Protagonists: Michael Stutz
From Mardi Gras parades to contemporary installations, the American artist reveals how paper transforms into energy, movement, emotion, and human connection
Paper is everywhere — to wrap, to contain, to protect, to write. So ordinary that we forget its magic. Yet in the hands of artist Michael Stutz, it becomes a language of energy, rhythm, and transformation. His large-scale woven sculptures, often made from reclaimed cardboard, inhabit public spaces with both physical presence and emotional resonance, exploring the fragile balance between permanence and impermanence.
Stutz, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, began his creative journey by crafting enormous figures for the Mardi Gras parades of New Orleans. That carnival, he recalls, taught him the power of public spectacle, of art that moves through the streets and connects with people directly. «Being an artist means making things happen» he says, «and that’s also a way of life.»
Now based in Fallbrook, Southern California, Stutz lives among oak trees and chaparral with his family, working from a multidisciplinary studio linked to the Fallbrook School of the Arts. His practice blends the physicality of sculpture with the meditative act of drawing, and his studio resonates with the sounds of jazz — Coltrane, Mingus, and Miles Davis — his constant companions. «Keeping fit and listening to music all day are the real advantages of my lifestyle» he smiles.
From paint to paper: a journey of materials
Stutz’s artistic path began with painting. After studying Fine Arts at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and spending a formative year at Ulster Polytechnic in Belfast, he immersed himself in the vibrant San Francisco art scene of the late 1980s. There he exhibited paintings and constructed works while earning a living as a prop builder for film and fashion. The city, still affordable and bursting with artistic energy, offered him community and experimentation.
A later move to New Orleans changed everything. Immersed in the city’s rhythm — its funk, its parades, its sense of theatricality — Stutz discovered a new sculptural vocabulary. Working for float builders, he encountered a hybrid technique called contact mache, which used contact cement and cardboard as the structural base for papier-mâché forms. «It was like sculpting with glue and cardboard instead of clay,» he recalls.
This discovery sparked an evolution. He began using triangulated cardboard strips woven into lattice structures, essentially «drawing in the air.» Influenced by Giacometti, Buckminster Fuller, and the cross-hatched marks of Jasper Johns, Stutz found a visual rhythm that would define his mature work.
When he returned to San Francisco, he realized that his sculptures — made from discarded packaging, computer boxes, and cereal cartons — had a life and voice of their own. The act of collecting cardboard from the streets became part of the artwork itself: «As an artist, you spend long hours alone. Searching for cardboard got me out into the world and connected me to people again.»
The Lucca Biennale and the power of connection
This connection found powerful expression in Italy, at the Lucca Biennale Cartasia, the world’s largest event dedicated to paper art. Stutz first participated in 2016 with Hoodie, a work inspired by hip-hop culture and the migrant experience, which stood for years within Lucca’s ancient walls before being destroyed by vandalism in 2022.
In 2024, he returned with Inverted World, a monumental cardboard sculpture exploring the «world turned upside down.» For Stutz, the work symbolizes a humanity distorted by technology — an «animal spirit struggling to be seen.» The piece invites viewers to reconsider perspective and perception: what seems chaotic from the outside may reveal coherence from within.
«Participating in the Lucca Biennale is one of the most rewarding experiences of my career,» he says. «It’s like a boot camp for cardboard sculpture — artists from all over the world working side by side, transforming simple materials into something monumental.»
In Lucca, Stutz worked for three weeks with an assistant, assembling layers of corrugated paper into the complex form of Inverted World. The challenge, he says, was not technical but mental: «Staying focused under pressure. Planning carefully but not losing sight of the bigger picture. And taking the time to enjoy Lucca — cycling along the city walls was one of the best moments of my life.»
A language of fragility and force
Stutz’s woven sculptures are paradoxical — both soft and commanding, delicate yet monumental. They express, he says, «the bond between community and public space.» His figures — human, animal, vegetal — are animated by movement and by the light that filters through their open surfaces.
The contrast between his two main materials, cardboard and bronze, defines his artistic philosophy. Bronze, he notes, is permanent, monumental, and enduring — «it lasts about as long as anything made by humans.” Cardboard, by contrast, is ephemeral and tender, but also liberating: «It’s warm, light, easy to handle, and full of emotion.» Both share a plasticity, yet their meaning diverges — permanence versus transformation.
«If I had to choose, I’d choose cardboard,” he admits. «It’s freer, more expressive, more human.»
His sculptures, often built from reclaimed boxes found in dumpsters and alleys, reflect an environmental consciousness rooted not in ideology but in practice. «Collecting material from the street connects me to the world,» he says. «It reminds me that creation and waste are two sides of the same process.»
Music, movement, and meaning
Music plays a central role in Stutz’s work. His studio rhythms echo jazz improvisation — spontaneous yet structured. «Music keeps me going,» he says. «My heroes are Coltrane, Mingus, and Miles Davis. Jazz is all about dialogue, tension, and release — just like sculpture.»
In the visual arts, his inspirations range from Anselm Kiefer and classical Greek sculpture to Lee Bontecou, Ruth Asawa, and Martin Puryear. In film, he admires Tarkovsky, Fellini, Coppola, and Altman — artists who, like him, explore the interplay of narrative and form.
Yet Stutz’s true muse may be energy itself. «Almost everything is energy,» he reflects. «Sculpture includes light, sound, and mass — the way a piece occupies space, the way it changes as you move around it. I want my art to capture that vitality.»
He rejects the idea of leaving a static legacy: «I don’t want to be remembered for making things that outlive me. Art stores energy, like a battery. That’s its nourishment.»
Encounters and interpretations
In Lucca’s Piazza San Michele, Stutz spent hours watching people interact with his works — observing, talking, laughing. «I made friends with the local drunks who stayed there all day and looked after the sculptures,» he recalls with affection. «I loved seeing children play hide-and-seek among the faces. When someone interacts with a sculpture and gives it meaning, that’s when the work is complete.»
He describes his installations as universal yet multifaceted: open forms that invite dialogue rather than impose interpretation. «Cardboard has a way of dissolving barriers» he explains. «People approach it without fear. They touch it, lean on it, photograph it. It’s human-scale art.»
Looking ahead
Despite his ongoing love affair with cardboard, Stutz is currently engaged in several bronze commissions across the United States — including a 1.8-meter-tall dog for a park in Las Vegas, a portrait of Quincy Jones for a public square in Bremerton, Washington, and a herd of wild horses for the airport in El Paso, Texas.
Yet paper always calls him back. In January, he will exhibit a 2.4-meter female bust at Los Angeles’s Wonzimer Gallery, curated by fellow cardboard sculptor Ann Weber, alongside some of the best paper artists in the U.S. He is also developing a project to recreate Hoodie with young people from an underprivileged neighborhood in Los Angeles — a cross-cultural collaboration that will later travel back to Lucca. The initiative will include a documentary exploring how meaning shifts depending on place and context.
A vision of transformation
For Stutz, sculpture is not just an object but a living process — a conversation between material, space, and human gesture. His art is born from the tension between strength and fragility, permanence and decay, presence and disappearance.
«Almost everything I create,» he says, «belongs to the animal, human, or plant world. We’re rooted in the earth, but sculpture goes beyond matter — it’s about energy, light, and movement.»
Through paper — that most humble and transient of materials — Michael Stutz weaves stories of transformation. His works breathe, bend, and shimmer with the pulse of human experience. They remind us that what is fragile can also be powerful, and that art, like life, is an act of balance between what endures and what inevitably fades.