Some evoke the moai statues on Easter Island; others seem to be the spitting image of George Bush. Yet these little gems are made from (ready?) toilet paper rolls. Toilet paper rolls! It’s the artistic equivalent of making silk from a sow’s ear.
The artist is Junior Jacquet, a native of Haiti who is now a longtime Parisian. (Be sure to “cliquez ici” in the lower left corner of his website to see his pdf catalogue). Jacquet works in all kinds of paper, creating human figures and abstract sculptures, and makes his “masks” in large sizes, too.
But the small versions made from recycled toilet paper rolls impress me so much more because they are born from something so mundane. The very idea of making such expressive portraits out of toilet paper rolls in particular seems to suggest that every little thing we might cast away as garbage really just wants to be transformed. Images after the jump.