Mari Watanabe /Japanese paper artist.
Japanese, born in 1962 in Sendai, Miyagi.
1985 : diploma in the household arts from Mishimagakuen College in Sendai. ( thesis, screen printing of playing cards ).
Mari Watanabe has worked with Japanese paper since 2008. She has lived in Munich with only a brief interruption since 2004. She attended the “Academy for Style and Design” in Munich and completed her training in the year 2013 with an exam in front of the “Chamber of Crafts for Munich and Upper Bavaria”. Her thesis topic was the creation of a Japanese paper dress, for which she was awarded the master prize by Bavarian government. Representative work: “Das Isar Projekt 2012”, for which Watanabe let 500 7.5 m-long strips of paper flow from a bridge down into the river. Since 2013, Watanabe has held annual exhibitions in Germany. In 2016, Watanabe had a booth for the first time at the “International Craft Trade Fair” in Munich.

Brief Description of the project
The creation of two dresses out of Japanese paper (WASHI) . There are several advantages to using WASHI. It is supple, stable, easy to sew, and has a pleasant color. Woven pieces are washable. But WASHI has no elasticity. The challenge is to use this characteristic of WASHI profitably. And the dresses schuld look elegant. That is the aim of this project.  Many folds help to give it elasticity. The other dress has many gaps. It seems easier to move in. If one part gets dirty, it is easy to exchange.