Su Blackwell is a textile artist, theatre designer and fine artist. She studied textiles at The Royal College of Art and has always been interested in the sculptural potential of materials, experimenting as a student with electroplating fabric to create new forms. Since graduating in 2003 she has worked in many areas of the arts, including theatre design and illustration, but her main focus is in creating unique artworks using paper and found objects, with a particular interest in books as both conceptual source material and physical media. Over time she has developed her technique to produce increasingly complex structures that push the boundaries of the sculptural possibilities of paper.
Taking inspiration from the stories contained in the books she finds, Blackwell creates three-dimensional dioramas that rise up and out of their pages. The artist builds narratives that can be interpreted in various ways. Her work has been described as ‘weaving with words’ inviting viewers to ‘step into a paper kingdom’. Fairy and folk tales have a particular resonance for the artist.
In this work, Blackwell has drawn inspiration from Ivan Bilibin's 1901 illustrations to the Russian tale Vasilisa the Beautiful. Using an English modern copy of this book, she has created a three-dimensional scene showing Vasilisa approaching the lit hut of Baba Yaga, in the depths of the woods. The book on which the scene unfolds is a 1967 copy of Frederick Warne's Russian Fairy Tales.
A copy of the 1901 Russian edition of Vasilisa the Beautiful (Vasilisa prekrasnaia), a masterpiece of early 20th-century Russian illustration, is in the National Art Library (Museum no: L.2688-1963).