Isabella Whitfield

Artist Statement from Isabella Whitfield
I am a multimedia artist, currently working between papermaking, sculpture, and site-responsive installation. My practice observes the relationship between objects, lifespan, and perceived value. By abstracting materiality through sculptural paper castings, I examine the internal disassociation that arises when intended purpose contradicts actual functionality. I often work within the same reservoir of source materials, recycling pulp, colors, and architectural imagery. My work values quiet precision, inviting viewers to confront the familiar with a sense of alienation.

I am currently a Core Fellow at Penland School of Craft, where I am doing a year-long study across various mediums.

Interview with Isabella Whitfield

Questions by Sidney Mullis

With a focus on her last three solo exhibitions Best Regards, All My Children Are Good People, and Present Perfect.

June 29, 2026

Across your last three solo exhibitions, cast paper objects have been dissolved and recast into new forms. Rather than treating paper as a fixed material, you rehydrate and reuse it from one exhibition to the next. When did you begin thinking about paper as a material that could continually begin again?
I was initially drawn to papermaking because of its potential for limitless beginnings. In papermaking, if you are not satisfied with your work, you can easily rehydrate, reprocess, and try again. It is a very forgiving medium, and this lack of permanence makes working expansively much more accessible. I first started papermaking when I was a senior in college, and this reusable quality has kept me engaged since then.

This past year, I have been exploring materials outside of papermaking, and those works tend to stray from cyclical usage. Medium is closely tied to concept, so it is interesting to test similar ideas across different studios. Some mediums transfer more easily than others. With my land-based art, for example, it is logical to return a site to its original state. However, with more persistent materials, such as metal and glass, I am still developing my approach.

Repetition appears throughout your work, whether reprocessing paper pulp or producing large numbers of related forms. What does repetition allow you to uncover that a singular gesture cannot?
Repetition has enabled me to express intention and assert feeling through presence. By sticking with a specific material or form, I can communicate ideas that are physically more committed. Creating hundreds of related forms is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it reveals fixation that often verges on obsession.

Your work often involves physical labor and long durations of making. I’m thinking of the rice grain performance, casting processes, and reworking the same paper pulp. How did the body and its physical endurance become an integral part of your practice?
Over the past several years, I have begun to treat my art practice like training for a sport. I draw a lot of inspiration from endurance athletes, particularly ultramarathon runners and long-distance hikers. Behind building endurance is a lot of willpower and meticulous preparation. Work ethic is often a way to exert control over unpredictable situations, and commitment to process serves as an act of reassurance. Putting in time and labor is my way of developing a framework on which something worth building can stand.

Many artworks in your solo exhibition Best Regards, begin with “How To.” They read like instructions, but they also feel like prompts with unfinished possibilities. How did this approach to titling emerge?
With the works in Best Regards, I was thinking about how our intentions can often be misaligned with actions or reality. Through the “how to” titlings, I wanted to form logically dubious questions to which the artworks presumably serve as answers. For example, in the piece “how to hold your breath in over a minute in under a minute” I installed a paper life vest weighed with cast bronze bell clappers. Both the physical piece and the titling speak to some kind of joint contradiction or aligned ulterior purpose.

In Best Regards, I was particularly struck by the artwork titles How to Stop a Cycle and How to Recall a Message. They do not announce completion. Instead, they suggest a continuation or return. Do you see your titles participating in the same cyclical logic as the objects?
As long as my artwork is engaging in a cyclical logic, my titles will reflect that process. I like to write and think about titling possibilities, but the work itself always takes precedence.

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between your bronze works and your paper works. What interests you about working between these two materials?
I am interested in how bronze and paper can act as foils to each other, primarily in terms of material longevity and weight. I like to play within those contrasts while still locating moments of overall reconciliation.

In How to Stop A Cycle, the bronze train track remains fixed on the wall, while its shadow drawing continues to evolve throughout exhibitions. Could you talk about the shadow in this work and how those drawings have evolved over time?
In my bronze shadow drawings, I have a bronze piece installed a few inches away from the wall and have it lit at an angle, casting a shadow. This work first came about from a studio visit with my friend, Kat Nguyen. The lighting was casting two shadows at the time, and we drew a dumpster and a pig. It was a fun moment, and I wanted to carry that levity into the two installations since then. While I have a general feeling of what I want the drawing to feel like, the evolution of the drawings is determined by the surrounding environment. I let the lighting and positioning be primarily informants and am never set on specifics - it's a very generative exercise.

You spoke about site as an active collaborator rather than a passive container. What changes when you allow a site to participate in the work rather than simply receive it?
I think it is a kind of hubris to assume that a space, whether that’s a gallery wall or an outdoor site, needs your artwork for it to be activated. Whatever space you’re showing at was there before your art, and it will be there after. By acknowledging an artwork’s physical surroundings, I am recognizing that I am a visitor. Instead of a monologantic artistic imposition, I want things to be a two-way street between myself and place.

Across your recent exhibitions, materials return, installations shift, shadows evolve, and titles imply continuation. What has this cyclical way of working taught you about endings?
Though my work is cyclical, it operates more as a spiral than a circle. I return to a place of origin, but in a slightly different position. It is like going back to a house, but always in a different room. For example, from re-pulping my paper caution signs, I created a series of paper garden figurines; it is the same material, but a different manifestation. In this way, endings are necessary transitional phases that give rise to new beginnings. I am required to let go to move forward. Especially within the medium of paper, I have learned that there are unlimited new beginnings if I am willing to let go of my work and allow it to evolve. In my practice, a true ending is not when an artwork is reprocessed and materially disassembled, but rather when I decide to disengage with it and leave it as a final form, not to be reimagined.

Thank you for sharing your work and talking with us!

To find out more about Isabella Whitfield, check out her website.