Senior Art Exhibit 2005: Hilary Scott

As an artist, the creative process is fascinating to me. Steps are taken along the way with an outcome that may reflect the journey. The paper airplane is a juvenile masterpiece. It is a sculpture made out of an everyday desk supply. It is often the result of boredom with a mind and goal in play. The concept that anyone, even a child, can create something that has the ability to fly in less than a minute is fantastical. The paper airplane makes your average anybody an inventor, an artist, and a magician. But the form itself, beyond its means, is beautifully simple and is a graceful reflection of its possible flight. Light is cast and thrown by the directions of the folds as a flat surface is given life. Two dimensions become three. Just as the steps taken to construct an artwork show the inner workings of its creator, the folds made to accomplish what is ultimately a toy search for a history of their own.

In this body of work I have explored the creative processes of making paper airplanes. Designs of all shapes and sizes exist with the same goal in this subject. My paintings explore this creative process of what a paper airplane is and what is becomes. Here, layers of paint replicate what paper achieves as it goes. Each fold leaves behind a history that impacts the visual presence of the next fold. The beginning and the end are represented as one. I have worked to draw attention to a subject or object not often noticed for its aesthetic beauty and intellectual complexity. My hope is that the viewer sees something more than a classroom mischief toy to find imagination from the metamorphosis, and a joy that even the youngest of students can discover in the beauty of the simpler things of life.