Colette Fu | |
|---|---|
 Colette Fu at the Axi Fire Festival, 2015 | |
| Born | Princeton, New Jersey |
| Nationality | American Chinese |
| Education |
|
| Occupation(s) | Book artist, paper engineer, artist, photographer, teacher |
| Awards | Fulbright Scholarship, Leeway Transformation Award, En Foco New Award, Puffin Foundation Artist Grant, Society of Photographic Education Achievement Scholarship, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artist Fellowship |
| Website | colettefu |
Colette Fu is a photographer, book artist and paper engineer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who makes pop-up books from her photographs. She teaches pop-up courses and community workshops with marginalized populations at various art centers, universities and institutions internationally.[3] Her large-scale, three-dimensional pop-up books feature photographic images which extend towards the viewer for many layers. During an artist residency in Shanghai, Fu designed China's largest pop-up book. Pop-up and flap books originally illustrated sociological ideas and scientific principles; she constructs her own books on how our selves relate to society today. In 2008, Fu was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to create a pop-up book of the 25 ethnic minority groups residing in Yunnan Province, China, from where the artist's mother's family descends. 25 of 55 minority tribes of China reside in Yunnan and comprise less than 9% of the nation's population, with the Han representing the majority. She uses her artistic skills to spread knowledge and provide a brief portrait of their existence.[4][5][6][7]
Fu, born in Princeton, New Jersey, is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. After graduating from the University of Virginia, Fu traveled to China with a student tour and shortly returned for three years to teach English and, later, to study Mandarin and art. Fu traveled throughout Yunnan, where her mother, member of the Nuosu Yi community, was born, photographing various people in ethnic dress.[8] After returning to the United States, Fu studied photography at Virginia Commonwealth University and Rochester Institute of Technology, where she began collaging images into detailed hyperreal fantasy scenarios.[8]
Fu's well-received pop-up book series include:
Fu's commercial clients for paper engineering have included LVMH, Vogue China, Canon Asia, Greenpeace and Children's Medical Center in Texas.[10] Fu's books are in collections including Library of Congress, Yale University, Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Museum of Women in the Arts.
On a visit to her local Borders Book Store, Fu stumbled onto Robert Sabuda's Wizard of Oz pop-up book and was instantly enamored.[11] Fu then learned paper engineering mechanics by reverse engineering pop-up books purchased on eBay while attending numerous artist residencies.[12][13]
Each of Fu's pop-up books are a single, large format spread. A good variety of her pop-up books are based on her experiences traveling to China and learning about her culture. Fu creates a digital collage using her own photographs on her computer, then "works on the pop-up mechanisms that cause her composition to explode from the page."[14] Fu does all the work herself, including printing and binding, and each pop-up element is cut by hand. Some books include up to 40 photographs and measure 3 x 4.5 feet.[11] An average pop-up can take up to four weeks to design and build.[15]
Colette Fu's projects have taken her across the globe and can take years to fully materialize. With the help of a Fulbright fellowship, a recent endeavor found her in southwest Yunnan Province, China, where she studied the local population, learned about their culture and immersed herself in the daily life of its people. The project took ten years to complete, but resulted in some of Fu's most notable work.[17][18]
| Year | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Medium & Message: The Book Art of Colette Fu and Lothar Meggendorfer[19] | The Rosenbach, Philadelphia, PA |
| 2021 | What the Butterfly Dragon Taught Me: Dimensional Stories in Paper[20] | Center for Book Arts, NYC |
| 2019 | We are Tiger Dragon People[16] | Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA |
| 2018 | We are Tiger Dragon People | Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin and Marshall College[21] |
| 2017 | Tao Hua Yuan Ji: Source of the Peach Blossoms | Philadelphia Photo Arts Center[2] |
| 2016 | Wanderer/Wonderer: The Pop-up Books of Colette Fu | The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, catalog included[22] |
| 2015 | Land of Deities [23] | Georgetown University, Washington, DC |
| 2013 | We are Tiger Dragon People & Photo Binge[24] | Jaffe Center for Book Arts, Boca Raton, FL |
| 2011 | Haunted Philadelphia[25] | Philadelphia Athenaeum, Philadelphia, PA |
