Michele Riesenmey

I did think about writing "no comment" for this post. I came across Michele Riesenmey's work a few years ago in one of my favourite French magazines Cote Ouest. I have piles and piles of magazines at home and just as many articles, bits of paper, cards and photos that I save for inspiration or for my own aesthetic pleasure. Cote Ouest's piece has never left me and I can't really explain why.

Michele's powerful compositions are made from paper and simple time-worn treasures gathered along the banks of the Loire estuary and St Nazaire harbour. There's a childlike quality to her memory boxes filled with "petites emotions" - scraps of handwritten letters, scrunched up foil, pebbles, cork and driftwood - that I find beautiful. I also recently read that her huge "tapisserie de memoires", thousands of strips of paper on a metal frame, was created from abandoned works of art that she had saved for over 20 years - recycling at its best!

My favourite piece is this "bibliotheque de memoires", a composition of over one hundred unique paper balls, stained with pigments and inks, tied with string and tape and embellished with foil and estuary treasures, encased in rusty metal. It leaves me speechless.