Georgia Russell

At CEA, I teach with an artist named Georgia Russell. She teaches drawing. She is a crazy artist. I mean crazy in all the incredible ways. Crazy good. Crazy compelling. Crazy innovative. Crazy thrilling. She is also a magnificent human being - sparkling, beautiful, funny and humble (a rare quality for an artist as successful and brilliant as she). Here she is:



Georgia spoke last night at the institute where we teach and talked about her experience as an artist. Georgia is from a small village in Scotland, but she came to Paris as part of her studies in art. When she arrived, she spent a lot of time walking along the Seine, where all the old books are sold. She bought books and used them as sketchbooks, drawing on top of the language that, at the time, was a source of alienation for her. She would read the words and draw the city around her. Eventually, she started cutting into the books with a scalpel and felt it was a thrilling and emotional experience to destroy something - to literally take apart layers of meaning in a book. In this way, her books became sculptures of their own.


The Story of Art 2006

In her presentation, she talked about how "books modify you," and by taking the book apart, she was playing with this idea of layers and layers of meaning within a text.


Spectacle – Jacques Prévert 2006


L'Erotisme (detail) 2008 (Cut and painted book in a bell jar)

She also uses sheet music and cuts into the score, playing with the concept of timing, of measures, of movement within a piece of music.




Les Saisons de Haydn 2007

She exhibits at a gallery in London called England & Co. See her stuff on their site.