When I was a child, I spent much of my time creating incredible works of art using only crayons, construction paper, and tape. Most of my projects would center around construction paper homes or weapons – the latter being the most interesting. Looking back, I regret my artistic methods a little bit. What I should have been doing is rolling up paper in a process called “quilling” to produce incredible works of art like these anatomical cross-sections by Lisa Nilsson. My creations would likely have been more terrifying and certainly not spiritual like hers, but hey, art is art, right?
Quilling, or paper filigree, is a process that monks, religious people, and housewives with far too much time on their hands have been creating for thousands of years. According to recently recovered documents from Jesus’ final resting place in the Arctic Circle, even the man himself was deeply passionate about quilling. Given how incredibly time consuming these projects are, I think one would need a god-like level of patience to complete them.
Anatomical Cross-Sections made of Paper
As I’m sure you can see, Lisa’s work is incredibly complex. She’s seemingly used thousands and thousands of tiny paper ribbons to create each piece, and and she’s done so in a way that actually looks fairly realistic. Her excellent choice of color went a long way towards making these immediately recognizable as well.
As I said, I would have loved to learn paper quilling as a kid. Perhaps schools could actually run a sort of crossover between biology and art, where students would re-create parts of the body using paper filigree. I would have loved the shit out of doing projects like that. It would have been like the crossover between the Xena and Hercules TV shows from the 90s, but more artistic.
If you’re interested in seeing more of Lisa Nilsson’s impressive paper quilling, or any of her other work, you can do so by visiting her website. I also recommend visiting John Polak’s website; he’s the fellow who took the photos of Lisa’s work.
