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No. 28 Hope

Design: Toni Dachis, Minneapolis, MN

Folded paper, 2019

Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried but actually you’ve been planted. Currently the “Papercuts” technique she has created has drawn attention, out of her desire to repurpose materials that would normally end up discarded. Toni manipulates cut paper strips by folding and gluing them to the substrate like pieces of a puzzle. What you see are the folded edges. With so much destruction in the world, creating is Toni’s contribution to the balance of what we destroy while preserving history in an abstract way. Repurposing everyday materials gives old materials a new life and meaning before they become obsolete.

Toni is a Minneapolis based multi-media artist. Her clean conceptual style is influenced by her earlier career as a graphic designer. She received her BFA in graphic design from the the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 1978 and has continued to study printmaking in MCAD’s summer program (2009-2014). After ten years in graphic design and raising two children, Dach is began painting murals, designing interior accessories, and started two non-profit organizations. Her choice of materials-newspapers, magazines, scrap paper, and even ‘bad’ prints from the printmaking process-is integral to the message of each piece, her sensitivity to the environment, and the times in which we live.