Marietta Sophie Paul’s 2023 exhibition Scuttled/Transformed converted rejected prints and discarded aluminium cans into layered collages.
Presented in the Crowell Board Room at Carson City Community Center, the exhibition developed from the artist’s desire to reduce waste while finding new formal possibilities in materials already considered useless.
Rejected work becoming raw material
Paul began cutting failed or unwanted prints into fragments and reorganising them through repeated patterns. The process preserved traces of the original images while removing their earlier status as complete works.
During morning walks, she also collected soda and beer cans left beside the road. Their colours and printed surfaces became additional elements within the collages.
The title referred to objects being abandoned and then altered through another use. Waste was not hidden, but remained visible inside the finished composition.
Metalwork knowledge entering printmaking
Paul trained as a metalsmith through a silversmith apprenticeship in the United Kingdom. She later established a jewellery business and developed expertise in goldsmithing, cloisonné enamel and hand engraving.
Her technical knowledge connected contemporary recycling with methods used by craftspeople over several centuries. The Ringling Museum of Art had previously invited her to discuss historical tools and techniques in relation to exhibitions of jewellery and decorative art.
After expanding into printmaking at Western Nevada College, Paul began combining paper processes with metal material.
Scuttled/Transformed brought those parts of her practice together. Its collages treated environmental concern not as a separate subject represented in an image, but as a decision embedded in the work’s materials and construction.