers::
Green Lullaby Makes Recycled Dollhouses and Doll Cradles
Dria Peterson’s Handmade Creations, Born From a Genealogy of Vegetarianism and Recycling
Manuella Design Dolls Never Run Out of Steam
Neta in Wonderland (via Tel Aviv)
Author: Karen Chernick
Much to the disappointment of her Moroccan grandmother, Karen became a vegetarian at the age of seven because of a heartfelt respect for other forms of life. She also began her journey to understand her surroundings and her impact on the environment. She even starting an elementary school Ecology Club and an environmental newsletter in the 3rd grade. (The proceeds of the newsletter went to non-profit environmental organizations, of course.) She now studies in New York. Karen can be reached at karen (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
