About
Nicola Dobrowolski is a Paper Artist, Designer and Maker.
She is fascinated by narratives, human behaviour, scale and the use of space
and the power of Art to encapsulate all these elements into one experience.
I believe ‘Your Story makes the Cut’
This short film is about the process of a commission “Primavera” coming together. The research, sketches, the hand cutting process, the assembly and the final piece. Below this is a written interview about Nicola and her love of paper conducted by The Michelangelo Foundation for her exhibition in Venice in 2021.
Click the image below to view the video
Interview with DobrowolskiDesigns
Interview with The Michelangelo Foundation, detailing a little background about Nicola and the origins of her love of paper.
“Working with paper comes so naturally to me. When I look at a piece of paper, it’s never a flat piece of paper that I see. It’s an opportunity. It’s the beginning of something wonderful. I have innately collected and respected paper from a young age. Respecting and valuing good paper and its many personalities is clearly something that has been passed down through the generations within our family, most obviously from my grandfather, who was a Polish artist and worked with paper in a sculptural form in the commercial advertising industry in the 1940’s in London”
Nicola learnt the wonderful skill of model making during her training as a Theatre Designer. “This is where I was introduced to my scalpel,” she recalls. “The possibilities of paper in both its two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms truly became apparent to me there.”
“My passion for visually telling a story stems from my difficulty with reading. I am Dyslexic and I’m so pleased that I am, as it’s forced me to understand things in a visual and spacial way from a very early age. When people talk, I instantly see the story inside my brain. My bed time stories were a childhood highlight, the best part of the day.
And now, three decades later, I am thrilled that my career is grounded in telling people’s and companies’ stories through art, using colour, space and form to do so. It’s a dream come true…”
Interview by The Michelangelo Foundation - Homo Faber Guide 2021 . Nicola Dobrowolski - Master Artisan of Paper Sculpture U.K.
Daydreams at Dawn - Paper Installation