Hospitality Design - Marketplace Fall 2020 - 64

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Five artists use unconventional materials and outside influences to expand their canvases
By Matt Dougherty

Paper-Cut-Project
Nikki Nye and Amy Flurry met while the former owned a fashion boutique just outside of
Atlanta and the latter was working as a freelance fashion editor. "We discovered a mutual
love for the theater and fantasy as it played out on the runway," Flurry says. Nye, a graduate
of the Illinois Institute of Art, has been working with paper since art school, while Flurry
was also making textiles on the side. Joining forces, the pair founded Paper-Cut-Project in
2009. "I had been an artist since I was a little girl, but always as a hobby," Nye says. "[PaperCut-Project is] when I realized that it is possible to make a living doing what I love."
While Nye is responsible for sketching designs for client approval, Flurry works on the
accents and details of their pieces, which are constructed from heavy art paper and glue.
Recently, they completed their first permanent installation at the Eve on Adams rooftop
lounge at the DoubleTree by Hilton Tallahassee, designed by Steiner Group. Measuring
9-by-5-feet, every piece of paper for the floral sculpture was hand-cut and assembled in
three panels that were then shipped and put together on location.

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Born in San Bernardino, California and raised in the greater Atlanta area,
artist Craig Alan spent his youth drawing on the walls of his parents'
house. "I decided my mom's kitchen walls needed more color and took
it upon myself to resolve," he says. From there, Alan temporarily found
passions elsewhere, accepting a scholarship to play soccer at the University
of Mobile in Prichard, Alabama. But when his GPA slipped, his coach
enrolled him in art classes to pull it back up. "These classes ended up
changing the course of my life," Alan says. "Art made all of the other
classes I was taking come alive." On weekends, he began driving to New
Orleans to create and sell portraits of pedestrians, which was the first step
in opening his eponymous studio a few years later.
His most acclaimed series, "Populus," was inspired by a wedding he
witnessed, and comprises 3D portraits of historical figures such as John
F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Recently, however, he worked with
DAC Art Consulting to install From the Ground Up, a mural depicting a
rising phoenix on Atlanta's multi-use 8West building. The original mixedmedia painting was completed in studio and then reproduced on stainless
steel metal sheets. "I love finding ways to shape people's perspectives in
unexpected ways, taking them from one sense of reality to the next," Alan
says. "This notion of transformation fuels my inspiration."
Marketplace Fall 2020 hospitalitydesign.com

Photos courtesy of PAPER-CUT-PROJECT and DAC ART CONSULTING

Craig Alan

http://www.hospitalitydesign.com

Hospitality Design - Marketplace Fall 2020

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