Christina Lihan is an artist creating architectural reliefs by intricately hand cutting paper. Formally trained as an architect, she has turned her talents from the built form to sculpting paper into architecture. Her works are sculptural, three-dimensional reliefs of skyscrapers, cityscapes, historic buildings, and European and American landmarks. She carves, cuts, scores, bends and folds watercolor paper by hand to form facades that come alive with shadows, texture, light and details. Ms. Lihan received her Bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and went on to get her Master’s in Architecture from Columbia University in N.Y.C. She has done architectural internships in London, Italy and Paris. Upon graduating from Columbia she received a fellowship to study in Czechoslovakia where she studied socialist housing. These buildings influenced the way Ms. Lihan looked at building facades, the repetitive, monotonous rhythm of hundreds of soviet-built housing “cities”. Moving to Paris for two years to work as an architect, she reveled in the wealth of historic architecture of the city. For more information or to get in touch with Christina, just follow the link below. “I usually start my pieces with sketches, sketched on site and from my imagination. If the piece is from existing buildings or homes, I will take the photos on site, if possible, or ask the client for photos.
I will show the client the composition, make adjustments, and then start cutting! In the case of the two huge pieces for The Spire in midtown Atlanta, I drew charcoal sketches at roughly a tenth of the scale, then enlarged each sketch to the exact size of the piece. From this enlarged drawing, I will lay out the buildings and start cutting! The sketch in all cases acts as my “template” which I cut the paper from. I am constantly resizing the cut pieces and going back and forth to get the perspective as accurate as I can.
I don’t construct any pieces with a measured perspective, I just eyeball everything (quite the opposite from a trained architect’s way of working!). The images on this page show the process of putting together some larger pieces. The Spire pieces were each 4′ x 8′ and are of the downtown and midtown Atlanta skylines.” For more information, just follow the link below.
