Jeff Nishinaka

The Paper Genius

Jeff Nishinaka carves and pinches paper to create intricate paper sculptures. The 52-year-old Los Angeles based illustrator and sculptor has been refining his paper craft since 1982. Taking anywhere from three days to four months to produce, Jeff's detailed pieces range from 8in by 8in to 20 feet tall and 20 feet wide Jeff Nishinaka cuts and crushes the paper with an enviable skill to create exquisite paper sculptures. 52-year-old illustrator and sculptor from Los Angeles creates his work from 1982. The stunning elegance of Jeff Nishinakas paper art calls for a new definition of paper. His meticulous sculptural 3D work appears to have been created from marble or extremely fine sand or vanilla ice cream or thick foam definitely of something other than just paper. The Los Angeles-born artist works mainly with white, which makes the exquisite play of light and shadow a large part of the appeal of his work. One might assume that there is very little demand for work that uses one medium and one color. Not so. Nishinakas work pops up everywhere in the most unexpected places, from medical illustrations of the structure of the eye, to private portrait commissions, to a life-size garden for a hotel. He has a prolific career working in advertising, fashion and fine art, and also creating some larger installations. His commercial work includes commissions for fashion catalogues for Bloomingdales and Galeries Lafayette, advertising work for Visa, Coca Cola, Playboy, American Airlines, Toyota and Mattel. Even the colourful characters of Disneys Lion King Pumbaa, Timon, Rafiki et.al. look absolutely stunning in Nishinakas white paper world. If you want to see a lot of Nishinakas work in one place, you need to talk to his personal friend, actor Jackie Chan, the owner of the largest Nishinaka collection. Jeffs paper sculpting career has spanned 28 years, and his commercial portfolio includes clients such as Bloomingdales, Visa, Penn State University, Paramount Pictures, Harvard Medical School, Random House, and Mattel, for whom he designed these beautiful, custom Barbie sets

All copyrights belong to the artist Jeff Nishinaka http://www.jeffnishinaka.com/

"The largest installation I did for the hotel ANA Hotel in Tokyo - said Jeffrey. - It was a tree with birds, grass and fish. The entire sculpture was about 6 meters in height, 6 meters wide and 3 meters in depth. (JEFFREY NISHINAKA / BARCROFT USA)

"Everything starts with an idea, then do research, and only then work's draft drawings. After that, I am perfect in outline, then paint the final version of the pencil on the sculpture. The final figure is a blue dye for the sculpture. Picture of "broken" into individual pieces and transferred to the rear side of the paper. Then cut out the pieces, clean, give shape and glued. This is a very long and l aborious process. " (JEFFREY NISHINAKA / BARCROFT USA)

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Jeffrey worked as an artist and his career has created hundreds of paper sculptures. "I use very simple tools: forceps, mechanical pencil, toothpicks, knives, a matrix for cutting, curve and triangles and a small rounded wooden peg," -says Jeffrey. (JEFFREY NISHINAKA / -BARCROFT USA)

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

The works have the effect of 3D thanks to several layers of paper and adequate lighting. The artist uses paper from 100% cotton, so it does not yellow with the years. (JEFFREY NISHINAKA / BARCROFT USA)

The actor Jackie Chan - a close friend of the artist

Brooklyn Bridge

A presentation by Nubia
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