The Mississippi Delta
I am interested in the space between things—where one form becomes another, where elements shift along a line, across a horizon, or within the negative space of a page. Line, pattern, shape, and repetition are ways to experience expansiveness, tension, and balance. I am drawn to the relationship between forms: how they pair, oppose, or harmonize, whether on the flat plane of a page or as sculptural shapes, formed from paper pulp into textured, irregular surfaces and assembled on the wall.
My inspiration often begins with the natural world: tiny seashells worn smooth by water and time, their internal structure revealed; the exposed strata of the earth, lamellations shaped by sediment and geologic shifts. These layered lines are echoed in the flat expanse of the Mississippi Delta, the landscape that shaped my visual vocabulary with its endless horizon and radial rows of plowed fields. This geometry of repetition and subtle shifts continues to inform my work.
My work also references the geological concept of unconformity, the phenomenon where strata of rock abut one another yet are separated by vast spans of missing time. Adjacency disrupted by absence, the presence of something now gone, but its edges remain, evokes both the visible and invisible traces of time and transformation.
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Eileen Wallace is Senior Lecturer at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia where she teaches courses in letterpress printing, book arts, and hand papermaking. Wallace was a resident artist at Penland School of Craft and has taught workshops at Penland, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and other venues across the country. She is co-director emeritus of the Paper & Book Intensive and a former board member of Hand Papermaking magazine. She is the curator of Masters: Book Arts, a book featuring the art of over 40 artists considered masters of their craft. Wallace earned an MLS in Library Science and an MFA in Book Arts, both from the University of Alabama and was named the 2025 Outstanding Book Arts Alum from the program.